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.
Although I'm a customer of APP, I thought I'd give Pixinsight a try.
I spent 3 or 4 days reading tutorials, watching videos and following along step by step with my data. What APP does in 10 steps, Pixinsight seems to require 30 or 40 (completely un-intuitive) steps. When a tutorial told me to do x-y-z, I was hunting for ages through the menus and dialogs. It honestly took about a week before I was able to fully process a single image.
Yes, it's good software and provided me a good quality result. Just for fun, I thought I'd run the same data through APP. Compare Apples to Apples.  The winner: APP.  Better final image, better interface and by FAR the best user experience.
THANK YOU Mabula! I love the direction this software is headed and I'm excited to see it progress. Keep it up!!
I'm approaching this from the other direction as a long-standing PixInsight user I'm giving APP a trial.
I think it's more a mindset thing rather than one being better than the other. I've no doubt if I'd come straight to APP from DSS I'd have found it a breeze. However, having spent a few years getting to know PI, I found APP a struggle at first, mainly because it's so different (once I'd watched Sara's videos it made far more sense though). I'd say that PI is currently a far more powerful tool but it's a long and very steep learning curve, whereas APP is pretty straightforward and intuitive in contrast.
The key thing is that APP and PI are not versions of the same thing, they are totally different fish. APP is a self-contained application that encapsulates the workflow for the entire calibration and integration process. PI, on the other hand, is a library of image processing tools and very much relies on the user to provide the workflow. So far I haven't found APP to be significantly faster (in terms of CPU time) or much different in terms of the results. Where APP does win big time is in being far less tedious and does most of the thinking for you.
Personally, I like both APP and PI. I'd say that if you currently use one or other of them and it does what you need it to do there's probably no point in switching.
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Although I'm a customer of APP, I thought I'd give Pixinsight a try.
I spent 3 or 4 days reading tutorials, watching videos and following along step by step with my data. What APP does in 10 steps, Pixinsight seems to require 30 or 40 (completely un-intuitive) steps. When a tutorial told me to do x-y-z, I was hunting for ages through the menus and dialogs. It honestly took about a week before I was able to fully process a single image.
Yes, it's good software and provided me a good quality result. Just for fun, I thought I'd run the same data through APP. Compare Apples to Apples.  The winner: APP.  Better final image, better interface and by FAR the best user experience.
THANK YOU Mabula! I love the direction this software is headed and I'm excited to see it progress. Keep it up!!
Thank you very much for the compliment @cheetah, it's my pleasure 😉
I'm approaching this from the other direction as a long-standing PixInsight user I'm giving APP a trial.
I think it's more a mindset thing rather than one being better than the other. I've no doubt if I'd come straight to APP from DSS I'd have found it a breeze. However, having spent a few years getting to know PI, I found APP a struggle at first, mainly because it's so different (once I'd watched Sara's videos it made far more sense though). I'd say that PI is currently a far more powerful tool but it's a long and very steep learning curve, whereas APP is pretty straightforward and intuitive in contrast.
The key thing is that APP and PI are not versions of the same thing, they are totally different fish. APP is a self-contained application that encapsulates the workflow for the entire calibration and integration process. PI, on the other hand, is a library of image processing tools and very much relies on the user to provide the workflow. So far I haven't found APP to be significantly faster (in terms of CPU time) or much different in terms of the results. Where APP does win big time is in being far less tedious and does most of the thinking for you.
Personally, I like both APP and PI. I'd say that if you currently use one or other of them and it does what you need it to do there's probably no point in switching.
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@richbamford, thank you for sharing your feedback.
As the main APP developer, I am off course heavily biased 😉 but please, let me share what I envision with APP's development:
My purpose is to create a complete Deep Sky Image Processing application.
APP will be expanded with a lot more functions and feautures in due time while focusing on and maintaining as much ease of use for the user as I possibly can.
I aim to develop in a modular fashion and I want modules to have deep integration with other modules if needed/wished. This is what APP currently has and is. This makes it possible to be user-friendly and internally smart.
Furthermore, I intend to be strongly innovative in the astrophotography sphere, functions like Adaptive Airy Disc debayering, MBB & LNC and multiple-view mosaic registration are examples of this.
APP's development is relatively very young when compared to all other players out there, so I personally think that APP's performance and results are catching up really fast with the best out there, but that's my personal take off course.
Regarding post-processing, yes, APP still has little functions compared to others in this regard. This is because I think, a good deep sky image processing application is based on the fundamentals of data calibration, registration, normalization and integration. That is where the fun starts ;-).
So development up until now, has been largely focused on these modules. Since these modules have now matured greatly in APP's first year of existence, development will soon shift to focus more and more on adding new feautures for post-processing.
Finally, since APP was launched last year, many photographers and reviewers have tried to make a comparison with the best applications out there which is perfectly legitimate. One, from my point of perspective, argument for these comparisons has rarely been mentioned, which I think is vital to make a fair and reasonable comparison with an outlook into the future:
All applications to which APP has been compared since it's launch last year, have had 10+ years of development time more than APP.
But like I said, I am hugely biased off course...
Main goal with APP has been and will always be: to try to contribute to the enjoyment of astrophotography to users all around the globe 😉
Kind regards,
Mabula
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I am currently a Trial user of APP, and its giving me great results. Sequator does come close for single session processing, but multi session, APP rules.
I am hoping to get a good usable Duo Narrowband Filter workflow, and will make final call between Pixinsight and APP, though from what have seen, APP seems better and developers are friendlier and patient even with silly questions.
I came from Nebulosity - very manual but good results. I tried APP and PI about the same time, almost a year ago, with no previous experience on either and could see that PI was going to be tough slogging, a bit like Photoshop. My friend chose PI and I chose APP, and I'm totally happy with my choice. I believe applications should be autonomous as possible, do all the heavy lifting and make the right processing choices where possible too - I'm not one who likes to tweak - a good program should make my life easy, not complicated. APP has met my expectations. After time I may start tweaking... I just started to use the " % lights to stack" slider! Lol. Thanks for a great product!
