Mar 28 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta40 will be released in 7 days.
It did take a long time to have the work finished on this and it will have a major performance boost of 30-50% over 2.0.0-beta39 from calibration to integration. We extensively optimized many critical parts of APP. All has been tested to guarantee correct optimizations. Drizzle and image resampling is much faster for instance, those modules have been completely rewritten. Much less memory usage. LNC 2.0 will be released which works much better and faster than LNC in it's current state. And more, all will be added to the release notes in the coming weeks...
Update on the 2.0.0 release & the full manual
We are getting close to the 2.0.0 stable release and the full manual. The manual will soon become available on the website and also in PDF format. Both versions will be identical and once released, will start to follow the APP release cycle and thus will stay up-to-date to the latest APP version.
Once 2.0.0 is released, the price for APP will increase. Owner's license holders will not need to pay an upgrade fee to use 2.0.0, neither do Renter's license holders.
Hi - I'm hoping I can get some help on a RGB processing issue. I used the RGB combine tab for an LRGBHa image of M51. The result was a horrible red and blue hued image (see below). What did I do wrong? I realize the list could be long but a nudge in the right direction would be helpful. I'm new to APP mono processing so I'm a little lost on next steps. Thanks!
Paul
@tsa120man Hi Paul, since i asked you to create a new post, I split off your comment from the tutorial post. It looks like the Ha data are dominating the image. Do you get this red hue as well if you only process the LRGB data?
Hi Wouter - yes, I do. The red and blue colors disappear when I drop Lum and Ha and only combine RGB, which really seems strange to me.
Paul
@tsa120man Hi Paul, what data are you combining exactly? LRGBHa obviously but what are the exposure times? And do you use bias, dark, darkflat, flat? What camera are you using? Are you sure that the temperature, gain and offset (or ISO) of the calibration frames are the same as for the lights? Are you processing on an internal drive or an external one? What version of APP are you on and what OS? I may have more questions but please answer these first 🙂
Hi Wouter -
To answer your questions, I'm using a QHY600M with Astrodon filters; all LRGB subs taken at 180 secs at the same gain/offset and the Ha subs taken at 300 sec with same G/Off. Calibration frames used: 25 flats, 25 Darks, 50 Bias, all at the same G/Off. Temperatures of cal frames were -10C but the subs shot at -20C. However, I don't believe that the difference in temperature should make all that much difference given the very low dark current for this camera. I store all my data on an external hard drive and process on a laptop using the latest APP version 1.082. Whew!
I played around with the RGB combine tool a little and was able to improve the original image (below) but it's still lousy. I was able to remove the red and blue hue and get to this result by using "add scale" with "LHaRGB1" in the RGB combine tool and calibrate the background and star color on the combined image. However, the blue arms and Ha red regions are still very weak in both color and detail.
I appreciate your help!
@tsa120man Hi Paul, thanks for the extensive reply. Does this also happen if you process the data directly on the laptop?
I’m not sure what you mean, Wouter. As I said, I process everything on my laptop.
Paul
@tsa120man Sorry, what I meant is to copy all data to the internal laptop HD and then run APP from the internal HD. We have experienced problems when running from external disks if they are not solid state disks.
Oh, I get it now. That's very interesting. My external drive is HDD, not SSD so I'll give it a try and let you know. Thanks!
Paul
