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 it 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.
Hi Mabula,
I've now managed to process two images with APP using the trial license and am very pleased with the results, see attached Ghosts of Gamma Cas and Iris Nebula.
I have used several other imaging packages in the past so have some idea what to expect but generally I've found the package very straight-forward to use once I'd got to grips with preparing calibration frames and experimented a bit with the slider controls on the RHS of screen. Overall I am very impressed with its capabilities and look forward to seeing what future releases will bring.
On a minor usability issue I find the placement of the RHS sliders and the associated labels slightly misleading, ie I find myself incorrectly moving the slider below a label (as it is the closer) when I should be moving the one above. If you are able to move the relative spacing of the labels and slider I think that would significantly improve useability, at least for me!
Looking critically at my images they clearly benefit from additional data capture to bring out the fainter details better - but imaging time in the UK is horribly limited. Apart from this I believe I have a small issue of banding in the darker areas which I think is due to some incorrect bias correction. I am using a stack of 140 bias frames. Would you agree with my assessment and do you have any
suggestions as to how I might reduce or eliminate this effect.
In summary, thanks for producing such an excellent package and I think you will shortly have a purchase in the near future.
Regards
Mike
Hi Mike,
Thank you for your nice compliments 😉
On a minor usability issue I find the placement of the RHS sliders and the associated labels slightly misleading, ie I find myself incorrectly moving the slider below a label (as it is the closer) when I should be moving the one above. If you are able to move the relative spacing of the labels and slider I think that would significantly improve useability, at least for me!
I have heard this complaint form other APP users as well, so I'll try to adjust the sliders appearance so it becomes more clear.
Looking critically at my images they clearly benefit from additional data capture to bring out the fainter details better - but imaging time in the UK is horribly limited. Apart from this I believe I have a small issue of banding in the darker areas which I think is due to some incorrect bias correction. I am using a stack of 140 bias frames. Would you agree with my assessment and do you have any
suggestions as to how I might reduce or eliminate this effect.
At a first glance, the images look fine, I don't see a clear fixe bias (or dark signal) pattern that indicates bad calibration. Maybe if you can show one of these images with a much stronger stretch so it becomes more apparent?
Kind regards,
Mabula
