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.
Did I miss something or make a wrong setting?
My FITS data is all fine (Lights, Flats, Darkflats and Darks) I have checked this twice, after stacking and without an error I get this.
<see the added Pic>
Any idea what I could do about this?
hey thanks for any help
cs john
@joim Can you tell us what settings you used in tabs 3, 4, 5 and 6? Most importantly "scale start", "scale stop" and "registration mode" in tab 4 and "mode" in tab 5?
Hello Wouter
Thank You for your time, here are my settings and what else I had tried myself.
my setting: (and my experiments with)
tab 3:
always turned on, Star detection with 500, 2000,2500 and more
tab 4:
Pattern recognition descriptors: Quadrilaterals / Scale Start: 5 / Scale stop: 10
Registration mode: Mosaic On
Registration model: Projective On
and experiments with,
same camera and optics: On/Off
use dynamic distortion correction: On/Off
tab 5:
default setting and..
mode: regular / method: multiply-scale / Scale: BWMV
Neutralize Background: On/Off
tab 6:
Multi-Channel/Filter options: Integrate per channel
Multi-Session options: Integrate all
And all others on default setting
CS john
@joim For mosaics it is important to set "mode" in tab 5 to advanced. Can you try that and see if that helps?
…yep, that was the fault, I didn’t activate it, and was on regular mode. With the advanced mode Now all okay.
What I still need to improve is the overlap (approx. 25%) which is very visible and forms a darker stripe on both panels.
Thanks a lot for your help and time.
PS: one more question about openGL4, I see that my GPU is not addressed at all, and everything runs via the CPU. I have checked under dxdiag and my GPU supports openGL v4.5, which I also see the (vGL4) in the main screen of APP.
CS john
What I still need to improve is the overlap (approx. 25%) which is very visible and forms a darker stripe on both panels.
If you enable MBB (multi band blending) in tab 6 and increase to 10 or maybe even 15% then that should be much less visible.
one more question about openGL4, I see that my GPU is not addressed at all, and everything runs via the CPU. I have checked under dxdiag and my GPU supports openGL v4.5, which I also see the (vGL4) in the main screen of APP.
I'm sorry, what is the question exactly? Is the question perhaps "why isn't the GPU used"? To my best of knowledge, this isn't supported yet and will be in a future version of APP.
thank you for the feedback.
Yes, I have only set the MBB at 10%, I must set it higher at 15% or higher. I'm still testing that.
thanks for the input - I had read something about it, it's just confusing that APP shows this openGL4 (top left) and my graphics card is just sleeping and everything is done by the CPU. I'll wait for the next release.
CS john
The OpenGL used at the moment is mainly for the preview filter I believe, real GPU processing of data is something for a future version, but definitely high on our list.
