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.
When I try to use the light pollution tool, it begins by neutralising the background of the image, so I can no longer see the light pollution! This is before I have drawn the boxes. What am I doing wrong? This did not use to happen for me.
Then you likely already have a very nice background. You probably can still get it to show up by stretching more, try a stretch preset (on the right under the DDP checkbox) for 30%.
You don't understand. Immediately after integration the pollution was clearly visible. When I selected the tool, without drawing any boxes or telling it to calculate, it was not visible, and nor were most stars. it looked like an unstretched image.
That seems like a data issue then. I may have to have a look at it, can you show a before and after screenshot?
Unfortunately I did not take screenshots. I was able to process the problem image by putting it back into APP. It was made from 30GB of input data, so processing used up most of the available storage.
I have run APP with different data and the problem did not occur again.
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