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 only been using APP a week and I am very impressed. Great work. I was able to get going in a few minutes.
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I am sure you all know how defocus and star trails can get into your collections. I have some collections where PHD2 quit and my collections continued with 2 minute subs. I discovered something that is very useful and might make a good addition to APP. There is an algorithm called Lucy-Richardson deconvolution. I have been trying it in Matlab and it seems to do wonders for both these issues. The algorithm needs an estimated point spread function but a nice bright star gives you this. It takes about 5 minutes to calculate for a 61 mpixel image on a fast MacBook Pro.
I and post some examples.
Kurt
I think Mabula knows about that, he's also interested in deconvolution in a future version of APP. So, we'll need to see if that can be used for some of these examples. In the end though there is only so much software can do and it will probably not be the best for your data, fixing the issues at data gathering is always preferred. I think you can set your capture software to start over when guiding is not ok, I do that to filter a lot (or hopefully just a few) I would throw away anyway later.
Dear Kurt @ispybadguys,
Thanks and you are most welcome!
Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention.
Indeed, like Vincent says, we will introduce deconvolution in a future version to solve issues like you mention. It is on our ToDo 😉
Cheers,
Mabula
Thanks
I used to work at a National Laboratory and we designed and built space telescopes. To get the best possible image out of them we would take several images at different focus positions and we could compute the telescope wavefront error from this and the we used Lucy-Richardson to correct the images. Not only can you correct focus errors but also seeing conditions. Nothing is free you have to trade in some SNR to get this.
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Kurt
