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.
When you have multiple sessions to combine, I know APP has the ability to add previously stacked files to the Lights. This is what I normally do when I have multiple nights on one target. My question is this equal to adding the individual subs from each session and grouping them by the Session number and letting APP stack every sub at once? Or does one method give better results than the other?
Theoretically having individual subs is better, but when you integrate enough frames per sub-integration, it should work very well. You can always do a test for yourself of course, but I don't see big differences. Enough frames then means, at least 40-50, so APP can perform proper rejection etc. When people have 100's of frames, I always advice to divide such a set into 100-200 per integration. That will also speed up the result.
I just did a stack of three sessions of M33 Luminance data using individual subs. Previously I just stacked together the 3 stacked files and I was getting a even uneven background. Stacking the individual subs gave a much better result. My question now is that when adding the subs, APP will asking if they are from Session 1-5. Are we limited to stacking 5 sessions of individual subs at once? or is there a way to tell APP there is more than 5 sessions? Thank you for the info.
Ah yes, well there can be differences because the statistics for the background will be different compared to a lot of frames. However, you should be able to correct that background just fine with the light pollution tool.
No there isn't a limit, you can set it to a custom number. However, sessions are only meant for the case where you have different calibration files per set of data.
