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.
Forgive me if this was answered before, I did do some searching but couldn't locate a answer.
QHY600mm and trying to see why Flats are causing poor normalization. With a 6200mm, same process and works great. Using NINA to save as .fits files.
Bias with 10% stretch. .001 second images.
Dark with 10% stretch. 60 second images.
Flat red filter with no stretch on it. sky flat and flat panel both same results. this is .5 second images with 30% histogram when taken.
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Raw image with 15% stretch and dark skies with very little vignetting.
Normalized image with 15% stretch and flats applied. Vignetting worse.
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If we remove the flats and just use MB, MD, BPM, they look good, but we need flats to work due to dust sections. Am I doing something bad here?
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As a follow up, we tried more aggressive flats, upwards of 60-70%. It's not clipping the flats anywhere.
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aggressive flats with 65% histogram range.
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Raw subs look pretty good without flats applied, dark skies help.
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but after applying flats, we get this.
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Any further data I am happy to provide. I'm thinking this really should be minor variation between the RAW and normalized with dust removed using the flats.
Hi Josh @jjones,
Thank you very much for posting your question. Please accept my aplogies for not replying sooner.
Did you find an explanation in the meantime for the bad flat-field correction or is this still unanswered? If unanswered, did you check that the MasterDark and MasterBias are compatible with both the lights and the flats in terms of sensor gain and offset? How about temperature and exposure time?
If you need me to look at your data, please let me know and I will provide upload instructions.
Mabula
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I honestly could never get it to work with this specific set of gain/offset on the camera. It's a QHY at gain 26 and we eventually opted to move it down to gain 25 and retake some and the worked much better. Not sure if it was camera Mode change or what. I think we are good now moving forward, appreciate the follow up.
Hi Josh @jjones,
Okay, you are most welcome, it sounds a bit like something was off in terms of compatibility between the lights, flats and the other calibration frames. If you do have more issues, let me know and I can look at the data for you 😉Â
Mabula
