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 all,
Curious to see if others have a limit as to how many frames/how much data you will run through APP at once? I just waited 48 hours for my PC (i have 16GB ram and i7 quad processor) to integrate a stack of 503 light frames (plus cal frames).
I know, get a new PC you say, it is on the cards.
Perhaps 5 stacks of 100 then a final stack of these would have processed faster?
Would appreciate your thoughts?
Regards,
Daniel
Well the more frames you have, the more complex the internal statistics become depending on the options you select for it. You can indeed speed things up a bit in such cases, by dividing the data. I would say a minimum of 25 frames for good calibration per stack, so 100 is totally fine. And then combine those in the end yes.
The more cores and memory you have, the faster it will go indeed. Also using a SSD will help quite a bit. We do try to make APP faster each time, in a future version we’re also going to make use of the GPU’s, which will make it a lot faster as well.
