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 - apologies if I'm missing something obvious. I've been using APP for a couple of months now without issue, but suddenly, as of this morning, it appears to be not applying MasterDark, MasterFlat or MasterDarkFlat to my Lights. It appears to go through all of the steps of creating the masters from the individual dark, flat and dark flat files, but the resulting integrated image is very definitely without calibration frames applied. I've just done a simple test of stacking 40 lights captured last night with no calibration frames, then performed the same but with 25 darks loaded, and the resulting integration files are visually identical. Happy to provide screenshots, logs, files etc. if someone can help me please.
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Thanks
Chris
I think I've found the cause. The Dark files I were using were from my dark library and captured using different software (EKOS) to the Lights which I captured yesterday using NINA. Looking at the FITS meta data there is a mismatch between the Focal Length and Focal Ratio that I've entered for the set-up in EKOS vs that in NINA. I took another DARK with my new set-up, using NINA this time so the meta data tags all match, and this time the masterdark was applied correctly. Interestingly APP didn't flag up any kind of error that I could see with the mismatched files.
Hope this helps someone with the same set of circumstances!
Great you found that out already. That's indeed a good cause for issues, which is why we advice to always use 1 program to capture data with. Thanks for sharing!
