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)
It looks like there are still issues with APP not releasing memory in beta 44 - at least on Linux. My computer has 96GB of ram, and APP is maxing it out.
I did a simple integration. 100 aps-c frames, colour camera. The OS ram just kept climbing until it was close to maximum (see below). After the process finished the OS ram slowly decreased over several minutes.
Also, the ram claimed by APP seemed unusually high. I'm used to an integration like this using less than 10GB, but it claimed about 31GB.
I am on Linux Mint 22.3, Cinnamon DE, X11.
JC
(Edit - after rereading the release notes I see that the 'soft limit' of 32GB is intended to speed up processing and does not represent a problem)
Hi John @connor231,
Thank you very much for reporting this.
So the screenshot indicates actually that APP is only using 31 GB, keeping below that soft limit ;-), but Linux it self is keeping a very large cache. As long as APP keeps processing and Linux stays responsive, this should not be problematic. Linux should be able to handle this properly.
Yesterday, I released 2.0.0-beta45 and I have made additional changes for the memory management. In my testing, beta45 should work better and keep the memory that APP directly uses lower and release it more quickly back to the OS, so also the OS should release it more quickly.
Can you do a similar test with beta45 and let me know how the behaviour is on your Linux setup?
I can probably improve it again for the next release. I am adjusting the memory controls step by step and I do not want to do it too aggressively, because that could create other problems perhaps.
The most important thing is that APP keeps running without slowing down/stalling, memory does not get fragmented and that the OS stays running fine 😉
Mabula
