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.
Is anybody else having trouble using data from iTelescope?
When I do a simple stack, I'm finding that the 'calibrated' data is highly overcorrected by their flats. Dust motes, huge black band on one edge and such.
When I downloaded the raw data & cal masters, they seem to be a mess as well. Some are flipped up/down and some aren't. After I sorted that out... I did full calibration and then stacked, the results were worse than before.
I have no clue what to do.
Anybody else having these problems?
I don't know the state of the calibration files at this moment, but I do know they had problems with proper calibration frames in the past. You can email them and ask for an explanation and usually they refund that session. That at least was my experience a year or so ago. This is something that should become way better with the incorporation of APP over there, but will still depend on how they take the calibration frames.
When viewing the masters, they seem "OK" (not great, because that black band I mentioned is not the same in the flats, as in my raw data.) At least the dust motes are there, and when I re-do the orientation, they're in the correct place. It's just overdone in the final output.
Is there a way to control how much the flats are correcting?
Not really, if the flats are taken as they should, APP will use them correctly. If it over-corrects, I think it would mean that the light fall-off in the flats is more severe then they are in the lights for some reason.
