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
Last night I took a series of lights and then used my library of darks for processing. However when I examined the file after integrating it seems that the darks and lights were orientated differently.Â
I am using the ASI294MC-Pro camera which has a distinctive 'amp glow'. Normally the darks usually remove this artifact, either totally or largely.
However on this batch it seems as though APP inverted the dark, as the light colour of the glow is still in the upper right and a dark version is on lower right.
I have changed nothing - other than the target - since my last images.
Can anyone help/advise?
Frank
Mmm, that is strange as the sensor will always have the amp-glow on the same side, no matter what orientation the camera would be in. Did you do anything, as insignificant as it may be, to the darks in between (like copying them over or loading them into something else in between)?
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Hi Vincent
I think that I have got to the bottom of this.
I have been using darks from a library built up over the past months where the capture was done using ASICap - the ASI natuve software.
However recently I have been using CCDCiel for scope control and capture. It seems as though these two capture methods differ in how they present the image data.
I am currently taking a new set of darks with CCDCiel, and the APP processed image - hopefully - will be OK.
I'll let you know.
Frank
Ah, yes that could very well be the reason. Different software introduced in your workflow may influence some things. Sometimes these packages also change the data a bit, I've seen differences in which 1 package took on row and column op pixels off, probably due to the used image algorithm it uses, which gave a mismatch for APP with the darks and lights that were taken with another package.
