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 have a mixture of darks with different durations - 30, 60, 90, 130, and 180 seconds - and I’d like to create masters for each duration. Is APP able to sort the whole group and automatically create masters for each duration, or do I have to load and process each exposure duration group by itself?
thanks,
Wayne
Hi,
Not sure if you get the solution yet. There are two approaches in creating master darks for different exposures. For the first one, I would load different duration of darks in 'multi-session processing' to create master darks for each exposure. Or, using all darks to create a single master darks and check 'scale MasterDark' on calibration step.
Clear skies,
Kijja
Dark scaling isn't the best approach here. I would only use that if you don't have any proper darks for a certain sub-length. There is no auto-grouping yet, which would be nice indeed, so loading separately is probably the fastest or using the multi-session feature indeed.
@vincent-mod
Thank you Vincent for correction Glad to have you back in the Forum.
Cheers,
Kijja
Thank you too, yes I'm glad to be back, it's a struggle sometimes with this period of moving across the world. 😉
