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 am trying to combine an image using the RGBHSO algorithm. The images combine, but when I try to raise the luminance of the Ha channel to bring out a bit more Ha detail the image turns white. I was on a recent release and then downloaded 2.0 beta28 and the problem still persists. I have uploaded the data to folder minroadkill-orion-mosaic if someone wants to give it a try. I am not sure if there is just something wrong with the data or what. At first it kept spitting out a warped image when I tried creating the mosaic and then after I got that fixed the image kept being created with what looked like severe light pollution even though the original tiles were clean and had bgp removed individually. i ended up having to turn off LNC to get a useable image.
Hi Jonathan @minroadkill,
2 possibilities for the white image I would think:
1) the autostretch misbehaves and stretches unlimited creating a complete white image, is this the case?
2) the ha channel is much better than the other channels, so using it as luminance needs to be done carefully, tone down the luminance % and things should show? Is this the case?
A warped image can occur if you try to mosaic without first creating mosaic panels, so making a mosaic from all individual frames is not the most stable nor recommended workflow.
Mabula
@mabula-admin I think maybe the auto=stretch was the problem, but I ended up doing it another way. I wanted to create mosaics of each channel and then combine the results in combine RGB but that would not work. I ended up having to combine each panel into a final image and then creating a mosaic from those results. It worked that way, but this to me is not a very efficient way of processing as I should only have to combine RGB once which would be less work and more accurate. Here is what I ended up with.
Hi @minroadkill,
Okay, normally, you should be able to make the mosaics per channel directly and then load the channels all into RGB Combine, like you indicate. So something weird was going on when you use H-alpha for luminance. Maybe the normalization of the RGB Combine tool player a role as well, was it misbehaving with different normalization settings in the tool as well?
Mabula
