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've been messing around with the star reduction tool this evening on my Veil data and the results are quite disappointing. Though it doesn't help that I get no tooltips on anything in the Star Reduction window. The box says to check there for tooltips but then never changes and not amount of hovering or clicking will get anything to come up. Anyone else having this issue with the latest release? 1.083, Win 10 64bit
Since I don't have or use Photoshop, I'm thinking about downloading Starnet++ and zipping that through to see what it does, but so far I haven't been terribly impressed with the Star Reduction tool's ability to reasonably remove or reduce even minuscule stars without adversely effects to the image. In my recent attempts on Rosette and clicking the remove stars button, it didn't even phase any of the medium stars at all.
I tried to attach the fits files from APP but I got some red popups telling me the file type was not allowed, using Firefox.
For the tool to work nicely, the data itself is also important. The better that is, the better the tool works, this is the case for other software as well though starnet does have nice results as well for tricky data. Our tool is still in its first real version, so that will improve over time of course. If you want me to have a quick look you can upload your files to our server, check the details on the top right of the forum. Give your directory a good name like "nickoson-2-starReducer".
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@nickoson-2 Actually there is a tool tip. If you hover your mouse over the "Check the tooltip here for instructions on all sliders." text you'll get a tool tip:
Yeah, I get no such tooltips anywhere for that tool, as if its broken. Like I said, no amount of hovering or click on anything generates any tooltips for this feature. I get tooltips for the other regular stuff, but not in this tool.
I uploaded those files if you want to have a go.
Anyone else having this issue with the latest release? 1.083, Win 10 64bit
Are you sure you're using the latest version? For Windows, that should be 1.083.3, not 1.083.
