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 !
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Are there any plan for adding plate solving/astrometry in APP in future versions ?
I'm asking because I think it would be a perfect tool to make mosaics ; after star detection it would register all frames with a great accuracy and projection.
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David
Hi @dav78,
Yes for sure, for several reasons. For mosaics, for star color calibration and possibly other reasons 😉
We first need to finish work on 2.0.0 stable with save/load settings and projects 😉 after which this feature is rather high on our priority list.
Mabula
Thanks @mabula-admin, that's a great news !
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Indeed, solving and astrometry will have many advantages : true star color, projection correction and more.
I'm looking forward to see this 😉 !
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David
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I shot two series the other night with minimal overlap that I can't get to register. I was going to suggest either building in plate solving or using coordinates in the fits header to help. To help figure out what was going wrong I used astap to plate solve and write to the headers and then using Aladin to show me a frame from each sequence so I could see if there was overlap.
Thank you
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Hi @szumi,
We will add it for sure 😉 How much overlap did the frame have? are there any stars in the overlap region. Normally, when enought stars are detected in the overlap region, APP will be successful in registering them.
Mabula
It was 5% at best with some stars. That was why I was chiming into this plate solving thread.  I'm still waiting for a good night so I can shoot some frames that overlap which I'm sure will work.
Thank you for responding
Hi Szumi, @szumi
You are most welcome, yes 5% is very/too little. Even with plate solving, I would recommend more overlap if you want the sky geometry to come out okay when those panels are combined. Many applications use thin plate splines to register the image then, but the sky geometry will be off surely in those cases... so it is never really right with so little overlap.
Mabula
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