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 been having a very hard time processing my Ha/Oiii/Sii data from my heart nebula session. I am using APP for multi channel integration, then at the end I am using RGB combine to create the color image in the SHO hubble palette. I end up with a very noisy image and the background seems very blown out. My first major question is...should I be editing each channel individually in APP before I combine the three channels? I see almost everyone editing the 3 channels individually on youtube when using other editing software.
Individual processing is indeed a good workflow as you can tweak each channel very precisely to your liking. Also take into account that you might need more data to reduce noise in specific channels. I normally create masters of each channel and process them as well as possible before recombining. After that, I do another light pollution correction.
I turn on multi-channel/filter processing and load in all light at the same time. APP will ask to which channel they belong and all will be loaded in correctly. I load in my master calibration files and assign them and then proceed to integrating them per channel. You get masters of each channel and you can go ahead and use some of the tools in tab 9 to process them further. LP correction, etc. Then you can use those results in the combine tool.
ps. do you have a mono or color camera btw? If you have color and use a filter, make sure to select the proper algorithm in tab 0. For instance, if you have an Ha-filter, select the Ha algorithm and APP will extract the Ha directly from the RGB lights.
Maybe the existing bug in the RGB Combine Tool in APP 1.075 is upsetting your results here with the RGB Combine tool. Have you tried the latest APP 1.076 beta3?
there was a bug in the RGB Combine tool as demonstrated in this topic: https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/community/main-forum/good-lrgb-stacks-show-up-as-very-dark-in-rgb-combine-tool-even-at-30-stretch/ This problem has been fixed now. The tool has been further improved with the option to choose how all channels in your composite are normalized with each other, just like in 5) Normalize. Previously, the frames were only normalized additively. Now, by default they are normalized with Multiply-Scale which is the recommend normalization when you are creating a composite using different filter data and of different sessions. The first image shows a bad composite result in APP 1.075 due to the bug, the second image shows the same composite in APP 1.076 where the bug is fixed and where better normalization has been applied:
It could very well be that the bug is creating the bad result that you are seeing, so please try with the beta release if you haven't done so 😉 and let us know the results.
