2026-10-09 APP 2.0.0-beta48 has been released !
This is mainly a bug fix release for the reported bugs in beta47. In addition it has a significant User Interface performance improvement noticable when you need to process 1000s of images in APP.
2026-10-03 APP 2.0.0-beta47 has been released !
This is a very big release... many code optimizations/rewrites, many parts of APP are much faster and more precise, especially star analysis and registration are much faster ! Big mosaics will go much faster 🙂
And we introduce a new preview filter, which includes the new Adaptive Deep Sky Stretch and a General Levels Stretch, this has been long over due. The old preview filter (the panel on the right side to stretch and preview your data) has not been updated for a couple of years and it is a critical part of any APP session.
Adaptive Deep Sky Stretch or ADSS is a much more intuitive stretch algorithm. It is also color preserving (which is a great new addition in itself ! ) which means that the highlights are no longer bleached, color is maintained from the linear data while stretching. You can simply stretch your data using the sky background level and signal width sliders which work much easier and more intuitive. You no longer need to fiddle with the old complicated sliders with zoom buttons. All the zoom buttons for the sliders are made redundant. And you can enter slider values in the slider value fields yourself. I will make a youtube video in the coming days to explain and fully introduce ADSS. Once the video is ready, it will be highlighted on the forum.
RGB Combine upgrade !. The RGB Combine Tool has been rewritten mostly. The tool is faster and easier to use and most importantly, the Luminance slider to inject a luminance channel or channels into the RGB composite is now working correctly. It no longer bleaches the RGB colors. Combined with the new ADSS preview, you will get much better and easier great composites with great color! I will also explain this in a new youtube video.
Hi,
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although working with unsupported filetypes is a pain, I got pretty good results by converting to tiff with dcraw (following options :Â dcraw -q 3 -4 -t 0 -TÂ ). This is 3 hours of integration time in 120 sec subs with 25 darks and 30 flats.Â
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Camera: Sony A7rIIÂ
OTA: Canon 300/2.8 L USM (1st gen without IS) and Canon 2x TC III adapted with Metabones IV
Mount: Skywatcher Star Adventurer guided with Lacerta MGen II and an Orion Mini Guide Scope
Site: Bortle ~3
Seeing: initially good but decreasing in the last hour
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Calibration of darks and flats with Sigma clipping 3 and 1 iteration
Integration with Sigma clipping 3 and 3 iterations, equal weights
The lens has some ca when paired with the 2x tc and so I first had to remove this defect in LR before running star color correction but even with that done the colors needed a lot of tweaking. I am already collecting HA data in order to bring out the star forming pockets.
A higher resolution version of the image can be found here :Â google drive link
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Thanks for watching and reading. CSÂ
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Ben
Yes I think that is a really nice result actually, would be interesting to compare it to processing directly from the raw files when APP supports it! Thanks for sharing!
Finished around 3 hours of ha with a manually debayered Canon 40D and an Nikon 400/3.5 Ai-s lens. The difference is subtle but worth the work.
CS,
Ben
Bottom right has a bit of a red cast but other than that, it's a nice image.
Mike
