Mar 28 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta40 will be released in 7 days.
It did take a long time to have the work finished on this and itĀ will have a major performance boost of 30-50% over 2.0.0-beta39 from calibration to integration. We extensively optimized many critical parts of APP. All has been tested to guarantee correct optimizations. Drizzle and image resampling is much faster for instance, those modules have been completely rewritten. Much less memory usage. LNC 2.0 will be released which works much better and faster than LNC in it's current state. And more, all will be added to the release notes in the coming weeks...
Update on the 2.0.0 release & the full manual
We are getting close to the 2.0.0 stable release and the full manual. The manual will soon become available on the website and also in PDF format. Both versions will be identical and once released, will start to follow the APP release cycle and thus will stay up-to-date to the latest APP version.
Once 2.0.0 is released, the price for APP will increase. Owner's license holders will not need to pay an upgrade fee to use 2.0.0, neither do Renter's license holders.
This is my Rosette Nebula from last weekend. It's a mix of RGB and HOO from the OPTOLONG L-eNhance filter. I wanted to keep the colors natural, so I removed the stars from the Ha and O3 data and mixed it carefully to the RGB in Photoshop. I'm very happy with the result.
Better resolution and data: https://astrob.in/rofath/0/
CS, Robert
Very nice result Robert. Any chance you could tell us a bit about how you went about removing the stars and the blending in PS? I also have the Optolong filter and have been trying RGB combine in APP and also using layers in Photoshop. Not too pleased with the results!
Regards Dave
That's a stunning image Robert.Ā
Might very well be the new Starnet++ plugin? I have no PS knowledge, but that one seems very powerful. Beautiful image and blend!
Thanks Dave!
It's much easier to show than to discribe, but I will try. The Dual-filter data I split into it's three mono channels. For removing the stars I use starnet++. Then I process each channel seperatly (denoising, etc.). For the mixing in Photoshop I set the layers to blendmode screen. Then I add a "hui/saturation adjustment layer" for each mono-layer with a clipmask, set it to colorize, choose the color (0 for red, 120 for green and 240 for blue), saturation to 100, lightness to -50 as a starting point. Than I tweek the mono-layer transparency and "lightness in the hui/saturation layer" till I get the color I like. Usualy I have to add some curve and level adjustment layers too.Ā I hope it's not too confusing.
CS, Robert
@vincent-mod
Thank you Vincent!
Yes, I use starnet++ to remove the stars 🙂Ā
Many thanks for the workflow Robert. I'll have a read and try and get my head around that 😉Ā
Regards Dave
