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.
I am having trouble registration of integrations from different sessions when I want to combine say narrowband with RGB, I'm not sure what I am doing wrong! If I use Dynamic Distortion Correction I get a very strange effect with huge distortion but apparently good registration. If I don't use Dynamic Distortion Correction the registration is not very good with the stars easily seen to not align, see attached pics. I have tried with and without same camera and optics, I have tried increasing the distortion margin to 0.01 and even 0.1, I have tried quadrilaterals and pentagons and so far I have not been able to resolve this!
I have seen this before and forgot what was the cause, aaah! 🙂 Are the frames all from the exact same camera?
Combining narrowband with RGB is a bit tricky at the moment (in the sense that we need to make that easier). What happens if you split the RGB channels and then go register all of them together?
@vincent-mod Thanks for the reply, yes, all frames are from the same lens and camera. It isn't specific to this lens, I have had the same issues with other lenses, but not all the time. I make sure I check what the registered frames look like before integration! Often if I get the strange distortion I simply disable the dynamic distortion correction and the registration works well, but in the case above it did not. Also in the case above I have split the RGB into individual channels, they register to each other fine but not to the Ha channel.
Would it help to increase the star count to get a better registration maybe?
@vincent-mod I had it set to 3000 stars at analyse stars in the above example, but I also tried 6000, this didn't seem to make any difference! Eventually I used a different version of the Ha data which would not normalize with the other data (as it was colour!) but it did register, so I saves the registered frames and used Photoshop to create various versions with Ha, RGB and UHC. I would still like to know why I get the huge distortion with the Dynamic Distortion Correction at times, this is not the only time!
So I asked Mabula about this and this kind of issue sometimes happens when the data doesn’t actually need to be corrected for distortion. Apparently the algorithm can then cause this.
@vincent-mod I usually check to see what the registered frames look like and disable the Dynamic Distortion Correction if the distortion becomes extreme. But in this case the registration was quite poor without it! Usually it isn't.
Mmm, that would likely be a data issue then. Something we might have a look at, Mabula is on a short holiday now so if you want more information on that, remind me in a week. 😉
