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.
Someone else posted about this 2 weeks ago and I have not seen a solution to this.
This occurred in the previous and now latest version of APP. This does not happen with other processing software I've used, so I know it is in APP.
What settings did you use in APP? What camera and setup do you use?
Camera: STT8300M, Baader RGB filters, Scope SVS130.
First let me say that the pic. I posted was after following Sasse's video tutorial - using a master bias and dark from PI. Just to make sure this was not the reason for failure, I went back thru the tutorial once again, this time feeding it raw bias and dark frames.
This time, no problem. Why this is I don't know. If I process the whole image in PI with its master files, I don't see these anomalies.
If I just stick to using APP, guess I'll be OK 🙂 Sure is easier to use than PI!
Ahhh, yes that makes sense then. The calibration files from PI can't simply be used in APP as well as APP has a different calibration engine. So it might be APP didn't actually use them for your lights and that's what you see (hot pixels).
@vincent-mod
I'm afraid I don't see it. A master dark fits file should be a standard readable file usable by any software that conforms to that standard.
If APP didn't like it for some reason, it should have spit out an error and not gone any further. No calibrations were done in IP. I simply used the dark and bias files.
Well, what if PI isn't making a "standard" calibration file? They could be compatible, but the difference might be that APP is using the entire sensor area and PI is not. Using the entire area can be concidered the standard way as many professional camera's are processed like this as well. However, some packages are not using the entire sensor area and this can cause issues where they are not compatible when you process the raw light frames via APP and the calibratiuon masters from PI. I'm not 100% sure if PI is doing that though but it wouldn't be uncommon.
edit: Ah, correction, this will be an issue mainly with consumer grade camera's like DSLR data and such. Your camera should actually work. This is interesting to investigate then, could you send the masterdark processed in PI and the masterdark processed in APP for us to compare?
@vincent-mod
Not to worry. APP works fine. I'm happy so far with it.
(see my edit, would be great to compare those darks)
And could you check the dimensions of a light frame and that of the masterdark? They should match exactly.
@vincent-mod
Sorry, too big. I'm on a metered Internet service (microwave). I did note that APP's dark is 33.270MB and PI's is 33.323. Could be just header differences. I'll look later.
Ok no problem, the actual pixel dimensions should be the same. And you can always load in a light, double-click to show in the preview window, then load in the masterdark and bias and such, then select "L-calibrated" on top of the preview window. This will immediately show if your light is calibrated using those masters and what happens to that one light. Very handy as it's quicker then to wait for the entire integration. If the masters are assigned to your light, you will see this in the list next to each light frame, it shows up with MD added to each light frame line.
