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.
I've just stacked 20 images and save them as a Tiff in the trial version. In the software, the image looks great and show loads of colour (image on right).
However, when I try to open the TIFF in Photoshop (image on left), it looks like one of my unedited images with hardly any colour? Am I doing something wrong??
Steven
Hi StevenHanna,
Thank you for your question and welcome to the forum 😉
I don’t think you are doing anything wrong.
I assume you have saved the image using the save button and the stretch selectbox enabled on the right side, below the histogram, right?
It might have to do with PS interpretation of the data. Did you save it as 32bits or 16bits Tiff? If you saved it as 32bits, can you try to save it as 16bits and check if it looks different in PS?
Did you save it with an ICC profile? Which one? And did you check in PS that the included ICC profile is used (should normally be the case, but sometimes not) ?
Can you open the TIFF with an other normal image viewer application that supports ICC profiles properly like XnView (free)? How does it look then?
The only 2 limitations of the Trial license are
- Online internet connection is required (not for Owner/Renter version)
- 30 day period
So APPs functionality is not limited for processing images during the Trial period.
Kind regards,
Mabula
