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.
Just a note of praise for the APP ability to deal with mosiacs and especially random orientation framing from different sessions, scopes, cameras and camera angle. Here is the integrated stack of 8 hours for ngc 6888 taken from 3 sessions with 2 different cameras, one 12 bit micro 4/3) and the other 16 bit (APS-C). Completely different framing yet with correct LNC, rejection and registration/integration settings the raw stack looks perfect. Cannot o this with any other software form the raw subs in a single integration, even with two different bayer patterns (which the fits header rewriting was very useful in the new beta release).
Star reduction still too many artefacts to use, unfortunately, but the blending for integration is superb, even before any LPC of further APP 'tools' processing is done.Â
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I have to agree, usually. My latest was a lot more of a challenge. I had LNC up to 4th degree and 3 iterations, MBB up to about 15%, but still got this. I finally just gave up and hacked it in Photoshop. Since the integrations were taking over an hour I couldn't try too many different sets of settings, although I suppose I could have tried it with subsets of subs.
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That does look challenging. I had 2nd degree LNC, 2 iterations, MBB up to 15%. I disabled 'same camera and optics' obviously, but also increased the scale stop for registration to 10. At the same time, I ensure to have flip x/y descriptors checked. The only errors during the initial steps were at registration, and the scale stop and other choices fixed that before final integration. Mine is a OSC camera, but it worked for normal interploration and for drizzle since I undersample with this scope a bit.Â
I did try it with "same camera & optics" both on and off, with scale start at 1 and stop at 10.
I mean, this is just a torture test -- a glance at the center region and the Milky Way below is enough to confirm that! Center integration was from FITS files with three different sub lengths (15", 30", 600") at ISO 400, top and bottom margins are from the second night at ISO 1600 and 120" exposures.
It's pretty easy to see where the seam was in the final brutally-Photoshopped result, but if you don't have the original in front of you, it's possible to convince yourself that it's a sky transition and not just cutting the "good" portion off the bottom, moving it up to eliminate the dark trough, and then making with the Spot Healing like a D&D wizard in a boss fight.
Even the Light Pollution Correction tool struggled with the crazy gradients in this image. But I am not too unhappy with the result, all things considered.
