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.
Hey
Myself and a good friend are looking to mosaic the whole of the Orion region over the next year or so. We have multiple set ups from F2 widefield to F5.
My main question is how to deal with M42 - that would need HDR exposures unlike the rest of it. 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 60 seconds subs, for example.
Would it be a case of just using APP to create the mosaic at one equal sub-length (say 2 min subs on all systems stacked and aligned in APP) and then manually/separately stack the shorter subs for the M42 region and layer those on top in pixinisight?
Any advice appreciated!
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If you have Photoshop I have found that doing multiple exposures over the whole set with your short exposure ones maybe only having 20 or 30 exposures each then doing each as a full mosaic, then using Photoshop to do an HDR blend will work. So, basically do your full mosaic with the full length subs as you wanted to, then add in maybe a 20x 60s full mosaic, a 20x 30s full mosaic, and a 20x 15s full mosaic, and then blend them all as an HDR.
I would advise you to simply make the mosaic in our recommended way. First make mosaic panels by integrating the data per panel to single integrations. Then register those integrations as a mosaic.
The mosaic panel that has M42 simply can be created by combining all the subs of the different exposures into 1 integration. Make sure that you add enough short exposures to not have a burnt-out M42 core. That should work 😉
Mabula
