Mar 28 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta40 will be released in 7 days.
It did take a long time to have the work finished on this and it will have a major performance boost of 30-50% over 2.0.0-beta39 from calibration to integration. We extensively optimized many critical parts of APP. All has been tested to guarantee correct optimizations. Drizzle and image resampling is much faster for instance, those modules have been completely rewritten. Much less memory usage. LNC 2.0 will be released which works much better and faster than LNC in it's current state. And more, all will be added to the release notes in the coming weeks...
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.
Hi Mabula
Do you have anything that can reduce star sizes?
I've tried many PI scripts and PS techniques. Its not easy and would love for an easy/clean way to do it.
Either reduce dramatically (like removing all stars below a certain size) or completely remove and only leave nebulosity.
Hi Joelin02,
APP has a a preview stretch setting that will reduce the size of your stars by reducing the stretch strength in the highlights. It's the HL slider on the right.
But besides that, currently, APP has no tool yet to reduce star sizes or even remove complete stars, it's a tool which I can put on my working list though 😉
Maybe you can show me an image on which you would like this to be performed?
Kind regards,
Mabula
I can reduce the size of the stars using the HL slider but the star map is not changed.
Also, it is possible to save the star map? The save button does not do anything when the star map is open.
Hi @yatsze,
Welcome to the APP forum 😉
The star map is calculated on the original linear data, not on the preview data that you see on your screen. Your screen shows the original linear data with the preview filter settings applied.
At the moment, you can't save the starmap, it's an image with only 0 and 255 values, so it isn't suited to use as a mask either. I will work however on the possibility of making a starmap mask which you will be able to use in the preview filter to perform a masked stretch. I think you are looking for that function, right? Or is it another function that you need/want?
Kind regards,
Mabula
Yes, would be great to have a masked stretch, when will be it available, will be happy to try it out.
I have some other feature requests to be implemented first, so this one could take a bit longer. It will come for sure, but it's very hard to give a clear timeline at the moment for this feature.
Kind regards,
Mabula
