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.
Hello...I spent seven hours on a cloudy night creating an assortment of calibration frames to include flats,dark flats and darks (30,60,90,120,180,300 sec) at ambient and 0C degrees.
When I created a BPM using the 31x 2 sec flats, 30x 2 sec dark flats and the 20x 180 second darks, it generated what I believe is a good BPM with 2.7% bad pixels. (I used auto settings). However, after I saved the BPM to a folder, and then tried to load it into APP, I get the message that it "does not appear to be a Bad Pixel Map" as it lacked the BPM metadata. When I clicked YES to load it anyway it loaded OK -it appeared identical when zoomed in- (third image, below) but it no longer displays the metadata as it does in the first image, below. Did I do something wrong? Will the BPM work in future processing attempts as it should? Thanks!
Mmm that is weird, you didn’t change anything in between for the BPM? It should just be created and that’s it. No further processing should be done on it, or loaded into another program and then saved again. Things like that might change the fits data.
Well, that is what I suspected. Although it was automatically saved to the directory folder after it was created, I did 'save' it again, and added a suffix to identify it (e.g. "-0C"). Will it need to stay in the original folder or can it be moved to a "Bad Pixel Map" folder without changing the name?...would simply moving it change the metadata? Thanks for the reply!
No that should be fine, also renaming it would be ok I think as the fits header is what matters. But to be on the safe side for now, just save it in a folder for you to keep. A BPM can be used for at least a year on all your data, it never degrades data.
@vincent-mod Thanks again...slowly getting more familiar with APP! I just now processed my first ever meridian flip in APP...no issues.
Here is an image from July!
Excellent! Good to hear. 🙂 I would make the background less dark though, but the signal is great!
