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.
APP seems to have had some problems aligning stars in a few spots on a large mosaic I am doing. My Ha files are the best, Oiii is the worst. It happens in the same places on all three masters, mostly where some of the panels come together. They have plenty of overlap, so I am not sure what the problem is here.
The mosaic in question is this:
Did you switch so mosaic mode? or is the Regteristering mode still in standard?
/stefan
@digitaliz-se
It is in mosaic mode with advanced normilization. I don't think it could register all the panels otherwise.
I have added in more panels taking the total panels to 72, but some of the panels are set with huge overlap on the weird areas.
Tried changing scale stops, dynamic distorsions etc?
/Stefan
Yep, did it all and the only thing I can think of it is is so large that APP struggles. The panels are mostly from a QHY 600M Pro and no binning, so they are large files. I am hoping that adding panels in those areas with good overlap might help with this.
I'm having similar issues with my mosaics. Have you found a solution?
Hi @imnewhere,
Thank you very much for posting the issue with your mosaic. Do you want me to have a look at your mosaic data to understand why the registration is not working nicely? I guess you did disable same camera and optics?
Mabula
@mabula-admin
I did disable that since for my master lights I had already had that checked. I am away right now, but I have no problem letting you take a look at it, though it is missing he final set of panels. I am going to attempt it without dynamic distortion correction enabled to see if that helps after I get back home.
Hi @imnewhere,
Okay. please let me know if you want me to have a look at the data ;-), it will surely help me in testing going forward.
Mabula
@mabula-admin
I can definitely put the data together for that. I just need to see if I brought it with me on this work trip.
I get the same results on large mosaics. I've given up on anything over 2x2. Hope you two can get this sorted.
Hi @imnewhere,
Okay, once you have the data, please upload it here:
https://upload.astropixelprocessor.com/
username: uploadData
password: uploadTestData
Please make a folder with your name and issue like: ImNewHere-mosaic-issue
and upload your dataset there with all lights and all calibration files. Please separate the lights in different folders per panel if you can. Finally, let me know once uploaded and I will have a good look as soon as possible.
Mabula
I get the same results on large mosaics. I've given up on anything over 2x2. Hope you two can get this sorted.
@mrrat, APP definitely does not work perfectly, but most much bigger mosaics then 2x2 will work perfectly fine with APP. I regularly process mosaics of much larger size from other APP users for testing and rarely see regisration issues like this one. Usually the issue is caused by one of the following:
- to little overlap for the mosaic panels, too little overlap means that in the area of overlap, there simply are too little stars to accurately calculate the optical distortion correction needed to have the entire field of view "fixed"
- the star count in 3) analyse stars was set a bit too low
- the parameters in 4) were not tweaked enough for a good result
If you have such a mosaic with issues for me to check, please upload is with the same instructions as the post above and please let me know, so I can have a look and test myself to improve the registration engine.
Mabula
My most recent mosaic was having this issue of some stars not aligning, and I found that not using distortion correction when stacking the individual panels allowed the final mosaic to align all the stars properly.
