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 experienced a strange thing, I captured two sessions, Ha and Sii in both.
- Session1: Ha flats and flatdarks were at 1 second, Sii flats and flatdarks were NOT at 1 second
- Session2: Both Ha and Sii flat and flatdarks were at 1 second
So I created a MasterDarkFlat from the data in Ha:session1 and Ha+Sii:session2 (flat darks), lets call it MDF1s.
Then I tried to make master flats. I loaded all the sessions and channels, and tried to assign MDF1s to Ha:session1, Ha:session2, Sii:session2. There is no way to assign MDF1s in one go, so I attempted to do that in two. First I assigned it to all channels in session2, and then I attempted to reload the same file, this time assigning it to Ha:Session1 only. This failed, and APP complained that Ha:Session1 had no MasterDarkFlat.Â
The only way I could make it work, is by making a copy of MDF1s, and assigning that copy to Ha:Session1.
Is this use-case interesting, or some strange corner case? Could APP support loading the same file twice with different designations for such scenarios?Â
Thanks!
