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,Â
I'm on the trial license at the moment and getting my head round the many aspects of APP. I most likely will have a question about master calibration files at some point but want to check my understanding first. However, I do seem to have a problem with the files that I save from APP if I want to take them in to photoshop for some final minor adjustments:
First I stack everything (of course!) Using darks, bias and flats and a bpm. Pretty much everything else on the left hand side of the user interface is left as default and I click on integrate. I have to say I'm surprised how long it takes, I have a 3 year old core i7 laptop with 16gb ram and an ssd with plenty of free space. Stacking 150 files or so takes 2-3 hours!Â
Anyway, once that's done I tend to save the resulting file without stretch or ddp ticked, in order to get a master 32bit tiff I can come back to as and when I want. After that I enable stretch, ddp and saturation and start processing the image. Once I'm happy with it I save it once again as a 32bit tiff to take in to photoshop for minor tweaks. This time with stretch and ddp etc ticked. At this point I'm pretty darn happy with the result and just want to do some very minor noise reduction and maybe star reduction.Â
When I open the tiff in photoshop, what was a nice dark background is a mid to light grey and the whole image can be quite noisy, well actually it can be VERY noisy. This is in complete contrast to how it looked in APP! What is it I am doing wrong??Â
Thanks
Ed
Â
Interesting. I sounds like Photoshop is applying stretching which is what it would do with a raw file in order to display it. This is normal for RAW files. (JPEGs are already stretched.) Maybe you have turned off the display stretching in APP?
EDIT: you might find this useful: https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/gamma-correction.htm
Hi,
Thanks for the reply. I've definitely got stretch and DDP enabled when I save the edited image in APP. Is there any other setting I should be looking at? I'm saving as a 32 bit tiff.
Interesting article, but don't understand it well enough to gauge whether it relates to something I'm doing wrong here given I have stretch enabled. From reading this, photoshop should NOT be performing a stretch when it opens?? I think thats how I read it anyway!
Â
Thanks
Ed
I think when you save a tiff you are asked for the colour space - I use sRGB. I don't remember the other options but try sRGB , then you will know the PS knows what to do with it. Otherwise PS may just assume it has certain features like gamma encoding and process the image with wrong assumptions.
I looked for other settings too but didnt find anything that I thought would cause this problem.
Â
What happens if you alter it to a 16bit in PS using the Exposure and gamma setting and then setting the black point in levels?
What happens if you alter it to a 16bit in PS using the Exposure and gamma setting and then setting the black point in levels?
YEah, personally I save 16bit tiffs because APP has already stretched it quite a bit and it shouldn't need much more. 16bit tiffs give you a lot of processing room.
Hi All,
Have been away from this for a few days as other stuff going on but back to it today. Thanks for the suggestions though.
Having had a play with the output from APT it looks as though its something to do with saving as a 32bit TIFF. I made some adjustments to my image and saved both as a 32 bit file and a 16 bit file and the 32 bit one does indeed look very washed out and pale when imported in to photoshop. The 16 bit one however looks fine!
While I'm happy there seems to be a solution to this I would like to understand why this is so! Also, it doesn't explain why some of my previous images seemed to be ok as 32 bit tiffs in PS?!?
Thanks
Ed
Hi,Â
First I stack everything (of course!) Using darks, bias and flats and a bpm. Pretty much everything else on the left hand side of the user interface is left as default and I click on integrate. I have to say I'm surprised how long it takes, I have a 3 year old core i7 laptop with 16gb ram and an ssd with plenty of free space. Stacking 150 files or so takes 2-3 hours!Â
Yes, this is probably normal. We're working on making APP faster as much as we can, but the reason mainly is the advanced statistics and algorithms used. Some stacking programs are faster, but that's also because they don't use these kind of algorithms. APP is designed with the best result in mind and speed second, ofcourse we do focus on both.
When I open the tiff in photoshop, what was a nice dark background is a mid to light grey and the whole image can be quite noisy, well actually it can be VERY noisy. This is in complete contrast to how it looked in APP! What is it I am doing wrong??Â
Nothing I think, when loading in PS, that has its own color space and maybe other processes it does to it. I don't think PS processes in 32-bit does it? It may convert it to 16-bit and that's where differences can arise. This is also why, when saving in 16-bit, they do match as PS isn't converting it then.
Â
