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 have both an ASI2400MC and an ASI2600MC and when I try to integrate captures from both together, I get whacky results (see attached). It doesn't matter if I try to integrate in Mosaic more or Full mode and what setting I have on registration selections like "Same camera and optics" and "dynamic distortion correction". The results are just bizzare sometimes. To examples below. Also are subsamples of the two integrations I'm trying to integrate. Since I shoot Alt/Az so there is a lot of field rotation my two sub integrations (third and fourth files), so perhaps that's the problem. I can register them, but APP just can't see to stack them, which is strange because you would think registering them would be the hard part. Even if I crop both down to nice clean rectangles, I still get the whacky results.
Normally you turn off same camera and optics and when things look very weird, also turn off dynamic distortion correction. I'm not experienced with alt/AZ photography, but if I would do that I would get a rotator and possibly also something that makes it track properly. Without that it does get complicated fast. But the last image you show does seem relatively ok doesn't it?
Thanks for the quick response!
I don't think Alt/Az is the problem as I take short exposures (4-8 seconds) so I get very minimal field rotation per shot and no visible star elongation on the edges of the field. For field rotation over an imaging session, APP integrates into a larger frame with “full” integration mode. The edges are noisy and undersampled, but that’s it. The main issue with the above image 3 and 4 is bad coma in one due to a mistake in the coma corrector spacing. I don’t know why it can’t stack image 3 with image 4 once it can align them perfectly. I had the same issue with the Horsehead: perfectly aligned but whacky warped integration, so I ended up integrating them manually in affinity photo. Result was fine:
