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.
Just installed APP and when running the registration module on my Red light frames it aborts and says "no lights available". Likewise if I want to run Analyze Stars for a particular color frame, same error is produced. As you can see from my screen capture all Red.Fits files are checked but are being rejected as lights. My processing is stuck at this point.
Also the .FITS header shows then as a calibrated-light frame.--Thanks
Hi @starcruiser,
Thank you for your question and welcome to the APP forum.
So you have saved all your frames calibrated in 2) Calibrate, right ?
These frames are put in your work directory and you can see them in the screenshot at the bottom as Other/Processed frames.
Â
To be able to process them now as lights, you will need to load them as lights after you have removed the lights that you have just calibrated.
Go to 1) Load, click at the bottom on clear
Now load your new calibrated frames as lights 😉
Then you can proceed with star analysis, registration etc...
Â
To be clear, there is no need for you normally to save the calibrated frames. APP will process your frames dynamically from calibration to integration in one go 😉
Â
I can also see that you are trying to process the calibrated red light frames, right ?
It's best to simply use the multi-channel mode for this, then there is no need to do this selection/deselection filter by filter.
All is explained and shown in this tutorial, together with data from Diego Colonnello:
Please let me know if that clarifies how to proceed and process your data in APP 😉
Kind regards,
Mabula
Hi Mabula,
Â
I am getting player error on the video tutorial so I cannot view that at the moment. Anyway after reloading the Red light frames I was able to get the Analyze Star and Register modules working so that works. Did try the Multi-channel processing but it prompts me still to choose one color at a time, will have to figure what wrong direction I made in there. Hopefully I can find a tutorial that is running. That is it for now.
Thanks,
Bill
Â
Â
Hi Mabula,
Â
I am getting player error on the video tutorial so I cannot view that at the moment. Anyway after reloading the Red light frames I was able to get the Analyze Star and Register modules working so that works. Did try the Multi-channel processing but it prompts me still to choose one color at a time, will have to figure what wrong direction I made in there. Hopefully I can find a tutorial that is running. That is it for now.
Thanks,
Bill
Â
Â
Hi Bill @starcruiser,
Thank you for the feedback.
If the vimeo videos don't work, it is very likely that this due to some plugin in your browser or browser setting, possibly related to surpressing movies or advertising... So please check that. I can gaurantee these videos work, they are being watched by dozens of people each day.
If you choose the multi-channel mode, you need to load the frame and calibration frame per channel/filter. After that, all goed automatically 😉
Kind regards,
Mabula
Hi Mabula,
Well I continued on with processing before reading your latest post. Succeeded creating the RGB files individually and saved them. Restarted APP and used the TOOLS module to combine RGB, loaded the respective colors and identified them as prompted. When I press "Calculate" it reports the files as being "incompatible"...well they were created via APP. Looked at the .FITS header and it shows them as CFAIMAGE=no. Not sure where things are going wrong without starting them all at the beginning in Multi-Channel/filter processing. Will wait for your response before proceeding down that road.  I always have problems with Vimeo, did find some tutorials on AstroDude's Youtubes which look helpful. Here is a screen cap of this problem.
BTW, they do load and combine into RGB fine within CCDStack.
Thanks,
Bill
Â
Hmm, I may have discovered the problem. Rechecked the RGB files and somehow Blue is no longer linear compared to RG. Not sure how it got a permanent stretch. Anyway, reprocessing Blue again to make sure it is linear before combine.
Got things working now. After fixing the non-linear Blue frame, I reloaded the RGB files back into APP, did a Star Analyze, Normalize and saved the Normalized files.  Reloaded the new Normalized RGB files back into the combine RGB Tool and this time they processed without error. Whew!
OK, everything working for now. Leaving my issues posted to help others as well.
Thanks,
Bill
Â
Â
