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.
If you change out one of your calibration files, like a flat file, after star analysis, registration and normalization is done, why is it that APP start over from scratch doing all these steps over again?
In what way is a flat file (or any calibration file) used for star analysis and registration? 🙄Â
Not sure, I never actually tested that, why would you want to change a calibration file during the process and after everything is calibrated?
This was actually a curiosity question and not a big deal, but what happened was that my integrations looked like crap. I realized that I had used the wrong flats. I should of course have checked that up front. So I thought I could just replace them and rerun the integration (and possibly normalization), but no such luck. APP started doing star analysis. That, and registration, take a couple of hours with a lagre stack.Â
So maybe you could ask Mabula why it is like that. There is probably a good reason. I'm just curious.Â
Oh yes, didn't mean to say it isn't interesting. 🙂 We discover bugs sometimes precisely because people use the program slightly differently. The next version of APP will have the ability to skip steps, so if you save, for instance, the star registered frames, you can load them in later again and tell APP to skip star analysis. This may not fix this particular situation though, so if that remains to be the case please let us know and we will fix it.
I did a little testing just now to see if I could recreate what happened. 20lights, one of each type master calibration files. First I did a full integration using all standard settings.
There seem to be three scenario:
1. Adding a new flat and unchecking the other, press integrate and APP start integration as expected. (But I'm not sure which flat is actually used)
2. Delete the existing flat (using clean) and then add a new one. Press integrate and APP starts with registration then normalization and integrate. (Here I belive the new flat is used.)
3. Delete the existing flat (using clean) and then add a new one. Then press "reassign masters to lights". All existing analysis are deleted and APP starts with analysing stars.Â
There is probably good reasons for all of this, but if there isn't......Â
