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'm having a problem assembling a 36 pane mosaic of part of the Cygnus region in natural colour. As usual APP has aligned the panes flawlessly with a high degree of accuracy, which is great!   Each pane of the mosaic had already been carefully white balanced with the camera's colour correction matrix already applied. The data was still linear and I was very careful not to clip the black level. They were loaded into APP as 32bit floating point TIFFs for Registration followed by Integration. However, I have noticed two strange issues in the final mosaic:
1) Colour channels were black clipping in certain regions of the final mosaic
2) The white balance was substantially altered - specifically the green channel had been significantly boosted and the red channel had been significantly attenuated
You can see these effects in the attached screenshot. I also saved the individual registered panes and these looked perfectly normal. Why is this happening - is there some setting I have overlooked?
Mark
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Hi Mark,
Have you tried to load the different integrated panes of your mosaic before doing anything (color balancing, etc...).
Where those pictures taken with your A7S ?
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David.
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Hi Mark,
Have you tried to load the different integrated panes of your mosaic before doing anything (color balancing, etc...).
Where those pictures taken with your A7S ?
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I probably wasn't being very clear. Each pane of the mosaic was created, white balanced and background subtracted in another piece of software (Pixinsight) and saved as 32bit TIFFs. I am now loading those TIFFs into APP to run the registration and integration steps. The registration works perfectly - I can see the registered panes and no colour alteration has happened (APP can save the registered panes). The colour alteration and the clipping of the darker areas happens in the integration step.
The data all comes from my Sony A7S.
Mark
You should try to make the color balancing and the background extraction in the final mosaic instead of doing this step in each files.
That's the way I make my mosaic taken with my A7S : each tile is preprocessed and integrated in Pix or APP (I've similar results with both software), if the gradients are strong, I remove them in the different tiles, and then I create the mosaic with APP. And after that I make the background extraction and color calibration.
Here is the topic where I asked for some advice in APP settings for creating a mosaic.
😉
You should try to make the color balancing and the background extraction in the final mosaic instead of doing this step in each files.
That's the way I make my mosaic taken with my A7S : each tile is preprocessed and integrated in Pix or APP (I've similar results with both software), if the gradients are strong, I remove them in the different tiles, and then I create the mosaic with APP. And after that I make the background extraction and color calibration.
Here is the topic where I asked for some advice in APP settings for creating a mosaic.
😉
Thanks - that's a very useful thread.
In any case, I've just found my mistake. I had accidentally used the default settings in step 5) Normalize
In the Normalize step if I set method to "none" and uncheck "neutralize background" then the mosaic works as expected, without altered colour balance and without clipping of blacks.
Mark
In any case, I've just found my mistake. I had accidentally used the default settings in step 5) Normalize
In the Normalize step if I set method to "none" and uncheck "neutralize background" then the mosaic works as expected, without altered colour balance and without clipping of blacks.
Thanx for the information.
In step 5, I allway let the default settings. But it's maybe a mistake, as I usually remove the gradient before making the mosaic...
I'll have to try that because in my last mosaic of Orion, the blacks were a little clipped too.
Let's see the final result of your mosaic, great picture for sure 😉Â
Cheers,
David
Sorry for the late reply, but that's all very valuable, thanks for posting the fix. I normally do the corrections all per panel indeed so might not have encountered this issue as such yet.
