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 one of the new ASI6200mm cameras. I gathered a bunch of darks and bias when I first got it. Later, I changed the gain and offset to experiment with read noise, well depth and offset amount. I was reusing the darks and bias while gathering new flats for test images. All of a sudden I could not get my flats to remove dust donuts and calibration was really causing strange "bright" vignetting. I tried changing APP setting and calibration was still not working. Then I realized I had changed gain and offset from the initial darks and bias. I redid my darks and bias with the new gain and offset. Now APP works great again.Â
Â
Thanks for explaining your workflow and solution! Yes indeed, changing the gain will change the noise profile which causes a mismatch for calibrating the flats.
I am not so sure that the gain and offset were my calibration problem. Did that make sense, Vince?
I had the same problem again even with the correct gain/offset for lights and calibration frames. I was also getting an error about "Corrupted Image" randomly on all types of files. Then I noticed that there were both upper and lowercase filter names. My setup uses filter names that are all lower case - lum, red, green, blue etc. The load dialog shows my lower case names along with Luminance, Red, Green....etc
Once I assigned my frames to the correct filter name (my name variations were listed at the top of the channel assignments), calibration worked fine. I also no longer got the "Corrupted image" errors.
I will rename my filters in my capture software (SKYX) to match APP names. That should keep me from making the wrong assignments. Maybe APP should check for name variations to prevent this? I'm sure others have made the same mistake without even realizing it.Â
Randall
PS - using the image viewer and switching between linear/l-calibrated makes checking the calibration results easy. Best to check this before continuing in case calibration didn't work well. That is really a great feature of APP.
