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.
I recently acquired an S2/O111 Dual narrowband filter to go with my Antlia ALP-T Ha/O111 filter and whilst having great success splitting the Ha/O111 channels and recombining as SHO files am at a loss of how to add the new data acquired with the S2/O111. As a test I shot an hour of S2/O111 on the Tulip Nebula and tried to combine with a similar amount of Ha/O111 data collected over a year ago just to try what I thought may work out however it did not (A post about combining RGB with Ha data, which does work for me). I did select "different camera & optics" and when I tried to combine my normalized/registered frames as a SHO file . In the recombine RGB tab I selected SHO, added Ha, then O111 twice & S2 last so I had 4 files, selected recalculate & got the warning box "Data is not the same size or bit depth" so it wouldn't allow me to proceed.
If anyone uses two dual narrowband filters Ha/O111 & S2/O111 or even the (Antlia S2/Hb which I'm considering buying) and knows how / has a workflow that works could you please advise me how you do it
Thank you
Take your master light stacks from both sets and then put them back in as lights without using any calibration frames, then run them as a mosaic and with advanced normalization, making sure to keep same optics unchecked. It will re-register them and make it easier to combine, and if you have 2 different master Oiii lights it can combine them as one. That way you can do a normal SHO combination.
