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 am reworking a 2-panel mosaic of the Heart and Fish Head and am wondering if there is any benefit in matching the stats of the reference frames when stacking the individual panels. I am asking whether it is a good idea to try to find reference frames for each stack that have closely matched sky background, SNR, dispersion, and/or noise statistics. I also have an 8 panel Cygnus SNR mosaic in the works and will apply the same matching there if it is worth the effort. Â
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Also I am wondering if one of the 4 categories is more important than the others. For example if I match the sky background for each stack does that make the combined mosaic come together more easily?
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Thanks,
Bob
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Hi Bob @bobharmony,
Thank you very much for your question.
In general, it is always helpful to have similar quailty between your separate mosaic panels to have the mosaic work out successfully. So it would always be better to shoot each mosaic panel on every night that you capture instead of shooting 1 panel on 1 night and another panel on another night.
In this way, you automatically get more consistent quality in the mosaic panel stacks before combining them to a mosaic.
The normalization process and also LNC in APP should ensure that any differences in sky background and noise levels are corrected and thus made more compatible. But if the differences are really big to start with, it can be difficult to get good results.
Personally, I have never tried to select reference frames per mosaic panel based on corresponding quality metrics like the sky background or noise level to ensure that things work out nicely and normally you should not need to do see because normalization and LNC are there to solve that issue already.
Please let me know if this clarifies things and if you have any other questions.
Mabula
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