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 All,Â
I am new to this and just started the 7 day trial to see if this is something I have done. I have read guides and watched multiple tutorials videos but something seems to be going wrong. I am not sure if this is just out of my skillset and I should give up or if I am doing something wrong. I only have a few days left of my trial and dont want to pay if this is beyond me but all the tutorials say it is so simple and automated for basic edits.
High level summary, I did 64 frames of 30 seconds using a dsl. each frame looks good and is pretty sharp. There are no bad frames, no blemishes, no significant vignetting and as a stand alone frame can actually be edited to be a reasonably decent shot. When I stack though I get the below which has added a massive amount of vignette, blurred the stars, added random colours and whilst the MW is more visible the overall picture (ignoring enhancements, contrast etc) is far worse. Where and I going wrong or should I walk away?
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Hi Ross @roscodav78,
Thank you very much for your question and welcome to the APP forum.
The amount of vignetting becomes clearer when you stack so many images. The noise is reduced from stacking and thus the image can be stretched more strongly giving you an impression that there is more vignetting, but there is not, the data is only more strongly stretched giving you the impression that you have more vignetting all of a sudden.
To counter vignetting, you will need to add flats, then the vignetting will go away completely. Did you ever shoot flats before?
This is data shot with a DSLR and a short focal length lens, right? The short focal length lens will have clear optical problems, like non-circulair stars in the sensor corners and it will also have optical distortion. The non-circulair stars are no problem really to get a good result. The optical distortion can be a big problem here, but APP can dynamically correct it with a setting in 4) Register, try to enable use dynamic distortion correction and then re-integrate the data. I think the stars will look much better.
The random color that you refer to is the same issue as the vignetting. You just see more color because you have not applied flats and the data is more stretched in the integration view when compared to the view of a single image. Finally, in each image there will be sky gradients form light-pollution. These gradients build up in your integration, they become more complex, giving more colors... since flats are missing, it will look bad to start with, that is quite normal, really.
APP has a tool to correct this as well. Go to the Tools tab and select the Remove Light Pollution tool, that can correct a lot of these problem like the vignetting and sky gradients. An old and extensive video tutorial with this tool can be seen here:
Finally, to be honest, for a first try, the result looks quite good actually as well 🙂 the initial single images must be quit good and sharp like you indicate.
Let me know if this helps.
Mabula
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Thank you so much that helped. I still have a lot to learn and I had to spend a lot of time tweaking the light pollution and vignetting but doing some flats made a bit difference. This is my final output!
