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 downloaded the demo version of APP and really have fallen in love with it. I am using it to stack and do some color correction before porting to LightroomCC/PhotoshopCC/AI Denoise.
I got a good image of Thor's Helmet with lots of blue in the helmet, but when I am trying to get blue to show in The Statue of Liberty Nebula, I get a hint of it as purple at the bottom of the nebula but in the Hubble and other NASA pics, including from land based scopes, they have some bright blue in a couple regions. I worked on this for about 4 hours and it is the best I can currently do. I used the Slooh 17" planewave in Chile to capture 110 subs over the last year.
   I loaded 42 lums (50 sec ea) and 24 ea R, G, B all 25 sec ea. Should I be using less R&G or how do I determine what ratio to use if any to get the blue to show? Is it just hit and miss or trying different numbers of the filter subs?
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@jeffpadell Hi Jeffrey,how did you exactly combine the LRGB files? Did you do a per-channel integration or all at once? If per-schannel, how did you combine the integration results? Does the nebula show up in the blue channel? What happens if you only combine RGB but not L?
I used step 1 to pull in each set of subs for each filter. then hit 6 to integrate them and got the Session for each master. I combined them in step 9 the combine RGB and put in my L, R, G, B, got some color, more when I hit saturate. The nebula shows in each channel although not that much for the blue. I didn't try it with just the RGB will do that. Here are
the Blue and the Red channels
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Here is the image with just RGB and all the defaults didn't monkey with the colors when combining just accepted the defaults, and no HSL, adjusted the stretch a bit but that was it
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I pulled the file back into APP and played with the HSL got more of the orange color but still no blue.
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I should stick to B&WÂ ROFL
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Well it has to be the object as I get plenty of blue in NGC1977 the Running Man nebula
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@jeffpadell The Statue of Liberty Nebula indeed does contain blue emission but to me it looks like it is OIII emission which doesn't come out very well with B and G filters. You'll need to take Ha for red and OIII for green and blue to be able to see the blue color in this nebula. The fact that some blue is present in your pictures can be seen by the fact that the center of the nebula is white and not red.
