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.
My 2015 macbook pro processes so slowly that I frequently leave it on overnight, so it can work while I sleep.
Played with PI for a bit, now I'm back using APP again. The new version I downloaded (1.079) seems to crash my machine on these overnight sessions. If I 'babysit' the computer and prevent it from sleeping...it works fine... But I can no longer leave it on it's own. 🙁
Because my computer is SO SLOW, I have previously requested a "pause" button in APP, so I can do something important when I need to. It's now needed more than ever!!
A pause button would be interesting, but I'm not sure if that's as easy as you think. APP stores a lot of data in memory to be able to process. Pausing that would require a "state dump" to disk or something like that. And that should work very reliably. I can suggest this to Mabula for extra input.
Also, what kind of crash are we talking about? Couldn't you switch off the sleeping when you're processing?
When I check the computer in the morning, it has completed a reboot. Total system crash.
That is strange, I've not seen APP doing that previously. I'm wondering if the system itself is having an issue at some point. APP will max out your resources if you let it, stressing the system quite a lot. As it's an older machine, maybe something else is also causing such a crash? Maybe try to lower the amount of memory a bit and lower the amount of cores APP can use. This will make APP slower, but maybe your system doesn't like these amount of resources.
It can run with high settings all day long and have no problem (other than being unusable for anything else). APP won't crash and works just fine. It's something to do with the 'sleep' mode. When I avoid that, all is fine.
When I do get a new laptop, it's gonna be a monster. I'm SO tired of it being slow. What's more important: Memory or cores? Both is obviously the best...
