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.
The recent APP beta releases are amazing. Congratulations to the team on making these so many improvements so quickly! I am really enjoying the new capabilities of the software and speed.
A minor request I have is the following:
When starting a new project we set the current working directory. Would it be possible to start the loading of Lights, Flats etc to start from that directory? I find that after I load up Lights, when I try to load the flats, I have to go up one or even two directory as the file dialog again starts from where I loaded the lights from and this happens when I do the Darks and other types too.
I think the following structure is typical with many capture softwares --- so it will expediate loading everything if we start all the file dialogs from the working_directory.
working_directory|
             |-Lights-|
                    |-session1
                    |-session2
             |-Flats-|
                  |-session1
                  |-session2
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One more question: is it possible to re-assign sessions of Lights after loading from the file list?
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many thanks!
