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.
Hello looking for a new setup at the moment.
the question is which supports APP most.
is this a M1 Max system, a M2 pro or a M2 max setup.
Read a lot in the past few days but can’t clear figure it out.
my actual setup MacBook M2 / 8 GB RAM isn’t sufficient for stitching mosaics with more than 4 panels.
buts that’s what I want to do in the future.
please help me to find a suitable system for me.
kind regards
Hello looking for a new setup at the moment.
the question is which supports APP most.
is this a M1 Max system, a M2 pro or a M2 max setup.
Read a lot in the past few days but can’t clear figure it out.
my actual setup MacBook M2 / 8 GB RAM isn’t sufficient for stitching mosaics with more than 4 panels.
buts that’s what I want to do in the future.
please help me to find a suitable system for me.
kind regards
Hi @einneuer,
Thank you very much for your question.
APP will run equally fine on Apple Silicon M1 or M2 setups since APP is compiled 100% natively on Apple Silicon.
So then the remaining question is, which mac M1/2/3 computer has the best resources for your main task.
If your purpose is to start making big mosaics, then try to have at least 32GB of RAM or 64GB of RAM if funds allow. This is the biggest and main priority to be able to make big mosaics.
After RAM amount, make sure that your HDD space is enough, so I would advice at least 1GB, but preferably 2GB. This is the 2nd priority. (Of course HDD speed matters, but I think all the new mac computers will have fast SSD drives right? if not, choose SSD drive).
Then depening on your budget, choose the mac Apple Silicon machine with the most CPU cores that you can afford. More cores will let APP run faster than less cores allthough the might have faster single core performance.
So a M1 machine with 32 cores will likely be faster than a M2 machine with 16 cores for APP processing, since APP is almost completely multi-core and the parts where it is still single-core will surely be upgraded to multi-core going forward. The amount of cpu cores rule for processing with APP in terms of speed.
Please let me know if this helps and if you additional questions.
Mabula
Hello Mabula,
thank you very much for you very good informations that makes it more easy for me to take the right decision.
Just one question I still have is there any support in APP for GPU acceleration is it good to have also a good performance there ?
Kind regards
Joerg
Hi Joerg @einneuer,
The GPU definitely helps witht the OpenGL hardware accelerated image viewer 😉 data processing in parallel using the GPU will come for sure as well. This is not implemented yet, but we have already done testing with certain GPU calculations. I can not tell yet when the first modules with GPU calculations will be introuduced into APP, but it should not take more than 1 year from now. We really need to have this as part of APP going forward.
Mabula
