Mar 28 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta40 will be released in 7 days.
It did take a long time to have the work finished on this and it will have a major performance boost of 30-50% over 2.0.0-beta39 from calibration to integration. We extensively optimized many critical parts of APP. All has been tested to guarantee correct optimizations. Drizzle and image resampling is much faster for instance, those modules have been completely rewritten. Much less memory usage. LNC 2.0 will be released which works much better and faster than LNC in it's current state. And more, all will be added to the release notes in the coming weeks...
Update on the 2.0.0 release & the full manual
We are getting close to the 2.0.0 stable release and the full manual. The manual will soon become available on the website and also in PDF format. Both versions will be identical and once released, will start to follow the APP release cycle and thus will stay up-to-date to the latest APP version.
Once 2.0.0 is released, the price for APP will increase. Owner's license holders will not need to pay an upgrade fee to use 2.0.0, neither do Renter's license holders.
I know I'm preaching the choir, but I just spent two solid 10-hour days plus six more hours yesterday to create a 2x3 mosaic using the free 45-day Pixinsight Trial (my third attempt to scale the bulwark). This morning I spent just over two hours and produced a much better result using Astro Pixel Processor.
In both cases I used the same six previously calibrated and stacked FITs files. In both cases I was familiar with the interface but had to cookbook the process. Learning curve and interface were not the issue.
I was up to version 4.3 (no, really) on my PI effort after several wretched failures and decided the result was good as it could get and abandoned the effort having tamed the beast. But to what end?
With APP I went with V1.0, a seamless, good looking mosaic. Used Tools to crop, rotate, remove light pollution, calibrate star colors, and reduce stars a bit. Took a crack at the cropped version with StarTools but stayed with the APP version. Tidyb it up with Lightroom.
Yesterday I was prepared to lay down $200 for PI. Today? No way. I wish I'd invested those 26 man-hours in learning more about the intricacies and opportunities presented by APP.
Sure, some will say that only a poor craftsman blames his tools. But seriously, does a hammer really need a ratchet handle? Does a screwdriver need to have the point sharpened for every use?
There seems to be some kind of, "You aren't a real astrophotographer if you don't use PI," vibe out there. To paraphrase Marcus Aurelius, "Waste no more time arguing about what software a good astrophotographer should use. Be a Man and use Astro Pixel Processor.”
That's an incredible image!
By the way, my browser (Firefox on MacOS) doesn't show the TIF file so I needed to download it to be able to see it. Can you post a JPEG version please?
@tailspin45 Beautiful result indeed! I'm always as honest as possible when it comes to packages that people use. Even though I work here, I of course know people use all kinds of software and I think that's great. Use whatever works for your workflow. PI has been around for a long time so it has a good basis, I own it myself (as I also started with it), I liked the amount of tuning you can do etc. But, it's not easy. Which I don't mind, but when I found APP and tried that as well while I was doing my first ever mosaic, I was creating them while I was taking the data (just to check if the mosaic worked as planned). That alone blew my mind, as I knew it would take me days to figure it out in PI. So, I realized that software can be easy AND produce a great result, the more I used it, the more I created results that were simply the same with less hassle. I do still use it for stuff APP doesn't have yet, as everyone does I think.
Here's a PNG, Wouter, can you read that OK?
@vincent-mod
Here's the PI version. I agree that it has some tools that are not part of APP yet. But I'm not sure I often need a left handed spanner. I'll readily admit a PI expert probably could produce a better result, BTW.
Did you use LNC and MBB on the APP result? Just curious as I see the edges of the frames I think still. Anyway, for just a few hours, very impressive! 🙂
