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.
One thing that I've never understood is why the default weighting in 6) Integration is Equal. Since many new users often start using the defaults with APP they would automatically get a less than optimal result with this setting then if they used Quality.
Also in version 1.076 A new choice - automatic integration seems to be great. The documentation says "With the automatic integration method, APP will automatically set either median or average integration, set suitable integration weights (either equal or quality weights) and it will enable an outlier rejection filter with suitable kappa low and high values, all depending on the number of frames in the integration/stack. With light frames, it will even enable Local Normalization rejection if preferred. " I don't understand how Equal Weight can ever be better than Quality Weight.Â
Without knowing the selection criteria for Quality vs Equal I would hesitate to use this excellent new automatic integration choice.
It's about the number of frames basically, below 20 it has an advantage to go for one or the other. This will be clear in the upcoming documentation, the automatic setting will make this easy also for the novice user.
Hi,
I tried all of them recently and could see no difference. No matter if I have set "equal" or "star shape" or "quality" or "SNR".
That's possible, sometimes the differences are minor. You propably can tell when zooming in and "pixel peep". But it'll depend on the quality of the data.
No ... not even that. I was up to 400% view. And I couldn't see a difference. Pixel was exactly the same.
The data was from a color camera (Canon 5D MK IV). Maybe this is different with a mono camera?
Well no, but it'll depend a lot on things like the amount of subs, sky quality, noise, etc. If all your subs are excellent for instance, the quality integration will not be very different (if at all) from integrating on all.
