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.
This is driving me nuts. I've spent a whole day on this. I have LRGBHa frames in lights, flats, darks, flat darks. I'm getting plus signs instead of stars for my calibrated images. What am I doing wrong? I'm using default settings all round and I have the correct frames assigned to the correct filter channel.
That is extremely weird, I've never seen that before. And now, whenever I type that, I do want to check if you're using a FAT32 filesystem where your work directory is located. I don't think that will cause this, but it does cause super strange things, this is because FAT32 has a limit on the file-sizes.
If that's not the reason, something very strange is happening with the calibration data. What happens when you leave out all your calibration data and just stack the lights?
Definitely NTFS. And definitely a calibration problem because the lights on their own stack quite well. Could it be something to do with the fact that the fits header says that the exposure is zero? The actual flats exposure was less than a second and reported as zero. And APP says the ISO is zero. So maybe the flats and dark flats are not matching properly or something.
Yeah there is something really off there, Mabula also has never seen this so we are very interested in the data. Would you be able to upload some calibration frames and lights to our server? Login/password is: appuser
Please create a directory in there called "ddnum-plussigns" and upload in there. Thanks a lot! We will get to the bottom of this.
