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,
Reposting this, as I received an answer to a 1 year old post - something might went wrong with the subscription.
I am running APP 2.00 beta 26 on MACOS Sonoma 14.1.2. It stars fine without crashing. Operation seems normal as well. Some questions:
1) Do You still recommend to download beta 28?
2) What would be  the impact of Metal disabled?Â
3) Which Sonoma version has the Metal bug actually? Sonoma 14.1 got updated quickly to 14.1.2, probably this includes Metal fix already?
4) Going forward, will there be 2 future MAC OS versions with Metal enabled / disabled Or will there be a selector like the Open GL tickbox?
Hello
Just got new MBP with M3 max. Running fine APP 2.0 beta 28 on OSX Sonoma 14.2.1
I integrated without any issue 2760 files (4 plans in S, H, O, R, G, B each) of mosaic panel, then the assembly of the mosaic (where I still have normalization issue, but same on several versions and not linked to the comuter configuration)
Thanks @phillippe-berhard, I do not doubt beta 28 works, I just would like to know what toll we need to take disabling Metal (speed etc.). Maybe @Mabula-admin can shed some light here. And if beta 26 works as well, why would I upgrade?
Hi Jochen @jochen-scharmann, @philippe-bernhard
Oh, that is weird, indeed, I answered this question already somewhere else...
We disabled the use of metal in beta28 because it clearly is broken on some macs with Sonoma, like many other things... (Sonoma is rather a bad release from Apple to be honest... if you google for it, you will find a Sonoma mega issue/bug list even. )
But disabling metal in APP shoudl have zero=0 influence on APP's performance. Metal is only used for drawing the 2D interface, like the buttons and dropdown boxes... Metal is not used for difficult calculations nor for image rendering.
We can only enable metal once we now that Apple has fixed all the Sonoma bugs. Unfortunately, Apple does not report everything they fix in each macOS release... so it will be a bit hard to keep track of this. But we know at least that performance in not impacted.
Mabula
Hello
Just got new MBP with M3 max. Running fine APP 2.0 beta 28 on OSX Sonoma 14.2.1
I integrated without any issue 2760 files (4 plans in S, H, O, R, G, B each) of mosaic panel, then the assembly of the mosaic (where I still have normalization issue, but same on several versions and not linked to the comuter configuration)
That is great 🙂 Perhaps you can show or point me to the normalization issue that you are experiencing?
Mabula
Â
That is great 🙂 Perhaps you can show or point me to the normalization issue that you are experiencing?
Mabula
Hi Mabula @mabula-admin
I will prepare a new post for this.
I suspect when you do mosaic in SHORGB (for example), the normalization is calculated on reference (for example SII image, then applied to all other images R, G, B, Ha, OIII.
I say that because when I assemble each filter alone (for example the 4 Ha images), the result (intensity difference between 4 images) is not the same as when I put the 4 x 6 images (SHORGB) for assembly.Â
It is always a nightmare.Â
I will try to send you individual images (maybe only SHO). You will be able to test.
Best,Â
Hi Philippe @philippe-bernhard,
Your assumption regarding normalization is correct, it will try to make everything compatible, but SII especially can have so little signal compared to the green channel for instance that things might be bad. In that case, did you try to normalize with only add or multiple instead of add-scale or multiply-scale ?
Mabula
