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.
Hi,
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I've recently been imaging with an optolong L-enhance filter using a colour zwo 533 mc pro camera. I have followed some tutorials to extract the Ha and OIII data into two separate mono images and then combining (e.g. HOO). I've tried this with two seperate targets and I feel like the OIII portion of the image remains in mono, with only colour in the Ha channel? The OIII looks very grey to me regardless of the saturation settings. I've attached a screenshot which is zoomed in and shows the coloured red channel but looks like mono behind. Also attached is the basic unedited image (but with saturation and light pollution removal).
The method I'm following is this ( https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/community/postid/7610/).
Do you agree with my thoughts? Am I doing something wrong somewhere?
Thanks,
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On my monitor that looks blue actually. Not very pronounced, but blue. Maybe you can try to boost the OIII signal a bit by increasing the top slider of the OIII panel in the RGBCombine tool. Besides that you could have a play with HSL selective color and boost the blue's there a bit as well. OIII as signal can be way less intense then Ha, so that is tricky sometimes.
Hi, thanks for the quick reply. Overall it does look a bit blue to me too, but when I zoom in I get a strange texture which I tried to show in the screenshot. The coloured red (orange) just seem to sit on top of the background, which looks more grey the more I zoom in. I'll have a go boosting the blue in the rgb combine and selective colour and report back.Â
Attached are some more recent attempts - really not good, but I got the blue at least. I am still getting the strange artefact though (see screengrab), where the orange/red seems separate to the blues if that makes sense, if you zoom into the image. I guess it could just be noise, but the standard image seems much smoother colour wise.
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I think that's just the signal that is now a different color and not very strong in those parts, so it becomes very clear where the seperation occurs. The other, smoother, picture has very similar colors all over and so blends better. More data for OIII (and maybe a bit longer exposures) will help here for sure. What mixing formula did you use?
edit: Maybe upping the upper slider isn't the best in this case either, it depends on what you want of course. So if you set that to 1 and play with the HSL selective color tool, you may also get better results. Possibly.
Ok great, thanks, I'll give that a go.Â
I used the default HOO 2 formula as this gave me the best results. I adjusted the sliders a bit but did not think I got better results so I left it at stock and adjusted in the selective colour. I've not used it before so was a bit trial and error, so ill need to read up on that a bit more.Â
This is only 1.5 hrs of data, and sadly my scope was constantly illuminated by a neighbours light, so I did not expect the best data. These are 3 min exposures, would you advise longer?
Oh yes, if possible narrowband data gives the best results when exposing for a long time. Think 10-15 min per sub even. That will produce better results than many shorter exposures. Of course when light is really an issue, that may be less so, but still good to try. When you go for regular RGB broadband data and light pollution, shorter exposures will give better results. A true dark site, long exposures are the best as well.
