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.
Calibration is fine for my Luminance subs with 1x1 binning. Unfortunately APP seems to be unable to calibrate my RGB subs with 2x2 binning. Sensor size is 2275x2200. Lights are captured with SGP, calibration frames have been captured with NINA. There is a difference though in the pixel size reported for the 2x2 frames. SGP informs these as 1375x1100 in the FITS header for the lights, while NINA lists the calibration frames as 1374x1100. I suspect this is just a rounding difference when dividing 2275 by two for the 2x2 binning.
APP is happy to process the 2x2 lights and report these as calibrated, it just does not apply any of the loaded 2x2 calibration frames. Would this indeed be due to the difference in pixel size (1374x1100 instead of 1375x1100)? If yes: could this be resolved by correcting the FITS headers or would that only confuse APP?
Using APP version 1.082
@ventania What happens if you shoot the lights and the calibration files with the same software? So all SGP or all NINA? That would certainly avoid the rounding off issue that you see now. And in general it is advisable to shoot all data with the same software to avoid issues like this and potential other issues as well.
Correcting the FITS headers would certainly not solve this since the sensor data itself would still be one pixel row higher or lower. Cropping the larger files such that it contains one row less could work but since you have a color camera you may delete essential data.
Thanks for the quick reply! I understand that it is advisable to use the same capture software for both lights and calibration frames., I just like the flats wizard in NINA much better than the equivalent in SGP, while SGP is (still) better suited for my capture sessions. I can redo bias and darks with SGP, but it would be too late for flats then as the optical train has changed since capturing those lights. It would really be too bad if that now implies the RGB data has become useless.
May try cropping though, although I am not sure how I could strip a single pixel column. Can APP batch crop handle that? I am using a mono camera, hence the separate LRGB frames. It is really only one pixel difference in the width of the frame. Would be a shame to have to throw it all away or leave uncalibrated. At least the Luminance data is OK to calibrate and process.
Update: just used APP batch modify with a right offset of one to strip a single pixel column on the right hand side of a small sample of 2x2 light frames from SGP. APP is now perfectly happy to apply the 2x2 calibration frames from NINA. Seems all is not lost then for this set of data. Thanks for the tip on cropping. Going forward I will also make sure to take calibration frames with the same software as for the lights, but at least this seems to be a useful workaround for now.
@ventania It is possible to do that in APP but since you need to draw the crop region by hand you need to be very precise.Â
