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 all,
 I am new to the hobby and new to APP. I have a fairly fast gaming laptop that handles my processing but it crashes/freezes APP everytime I try to load an image into the preview viewer. has any one else had this issue? its a pain to do half my processing on one computer and then move over to this one for final touches.
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Thanks, Clear Skies
@headcheckdrummer Hi Jarod, we have not seen this behavior of APP before. What operating system are you on? How much memory has been allocated to APP (please click the CFG button on the upper left). Do you have any anti-virus software running on this laptop? Does this happen with any image (also raw lights) or only with processed images?
Thanks, Wouter
And considering it's a gaming laptop, did you by any chance overclock the system?
@wvreeven win 10, 32bit 8gb ram the issue happened when allocated 2gb ram. I have tried to allocate 3 and 4gb ram in cfg with the same results. the program seems to run everything well it stacks and carries out the operations but crashes on the preview. the window freezes not the computer and I have to end task to close.
I do have McAffee live safe anti virus. I have tried full system scans, checked my registry for errors and finally did a system reimage to see if any other malicious items were dragging down my cpu/ram nothing has worked.
The system isn't currently overclocked just the standard config the laptop is an ASUS fx705dy 4 physical cores 8 virtual with all cores being utilized by APP.
I should add I have encountered this with stacking, with light pollution filter, RGB combine it seems that I just cannot load previews so the software is impossible to use with this particular computer.Â
Wouter,
I just disabled antivirus and tried to load a single HA.fits....it froze exactly as before. It is possible to run this on 8gb ram, isn't it?
thanks for your help with this.
@headcheckdrummer Thanks for trying and for reporting back here. I just noticed something. You have a computer with 8 Gb of memory but run a 32 bit OS. As far as I know the OS will not be able to fully use the system memory which may very well be the issue. Is there a reason you're running 32 bit Windows and is there a possibility to move to 64 bit Windows instead?
@headcheckdrummer So I checked a bit more and APP only is supported on 64 operating systems so I'm afraid you'll need to switch to that.
@wvreeven Thanks so much for your help! I will check if this is possible. I must add it is so nice to actually have response from a software developer so quickly! I am glad to know there are active admins to help with these types of issues. Keep up the good work guys.
@headcheckdrummer Thanks for the nice compliments. And for your info, I don't develop for APP. I only provide support on this forum 🙂
