Apr 9 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta40 has been released !
It has a major performance boost of 30-50% over 2.0.0-beta39 from calibration to integration, for mosaics even faster! We extensively optimized many critical parts of APP. All has been tested to guarantee correct optimizations. Drizzle and image resampling is much faster for instance, those modules have been completely rewritten. Much less memory usage. LNC 2.0 will be released which works much better and faster than LNC in it's current state. Improved Outlier Rejection with LN 2.0 rejection. macOS CMD+A works now in file chooser ! And more, all will be added to the release notes in the coming hours...
Update on the 2.0.0 release & the full manual
We are getting close to the 2.0.0 stable release and the full manual. The manual will soon become available on the website and also in PDF format. Both versions will be identical and once released, will start to follow the APP release cycle and thus will stay up-to-date to the latest APP version.
Once 2.0.0 is released, the price for APP will increase. Owner's license holders will not need to pay an upgrade fee to use 2.0.0, neither do Renter's license holders.
I would really appreciate some guidance here.
I shot a 2x1 panel mosaic of NGC 7000. Â Both panels came out well, but for some reason when I stitch them together in mosaic mode in APP the bottom panel turns out very milky. Â It's obviously a normalization issue. Â That individual panel is perhaps slightly milkier, but it seems that way (I think) mostly because of the increased star count and not because it was encroaching on a light dome (these subs finished before that).
I've uploaded the two panels to the MountainAir-NormalizationIssue folder on FileStation.
Here's the result:
Thanks in advance!
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A few observations:
- The auto-stretch in APP exacerbates the problem; the mosaic doesn't look as bad in PixInsight, but still far from desirable.
- I took the individual panels through the ABE process in PixInsight with the normalization checkbox checked (ABE worked no worse than my quick DBE attempt in this case).
- I took the panels back to APP and stitched them together. Â The effect was less pronounced, but easily still visible.
- Opening the mosaic with PI's default autostretch didn't look as bad.
- Running ABE again, I was able to substantially reduce the milkiness effect. Â It's not perfect, but much better and may be usable.
I confess to not being as familiar with APP's post-stacking tools. Â I'm sure I could do most of this there, but there still may be some setting or workflow that I missed. Â Or, maybe this is an opportunity to train APP's mosaic normalization process using my individual panels.
BTW, I should have said I follow all the standard guidelines for mosaics in APP, including using Advanced mode in Normalization. Â Any ideas on what I may have missed? Â Most of my other mosaics turn out fine from a normalization perspective.
Thanks in advance!
When you make a mosaic, it's always best to first make it and then do the LPC correction. Correcting the panels beforehand may not work very well, though they look good, the background can still be different per panel.
