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,
(I actually solved this problem. So it's just an FYI)
Last night I shot Abell 33 from my Bortle 8 yard.
ASI2600MC and RC6 at 950mm f6. Antlia ALP-T filter.
It's a low target in my location (50dgrs max).
The lights were noisy.
Integrated with APP with my usual (standard) settings.
APP didn't report any errors but failed to detect/register stars.
The final integration was a mess.
Tried different Registration settings - didn't help.
I was puzzled since it never happened to me before.
PI integrated the same set of lights without a problem.
To tell the long story short:
-- switching from Adaptive Airy Disk to Adaptive Edge helped
but then I still couldn't extract Ha/OIII
-- then I discovered the Cosmetic Correction options which I never used before.
Enabled all three of them with defaults and it worked with the Adaptive Airy!
I am glad I was able to resolve this.
Hi @maxthebuilder,
Thank you very much for sharing this.
In the 2.0.0 beta's several things were improved in star analysis to make it more robust for more datasets. In your case, you do not need to enable cosmetic correction to make it work, allthough if it does that is fine. But in 3) Analyse Stars, you would need to increase the new cosmic ray/noise reducer a bit. The registration would fail if APP sees noise or cosmic rays as stars. By increasing the cosmic ray /noise reducer lower-limit area size to 6-10, probably all will work fine ;-). This is more efficient than increasing the cosmetic correction I think in terms of speed. In cosmetic correction, hot pixels would be removed (thus noise) so it makes it very likely that your registration issue was caused by noise in combination with small stars in your data as well.
Mabula
I continue in this thread so as not to do the same thing in duplicate.
I had indeed enabled the "cosmic ray / noise reducer" option but the result had been the same.
What had not occurred to me was to increase its value.
I have repeated the process again with "lower-limit area size" equal to 8 and the result, now yes, has been as expected.
Thanks, Mabula and Vincent.
