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 just purchased APP earlier today and find myself failing on step 1. Upon loading an image file of any kind (FITS, Raw, or JPG), the image window shows the image as a 2x2 set of quadrants. The real image is in the lower-right quadrant. The upper-right quadrant is vertical lines, the lower-left is horizontal lines, and the upper-left is blank. I must be doing something embarrassingly stupid, but all my searching for the proper setting to correct this has been fruitless. I can't find any help in the video tutorials either. Has anyone else seen something like this and can help get me on the right track? Many thanks from this baffled new user!
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Out of curiosity, I downloaded APP onto my laptop. It behaves as expected! No odd tiled versions of any images I load. So the issue seems to be related to something on my desktop (where I do all my astrophoto processing, of course). But what? A third party library perhaps? Again, any help or insight would be greatly appreciated.
The issue is OpenGL3. You can see APP is using that on top of the screen. I was under the impression this was fixed as well (we had quite the trouble bug fixing OpenGL3 as the developers of OpenGL had to step in). But, you should have a look if you can upgrade that to OpenGL4, sometimes this is a setting for your graphics card. GL3 is quite old now and the cause of some of these issues.
That's it! By clicking on the openGL3 button and reverting to CPU rendering, the problem goes away (see screenshot). How brilliant is that button in the upper-left corner that both displays your graphics accelerator and allows you to easily disable it? My desktop is 9 years old, uses Intel integrated graphics, and has the latest display drivers, but does not support openGL4 and is obviously now outdated. This could be a good excuse for a computing upgrade! Until then, I'll continue to revert to CPU rendering. Many thanks for pointing me in the right direction. 😀
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