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.
Hi Mabula:
When I process my astro images in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and Photoshop ACR has a lens correction feature that adjusts the image to compensate for distortions caused by various camera lenses. Does APP have anything like this?
Thanks,
Rudy
Hi Rudy,
Yes it certainly has 😉
It's the dynamic distortion correction feature in the registration engine. APP calculates these distortion profiles of the optics dynamically while integrating. And you can save these modules as well.
The profiles that APP creates are of a much higher degree (6th radial degree with varying Center Of Distortion) than Adobe supports.
The Adobe profiles will not work with enough accuracy to achieve optimal subpixel registration precision in the case of strong optical distortion. I have tested this extensively myself and the distortion correction that APP provides is simply better and more reliable because APP can calculate the distortion profile for your objective/ota, whereas the profiles of Adobe are generic per objective model and thus never precise enough for our purpose. Due to fabrication uncertainties, not all objectives of a certain objective model are exactly the same, so the Adobe profiles will only give you precision limited by the variance in fabrication of those objectives. Therefore these Adobe models can give you only correction with simpler and less accurate models.
The distortion correction in APP is so good that the creation of big automatic mosaics are possible as you are possible aware. Without accurate distortion correction this simply wouldn't be possible.
This is an ultimate example, a fully automatic 70 panel mosaic by Kees Scherer with a registration precision of only 0.1 pixel for the entire mosaic 😉
You can save the camera profile in APP for your camera + objective(s) 😉 that will help as well though.
Kind regards,
Mabula
Hi Mabula:
Thanks for the speedy reply.
This is great news indeed! I suspected that it was probably the Dynamic Distortion Correction feature that did this, and it was, but I had no idea that it was so advanced and accurate a feature! Excellent!
Cheers,
Rudy
You're welcome Rudy 😉
