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.
It is my understanding that stacking reduces noise and enhances signal. Does mosaic mode do the same? Or is mosaic mode just about alignment? I ask because I have sessions with more 60% overlap and would like to take advantage of signal to noise enhancement. If I process each session and then load the final products into mosaic mode will the mosaic image processing take advantage of stacking overlap regions to reduce noise? Also - do people load final products of individual sessions as un-stretched or stretched FITS files? Thank you!
@tak It depends 🙂 If you load all raw subs of a mosaic and integrate them all together in mosaic mode, APP will integrate the subs of each panel. If you integrate the panels first and then load them to create a mosaic, APP will have applied stacking on each individual panel.
It sounds like I can only take advantage of stacking once. In this case I have a question about integrating my overlapping frames together. When I try to pick a reference frame I receive an error telling me I must star analyze first but I have already completed the analyze stars step. I can not get past this. A person wrote about a similar problem in this forum but they were using a mono camera and I did not understand the suggested work around. I am using a ZWO 294MC Pro. Thank you.
It sounds like I can only take advantage of stacking once.
Well, stacking only works if there is overlap, which is the case when processing the raw images. In general a mosaic will have frames with at most about 20% so there stacking won't help much. But when creating the mosaic, APP will reduce the noise there where the images overlap. For what it is worth, this is the case for all image stacking applications because they all need many images for the same area of the sky to be able to reduce noise.
When I try to pick a reference frame I receive an error telling me I must star analyze first but I have already completed the analyze stars step.
APP will choose a reference frame for you so there is no need to select one yourself. The simplest way of processing the images is to load all in tab 1 into one session and then to go straight to tab 6 and hit the integrate button. APP will sort it all out for you and will perform all intermediate steps automatically. Can you confirm that that works for your raw images?
Does it automatically choose the correct reference frame? Two sessions may have frame with no overlap but a third session has overlap with both. Will APP automatically pick the third session for the master registration frame?
@tak APP chooses a reference frame based on star shapes and background levels, to name a few. It doesn't necessarily choose one that all others have overlap with.
In case some frames don't have overlap with each other then you'll need to process in mosaic mode.Â
Thank you for your help Wouter.
