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.
Guys,
If I wanted to combine OSC dual narrow band images to broadband color images, would the end result be the same if I merge the "HA-OIII Color" image file to the broadband RGB data during the basic integration process versus merging the "HA extract" and "OIII extract" data to the RGB data via the "9) Tool, RGB Combine" process?
Also, when combining multiple sessions that have different exposure times, is there a setting in APP that needs to be turned on so the stack can accommodate for this?
First point; basically yes, however with "Ha-OIII Color" you'll get a RGB result that has the standard corrections. If you want to make the Ha nicer/different or OIII, you have to work on them separately.
Second; You're talking about HDR I think. This is not an option yet, combining them will still produce a bit of an average effect, but not really like what you look for with HDR. This is something we want to add as an option in the future.
@vincent-mod Thanks for your reply!! Next question is, when stacking master light frames from previous sessions, are these framing be stacked by breaking down the color channels, then stacked, the recombined into a grand master integration file?
Not sure what you mean. I think you mean combining the narrowband data with previous RGB frames? If so, you separate the RGB first into R, G and B frames (split channels option in tab 2 all the way down). Then you load R, G, B and the narrowband data and register/normalize all together (after assigning them to the right filters). You can do this as well with previous full RGB integrations. So if you want to add H-alpha to RGB for instance, this can be done on a full RGB stack like this as well.
Here's a nice workflow in that regard; https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/community/postid/7610/
@vincent-mod Say I got 4 different nights of imaging from a OSC, and each night has already been stacked into a master image, so there is 4 master stacks total. Now I want to stack these 4 into 1 final image. When stacking these master integrations together into one final integration, does APP internally break down the RGB components of each file, registers them separate, then stacks them as R,G,B, then combines them into the final RGB image? Im just trying to understand how this software handles these files with RGB data contained within.
Good question, I'm not entirely sure how the actual integration takes place, that would be a question for Mabula @mabula-admin
I think it just uses the RGB as-is, there's no real need to register on separate channels as the star positions don't change really in that sense
@vincent-mod Thanks. I would defiantly like Mabula to chime in on this. This also brings me to a related subject. If I have an image with chromatic aberrations, if I use Deep Sky Stacker and choose the "align channels" option, it fixes them easily, as I assume there process would be separating the RGB as singles and the registering them individually before combining and stacking. When using APP's "align channel" or even "distortion correction", I do not see any improvements in the aberrations. Is there a bug in APP's align channel feature because it doesn't seem to work?
No that's not a bug, but the way to correct for that is not very clear (will be worked on as well in the future). This is because it works differently then the regular algorithms. You have to go to tab 2, all the way down select "align channels" save the frames and that should fix it.
edit: woops, I didn't read your reply properly, you already tried it exactly like this?
@vincent-mod No, I just went through the entire integration process via tab 6 but turned on align channel from tab 2. I did not save any signal frames in between tab 1-6. It would be nice if APP would do the correction internally without having to save frames from tab 2 first, then have to load them back in and continue the stacking. This doesn't make since though. Saving frames from tab 2, how does this align channels if there are no registration of the channels first?? Seems like the process would be: calibrate frames>Analyze stars>Register by separating RGB from all lights and then recombine them so all RGB matches in light frame>Normalize>Integrate. I assumed this was why dynamic distortion option was on the tab-4 register to do just this process, but it doesn't seem to do anything from my testing. It just seems to me when stacking OSC data you would want to separate the channels and register them all back together to help reduce the effects of chromatic aberrations. Thoughts?
Yes, that's why I mentioned it's not very clear and we should work on that. The thing internally is that it's not super easy to incoorporate it in the standard flow as we have it now. But we can make it way easier for sure. Mabula knows about this as well.
@vincent-mod Thanks Vince for all you do to help support APP!
That's very nice of you to say, great ending of this Saturday. 😉 I hope it worked for you btw.
