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 tried using the "Super Pixel" algorithm. I was expecting the integration result file to have a resolution of about half that of my original images, but it is about the same. I got a 3011x3014 output from 3008x3008 exposures.
I thought a block of 4 pixels would be converted to 1 pixel.
Have I misunderstood what Super Pixel does?
Be adviced that superpixel throws away possible valuable data, it's usually used to get a kind of preview on the data. Here's a snippet of the tooltip for it, it averages pixels before any de mosaic is performed :
I think it's better to try lowering the integrate scale (integrate tab, all the way down), if your goal is to simply downscale.
@vincent-mod Thanks for that. Jim
I tried Super Pixel again and it now produces a half width and half height image as you would expect.
...and now Super Pixel produces original sized images rather than half sized ones again!
Perhaps some other parameter overrides it?
...and now it's working again.
@jim Intriguing! What changed in between attempts? Did you choose different parameters? Did you restart APP? What version of APP are you using?
@jim Intriguing! What changed in between attempts? Did you choose different parameters? Did you restart APP? What version of APP are you using?
I had tried changing composition options (full, reference and crop) but that didn't seem to make any difference. I also tried restarting APP but that didn't help. However the following day, after a PC shutdown and restart, it worked again.Â
I'm on 2.0.0-beta2
Interesting indeed. You opted not to simply downscale then in the integrate tab?
Interesting indeed. You opted not to simply downscale then in the integrate tab?
Is that better than "Super Pixel" in any way?
If you want to downscale the image, then yes that would be better. Super pixel can throw away some of the data, which might impact a better registration of the data.
