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 starting a new project and there were several frames above 500 in Quality Score. Â Somewhere in the process this score dropped to where most of the frames are in the mid to high 100's, with only a handful in the 200's.
Would this place any suspicion on my calibration frames or do the Quality Scores naturally drop?
The quality score does change the further you are in processing. The more APP knows about the data, changes in quality scores can occur. Not necessarily something to worry about if the result looks good.
Thank you for your reply.
The results were half way decent but not exceptional. Â It may be that the lights themselves were not exceptional so the calibration frames didn't bring the quality of actual pictures down.
I was just wondering if the ratio of quality score drop was considerable it was an indication that the calibration frames were inferior.
I have observed the quality score dropping every time I've taken pictures, but none this steep. Â As I said, the actual pictures didn't suffer that greatly.
I'm always looking for indicators that give warnings that something is not right.
Mm, well if it changes way more than what you regularly see, it might be that the data is somehow "worse" than before. What the reason for that would be is sometimes difficult to see, do your stars look exactly the same when compared to a frame of a good quality run for instance?
Always good to have a good look at these things for sure, you may catch something earlier or even improve your workflow because of that.
