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.
i have very bad results with the new beta 35 version.. it found way less stars then before..
i have a reference pic for ic 434 and it found almost 2000 stars on version 34 and a little over 800 on version 35 (same settings)
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and its the same on the fit files. before it found over 100 stars on each fit, and now 20-40Â stars on the same fits
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Ps: Seestar s50 fit files
Dear Mathias @mrtipsy,
Thank you very much for reporting your issue.
The actual number of stars reported by star analysis does not mean if more stars reported is better actually. It could very well be that beta34 also detected a lot of non-stars as stars and thus gave a higher star count. On all our test data we also see this on some frames and we clearly see that beta35 is way more robust in detecting real stars instead of noise, hot pixels, cosmic rays and such.
Without seeing your data, it will be very hard to say what actually happens in your case.
What happens in registration, I assume that the frames still register okay with default settings in both 3) analyse stars and 4) register?
I have tested beta35 on a multitude of data sets and for all sets beta35 was way better in the star analysis result (you can visually check with the star map function above the image viewer) and the registration. If beta35 is not better on your data, then clearly we need to see your data. Are you willing to share it?
" reference pic for ic 434 and it found almost 2000 stars on version 34 and a little over 800 on version 35"
800 is very decent actually I think and should give no problems for registering the frames.
"and its the same on the fit files. before it found over 100 stars on each fit, and now 20-40 stars on the same fits
Ps: Seestar s50 fit files"
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The Seestar uses very short exposures, it is very likely that the 100+ star count in beta34 is quite bad, it could detect many noise artefacts for stars actually. So do a double check visually with the starmap and let me know how that looks.
Mabula
