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.
Today I tried doing a 2-panel mosaic integration (~10% overlap) for the first time, but when I do the mosaic integration, the result has lot of what I can only describe as hot red, green, and blue artifacts (see attached image), all apparently the same shape. I used dark frames from my library that were done at the same exposure time and temp as my new lights and took flats and dark flats after the session. The only changes to default settings were:
- RGGB
- Ha-OIII Color algorithm (I also see the artifacts on extract Ha and extract OIII, though they're only readily apparent after combining into RGB).
- 32-bit masters
- use dynamic distortion correction
- 10 scale stop (as recommended)
- mosaic registration mode
- 10% MBB (as recommended)
When I go back to normal registration on one panel alone (dropping scale stop back to 5), I do not get these artifacts, so it seems related to doing the mosaic. Should I be trying other settings?
Happy to provide all data for troubleshooting.
When you do the extract algorithms, did you see if the darks were actually applied to the lights? You can check by loading the lights (with the extract algorithm), adding the masterdark, then switching to "l-calibrated" on top of the window and see if that frame is getting calibrated.
Good call. It does appear to get applied because I see hot pixels disappear but it's not getting all of the hot pixels. I guess I need a better BPM that the one automatic produces? That said, if I fully integrate one panel of my lights normally, I see no hot pixels in the final image (outlier rejection?). With mosaic integration, all of those hot pixels not caught by the BPM aren't getting sorted out.
It may help to switch off the automatic setting in the integrate tab to "average" and then the options for rejection can be changed. You can try to lower the kappa high so it rejects more.
Another thing might be the darks, they should contain almost all the hot pixels, so I'm wondering if those are exactly the same iso and such as the lights? For a very good BPM it's a good idea to take a very long dark, like 10 min or so, it will then have as many hot pixels as the sensor might generate and should then correct for those. A BPM is never destructive to your data, so having more pixels in there if your lights are not having them (due to lower exposures) is no problem.
Â
Did you manage to get rid of these artifacts? I got the same problem when integrating with drizzle. Also seem to be there when not drizzling only less prominent. Creating a new BPM helped with getting rid of these artifacts 100% with a lower kappa of 2.0 but it introduced pretty bad artifacts around the stars. So not sure what to do now.
