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.
@snoraste Hi Shayan, there is no way to see the stats of all lights at the same time. But you can double click any light in the file list and then hover your mouse over the image. APP will then show the ADU values of the pixel under the mouse in the upper bar of the application window:
Not with a specific region no, for what use-case would you want that? Just for me to understand better, might be something Mabula can add to his to-do list.
The idea is to measure background ADU for an "optimum" exposure of swamping the read noise. For that, I would need to identify a region of the image that is "background" (no stars or nebulosity) and measure an average ADU. I know I can move my cursor along different regions and a point estimate of ADU, but looking for an average number really. Unless there's a better method of measuring mean background ADU in APP?
APP does show ADU values for all Masters, so the Calibration Masters and the Light Frame Integration, in the metadata/FITS header of the files:
BG-1 = ' 1,3835E-02' / background estimate of channel 1 SCALE-1 = ' 4,7350E-04' / dispersion of channel 1 NOISE-1 = ' 3,2280E-04' / noise level of channel 1 SNR-1 = ' 1,5204E+00' / Signal to Noise Ratio of channel 1
These are ADU values of Background, dispersion/scale (which is a robust measure and better than the average and better than the median), noise and Signal to Noise Ratio.
For the individual lights, the ADU values for Background, dispersion/scale, noise and Signal to Noise Ratio are reported in the bottom frame list panel like Vincent indicated after the normalization stage 5).
These values are reported in 32bits normalized floats, which means that the original 16bits integer values between 0-65535 are mapped to 0-1.
As Wouter indicates, the ADU values that you see above the image viewer when you move the mouse over the image data are the values as shown in the image viewer. So if the preview filter is stretching your data, then you will see the stretched ADU values. If you want to see the linear ADU values of a region in your image, simply set the DDP preset to No Stretch, data as is and move your mouse over the region of interest 😉
APP currently does not have an option to see for a single file the ADU values for average, median, robust scale, noise, SNR etc directly, but this will soon be possible using a new image viewer mode.
