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 first became interested in mosaics after imaging portions of the Cygnus SNR separately, namely the Eastern and Western Veils. I decided to try to capture them and the area between them in a 2x2 mosaic that included Pickerings Triangle in 2022. This was also when I first discovered and tested out APP. I was able to capture 50 minutes on each panel and got a respectable (although not really good) result combining the panels with APP and post-processing with Star Tools.
I considered going after more data the following year, but expanded my scope to a 2x4 panel mosaic that also attempts to capture some of the fainter details North of the area I got in 2022. During three sessions over last year and this, I was able to get about 50 minutes worth of time on these 8 panels and produced a similar result as to where I have gotten with the 2x2 data from 2022. I find it difficult to collect large amounts of time on target as there a very few good nights available to me and spreading that time over 8 panels is challenging.
In the last week or so I have been wondering whether I can use the overlapping data I collected in 2022 by combining the 2x2 and 2x4 integrated mosaics into a new mosaic. If this is a reasonable thing to do I could concentrate on collecting data on just the northern 4 panels to quickly get to about 2 hours of time per panel and see if that improve my end result. This is a screenshot of what the combined 2x2 and 2x4 mosaics looks like:
I have outlined the original 2x2 data to try and make this clearer. I will process the combined data in StarTools and see whether the overlapping portions look better.
If this is a reasonable approach I am wondering (and will do further tests) whether I should use then 2x2 and 2x4 mosaics as my source, or if I get a better result by doing a single mosaic of all twelve individual panels into an end result. I did take one pass at this option, but the result was rather bland color-wise as I had used LNC when integrating the individual panels of the 2x4 data. I have since reintegrated each ot the panels with no LNC and the result is more vibrant. That is the overlapped mosaic I am running through StarTools right now.
Any thoughts, questions or comments are appreciated.
Bob
You can, just load the masters as lights and register as a mosaic again. I've done this a few times.
