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.
Hey everyone,
in the last two nights I captured 8 hours of data with a Sony A7s and an 8inchf4 newton. I control everything with NINA. Unfortunately, due to a reason(s) I did not yet understand, NINA did not save the Sony-RAW files as usually, besides the fits. Only the standard Nina fits files were saved this time. However...I took Darks, Bias and Flats not through the Nina application, but manually on the camera, consequently the calibration frames are originally available in Sony RAW now. To sum it up: Nina-fit light frames and Sony-RAW calibration frames. I tried three different things to get them stacked:
1. I just stacked fits and raw which did not work
2. I manually converted the raw into fits via APP, but stacking it didn´t work as well.
3. I downloaded SIRIL and converted all frames to Siril-fits and tried to stack them in APP. Surprise...did not work as well.
In all three cases it seems APP is not able to assign the calibration frames to the lights. It stack all flat, bias and darks to it´s master version but somehow can´t use them on the light frames.
I would really love to work on these data and would be happy if anyone knows a solution and maybe even a reason for this problem 🙂
Thanks in advance!
Best wishes
Johannes
@rodljo Hi Johannes,
Could you please share 5 lights and 5 of each type of calibration data? The instructions for sharing data are to the top of each forum page:
Thanks, Wouter
@wvreeven Hi Wouter,
thanks for your replay. I created the directory as mentioned in your post and uploaded the files. I uploaded all of it in fits, if you need the Raw of the calibration frames, I´ll add them as well.
Looking forward to your answer 🙂
Best, Johannes
@rodljo Thanks for uploading the FITS files. I will need the RAW calibration files so please upload 5 of each as well. Thanks in advance!
@wvreeven Uploading finished. I hope it suits your needs 🙂 Thx again for your help!
@rodljo Thanks for the quick follow up. I had a look at your data and, indeed, the flats are not applied. The reason is not the file format but the ISO value. The lights, darks and bias are all shot at ISO 2000 and the flats on ISO 100. This will not work. You either need to make sure that you have ISO 2000 flats or to make sure that you have dark flats of the same exposure time and ISO as the flats.
By the way, how do you create the flats? What light source do you use? They look like this:
The histogram doesn't look very well. The three color channels should have sharper peaks and no trailing tails to the left. Another possibility is very, very strong vignetting in the corners but i have never seen that before.
Also, the exposure time of 0.00625 seconds is much too short. You should aim for exposure times between 1 and, say, 5 seconds. Do you dim the light source with a white t-shirt or any other way when you shoot the flats?
Hi Wouter,
wvreeven thanks for your help and time. I must admit, I´m quite confused now. I never ever before used the same ISO for the Flats as for the Darks/Lights etc. and it always worked fine...That´s new to me. What is also confusing is the fact that nothing was applied, darks were also not used for the integration...as well as flats. I also tried old Bias which had the same ISO as the current flats... Are you sure it can´t be about the file fomat?
Best
Johannes
Okay, looking forward to it, thanks!
@rodljo Mabula and I had a quick look. There are two (additional) issues with the data. Fitst of all, the image dimensions for the FITS files are different than for the ARW files:
As you can dee, the FITS files are 4256x2848 pixels and the ARW files 4288x2848 pixels. That way, APP doesn't know which pixels of the calibration files to use for calibration of the lights and therefore chooses not to apply them.
Secondly, the FITS headers for the lights show that they were shot with NINA while the EXIF data of the ARW files indicate the use of ICLE-7S. So it seems you have taken the calibration frames directly with the camera. This is a problem as well (apart from the different dimensions of the resulting files) since the camera software may treat the files differently than NINA does, resulting in unusable calibration data. As a rule you should always use the same software for taking lights and calibration data, so in this case NINA.
HTH, Wouter
