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.
OK, new to astrophotography, new to Astro Pixel Processor (running trial version). First night out with a new setup I shot four different sessions of the Lagoon area and was reasonably pleased with three. The third - the longest and one I had the most hope for, is a mess of doubled stars. Sort of.
I am running with all defaults generally, and realize a LOT more effort is needed to understand all the options. But I wonder if someone might give me a clue where to look for this particular issue. I had 61 x 30second images at 400mm. I excluded about a dozen my first try, and 28 the second time, based on the quality score. I had dark and bias, not flat (going to take some today). They are taken on a Sony Alpha A7Riv in raw and the raw fed to APP. The seeing is good but the light pollution horrible (maps estimate it at 6).
Apparently (though I do not recall) I repositioned the scope a bit during the imaging, about in the middle. The resulting accidental mosaic looked like this before any further work:
I mention it just in case -- I had another session that occured when the scope had to flip that looked the same, and came out fine. I cropped to just that area of overlap.
Here's the issue. In the middle bottom (about 80% down from the top) the stars look nice and round. This is a 200% enlarged drop, so very high magnification of very small pixels. It's also good all the way to the left edge at that distance from the top. But...
Here's the right side at the same horizontal pane. It's a mess of doubling (and different colors, interestingly).
Interestingly about the same distance down from the top as I was from the bottom before they are aligned on the right side, but similarly doubled on the left side.
It's like there is a diagonal across, running from about 80% down on the left, to 20% down on the right, that is correct -- except in the center (where you might think they cross) it is also doubled though not as badly.
It looks like an alignment problem in stacking, but I am lost as to where to look. Note this is NOT the one where I had to flip the mount as it crossed straight up, I do not recall why I repositioned it. I think this is when I changed batteries in the camera; it fits roughly with the time frame, and maybe that caused a bit of a shift.
I'm not asking for a magical solution, but hoping for a pointer where I might look; what kind of issue could cause this, and is it likely unrepairable, or is there a path I need to find?
Linwood
OK, I at least partly figured this out. Something went wrong when I labeled images, and this was indeed a case where I had a meridian flip. For reasons unclear this screwed up quite a few of the images before the flip. I tried aligning them in another tool and failed also (though it just refused which forced me to check more closely).
So... never mind. Mea culpa.
Sorry I missed your post! Did you try to select “flip horizontal” in APP? I think that might have fixed it already, though usually it works automatically with registration. If you want I can have a look at your data?
You can also try out the options for “optical distortion correction” and turn on “LNC” and “MBB” in the integration tab.
Thank you. I just trashed that set of images and moved on, but I appreciate things to try if it comes up again.
