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 I try to use either star reduction or star removal I get results that are weird and unusable. Any idea what's going on here? I've attached the initial image, one with star reduction, and then one with star removal.
Â
Initial image
 Reduction
Removal
I have the same issue....
Yes, this can happen apparently, I know Mabula knows about it and is likely solving that while we speak.
@vincent-mod awesome! I know this will likely give a better reduced star result than the action I set in Photoshop for it (mine accidentally denoises the image too, and does more than I like) and be way faster than using Starnet++ stand alone to remove stars.
My problem is not as a severe, mostly around the outer part of the frame. The reduction is really quite impressive and aesthetically pleasing.
Â
This is a game changer as it is pretty much one-click with great results.
Hello: The tool has worked for me using these parameters, only with these when varying some the result did not work.
Wow - nice results. I'll give your parameters a try and let folks know what happens. This is about the amount of reduction I am looking for.Â
Carlesa25's  parameters worked for me without the blacked out areas I had earlier. Here are before and after portions of the frame to show the effect. The full frame was clear of artifacts. Note - these are not fully stretched as I prefer to do that in Photoshop. Star reduction this early in the workflow makes things much easier and much better quality.Â
Â
Oops - here is the before.
Â
yep I had the same issue then reduced the area radius which made a massive difference.
Thanks for posting the settings to overcome the peculiarities with the SR tool. It works most of the time for me but occasionally the tool gets into a state where the save stars and cancel buttons do nothing and APP has to be closed and restarted. I will endeavour to reproduce this as it generated and error last time it happened but the error window disappeared too fast to note it down. If there's an error log stored anywhere please let me know so I can look into it?
Â
CS,
Â
Andy
Yes, the tool is definitely in a beta phase still. My expectation is that this will work a lot better in the upcoming release, at least Mabula is working on improving it.
@vincent-mod thanks Vincent, I have managed to get some decent results from the tool and appreciate it's still in Beta. I will endeavour to reproduce the problem and report the error back here.
Â
Clear skies,
Â
Andy
