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 could use your advice. I have an image integrated (2 sessions) with a few tools used on it, and stretched and saved. The project is still open in APP. I would like to add another night's data (lights, flats, darkflats), but I don't want it integrated into the other data as a 3rd session, I want to integrate it separately so I can see if it visually yields a better quality image. Then I could go back and forth to view differences without closing either project so I can make further adjustments. I'm not clear as to what the ALL and CLEAR buttons do and I don't want to delete the loaded files from this project...just uncheck them so I can work on the new data. Can this be done? Or alternatively can I open APP in 2 different windows?
You can select the files in the filelist and deselect them there, so shift-click to select and then right mouse button. A menu pops up which has "deselect" as the option and these files shouldn't be used then. I would advice to load the new files up in a different session as that makes it more clear to you what you're looking at. The clear buttons remove the files from the file list (they don't delete them from disk). You can also do that and then load the integrated files in again for comparisons.
