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.
The issue here would be the middle 2 panels, as they also overlap over the galaxy center, but therefore the other ones contain more sky background.
That would not be the best way for a 6 panel M31 mosaic, because you will still have M31 in all overlap areas especially in the 2 left and 2 right panels., so it will create less issues if you have less of M31 especially in those overlap areas.
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Hm I see, but I am not sure how I can prevent that? After all, I want to create the mosaic of M31, so obviously there will be overlaps of M31. Would you mind sharing how I can optimize it?
So, I created the mosaic without the neutralize background option enabled in the Normalize tab, but I still get the same result sadly, so this doesn't seem to be the issue here:
This is sounding great! Thank you so much for the clarifications. 🙂
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So, for the integration of teach individual panel, can/should I keep the neutralize BG enabled under 5)?
And then when integrating the panels to the mosaic, I need it disabled, correct?
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"I know for a fact that the current LNC algorithm is creating your problem partly here."
So, I chose a LNC of 2nd degree with 10 iterations, as I was just following a tutorial. I obviously don't understand any of this, to be frank, I don't even know what the difference between 1st and 4th degree and the different amount of iterations is, so all I can do is following guides here.
Could you just quickly let me know what you think is the best setting here? Thank you!
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Yes indeed, keep neutralize BG enabled when you make the individual panels and disable it when you make the mosaic 😉
It will be safest and best to use the lowest LNC degree possible, if 1st degree works well, then use that. the higher degree LNC's can become unstable with data like this and this is the main reason to develop LNC 2.0.
Same holds for the iterations, if 1x works well, no need to increase the iterations.
A fast way to test is to use the crop composition mode in 6) integrate, simply select an area (make a crop after having selected the crop composition mode) of the reference frame where the problems manifest, and push integrate and then APP will only create an integration of that part of the data 😉
However, could you still share how I can set the panels so that it would be good for APP to process? I am not interested in doing many mosaics at the moment, but M31 is my favourite object and it would be a real bummer if I either cannot do it at all, or even worse, spend like 20-30 hours of integration time just to then have issues like this.
Right now I am just testing around so I know how to do it and to see what is working. 🙂
Okay, I just tested it with 3 panels, with the overlap being 20%, and only in the outer parts.
Also, I created the mosaic without the background neutralization.
Sadly, this was also not the solution it seems. While it was already better, the middle panel definitely suffered the most, but the inverse gradients are also present in the other panels. You can especially see it on the darker nebulas, how it cuts off from the right to the middle panel. The middle panel got too bright it seems. This is after light pollution removal:
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Unedited, the gradient issue is even more apparent:
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Any other ideas on how to set this up?
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CS Tobi
This post was modified 3 years ago 2 times by Tobias Schwarze
I just uploaded my 3 mosaic panels. Each of them was calibrated with Flats, Darkflats and Darks, and other than that was just integrated with the default settings indivually.
