June 24 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta46 has been released !
Improved internal memory configuration (lower ! memory usage), fixed beta45 startup issue, fixed Set Save Directory & 2-panel mosaics.
May 27 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta45 has been released !
Fully Multi-Threaded LNC, many improvements for the registration engine, platform upgrade, and further tuning of internal memory consumption and memory release back to OS.
Apr 14 2026: Google Pay, Apple Pay & WeChat Pay added as payment options
Update on the 2.0.0 release & the full manual
We are getting close to the 2.0.0 stable release and the full manual. The manual will soon become available on the website and also in PDF format. Both versions will be identical and once released, will start to follow the APP release cycle and thus will stay up-to-date to the latest APP version.
Once 2.0.0 is released, the price for APP will increase. Owner's license holders will not need to pay an upgrade fee to use 2.0.0, neither do Renter's license holders.
I took a set of images last night and initially processed them in APP. During that I came across a problem in processing and something seemingly surprising post processing. I took the normal Lights, then Darks, Bias, Flats and Dark Flats and put them into processing. When I entered the Dark Flats I was told 'That this file type is not supported, or they are locked by another process' the files were Fits images and they were not in use by any other process. Is there a reason for this.
The second thing was that post processing the image as good, with bright colours and sharp stars. I then ran the whole process again through another software package, and to my surprise the stars showed star trails which was not the case in APP. I did not use the tools in AAP except to clean up the background, nothing else. Is there anything in standard APP processing that does a star analysis and cleans this sort of thing up.
I currently am running a trial of APP so the answer to this would be very helpful.
Those are some interesting results indeed. To me it sounds like you had the files open in another package and even though you closed it, there was still something blocking access to them. That's what I'm suspecting.
The second issue is also very strange, are you sure you loaded the exact same file in the other application? If so, did you properly save the stretched result in APP with the save button on the right?
@vincent-mod Many thanks for the reply, I haven't solved the problem with locked files. They were not open in anything else, I have rebooted the Mac a couple of time since and as of this morning it still would not take them. Does APP read the FITS header, could that be the problem?
Ok the other part, I have resolved that. It was to do with dithering, I had to reprocess the images but create drizzle data and reopen them as registered images. After I did that they were sharp
Strange, yes APP reads the fits headers. Maybe the files are corrupt? Are you using an external drive or maybe a location in the filesystem that APP can't access? For external drivers, only SSD's are adviced as you can get weird results otherwise. Try moving the files to a location that you know is accessible.
@vincent-modIt may be, which is why I asked if it reads the Fits headers, is that I mistakenly saved saved the files as Lights when I created them, and I renamed the files post that
