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.
Mabula (@mabula-admin)
I have recently switched from Windows to Linux and I can no longer change the black point by clicking left or right of the button on the slider. The image redraws but the BP value is unchanged. I can change the BP by grabbing the button, but this is very imprecise. I can no longer make small repeatable changes by clicking the slider. Other sliders are also affected.
I have tested this in beta40 and beta44. I am on Linux Mint 22.3, Cinnamon DE, X11.
It may be that this was a designed change that happened some time ago, as on Windows I was still using the last production version of APP (I know that's ancient history 🙄 ). Or alternatively this may be a minor, Linux only bug. Either way I would like to have the ability to make small repeatable adjustments restored.
thanks
JC
Hi John @connor231,
Thank you very much for reporting this.
I have opened an issue on our issue list to test this on windows versus Linux. I am not aware of this problem so thank you vey much for reporting this.
I understand that you Linux Mint is still using the X11 display server, it is not using the newer Wayland?
It could be that this is specific Linux issue indeed and a thing like this is sometimes caused by our development platform.
Yesterday, I released 2.0.0-beta45 and we have moved again to a newer dev platform OpenJDK 26.0.1, so please try it and let me know if the behaviour is the same or fixed with beta45.
Thanks,
Mabula
Mabula (@mabula-admin)
Wayland is still said to be experimental for Linux Mint, and apparently there are still some reliability issues. My plan is to switch from X11 to Wayland with the next release of Mint, where Wayland is planned to be the default. Probably Dec 2026.
I tested this issue with beta 45 and the results were interesting. I still could not click left or right on the slider and get a small change to the black point. However, as long the scaling factor was zoomed right out (or do I mean in ?) I could now grab the button and make small changes. That's good enough for me to live with - so if you want to demote this to a low priority issue that's ok. Who knows - once we are all on Wayland the problem might go away by itself 😉 .
JC
Hi John @connor231,
Thanks for your feedback.
One of the reasons that I have been upgrading our development platform many times and as soon as possible, it to have as good as possible Wayland support in APP. The latest Java JDK 26 is having much better support for Wayland on Linux than older java versions. The open source community and Oracle are working very hard to rewrite many code for java so that it is fully capable on Linux Wayland. All the old code for X11 related to user interfaces is being rewritten for Wayland.
My testing on Ubuntu with Wayland enabled shows that with JDK26 things are working very well already. I know from the java JDK issue list that not everything is fixed yet, but most of the work, especially the critical components are done and work as expected.
I suspect that going forward all will work perfectly fine on Linux with Wayland for APP users.
I keep your issue on my list and I will test it going forward 😉
Mabula
