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,
I captured some 16-bit raw FITS with my ASI2600MC. So being at 26 megapixel camera, they are about 52 megabytes each. So far so good.
So I bring a few into APP's crop tool and crop off 400 pixels on the left and right, so about 14% and save as 16-bit Integer FITS. They exploded to 134 Megabytes each, I think they may be 6 bytes per pixel.
What am I doing wrong? I just want a 2-byte/pixel FIT that is cropped.
I'm able to capture cropped FITS in NINA and it doesn't cause the file to expand like this. The issue with NINA is that the cropping is limited to a % from all sides (ex: take of 10%), but I want to only crop the left and right due to severe vignetting in the very corners.
Did it debayer it?
OK, more information, it looks like cropping debayers the image. I cropped and saved it as a TIFF and it really looks debayered.
Can't I crop a RAW and keep it as RAW undebayered? I mean, I know you have to respect the bayer 2x2 matrix dimensions when cropping, but that just means respecting the bayer matrix by cropping by 2 pixel increments, but man... I really want to crop a RAW and keep it as a RAW, I think....
If I stack these now debayered images, do I lose anything? They are sometimes broadband RGB and sometimes dual narrowband and I want to stack as "Ha-Oiii extract Oiii", can I still do that? Can I still align the color planes in the calibration step? Do I lose anything?
Hi Steven @readyjetty,
Indeed, if you perform batch crop, the images will be debayered so they will go from mono CFA (Color Filter Array) data to 3-channel RGB data.
Integrating already debayered data has a downside yes, you will not be able use Bayer Drizzle for instance, or process the data with another demosaic algorithm.
I strongly advise you to only start cropping the data after having calibrated the data with your calibration masters. Otherwise you need to crop the calibration subs exactly like the lights !, you need to have the exact same crop offsets.
Now, luckily there is already a workaround for you in the current APP version 2.0.0-beta9, you can use the batch modify FITS metadata/CFA tool which does enable you to undebayer the data again 🙂 If your cropp offsets are an integer factor x 2 on top and left side, you need to use the same Bayer pattern as normal, otherwise, you need to use one of the others and it will be okay.
I have added to our issue list, to provide the option that you can batch crop OSC data while keeping the undebayered data 😉
Mabula
Wow, thanks for the help, this is wonderful. I do know I would have needed to crop the calibration frames the same way. When I capture NINA data with a crop, I use the same crop for Lights, Bias, and Flats and it works well.
I'll think about how to approach this as I do both RGB broadband and dual narrowband OSC (ha oiii) demosaic algorithms. Because I sometimes do several debayers on one data set, it would be nice to crop but still have undebayered data in some cases, but if strictly broadband RGB, it would be fine for me to do it in two steps.
So let me outline what I understand from you just to double check. For broadband data that I'll only be doing basic RGB debayering:
1) Save calibrated frames (I often do this to align color channels anyway)
2) Crop the calibrated frames
3) Stack the cropped and calibrated frames.
For dual narrowband (Ha Oiii) if I want several debayer types, I'm still a bit unclear. Here is a guess on what to do, but with low confidence:
1) Save calibrated frames with RGB debayering
2) Crop the calibrated frames by even multiples of 2 pixels to keep same debayer
3) Use your batch modify FITS metadata/CFA tool to undebayer
4) Now reload as raw FITS and use "Ha - Oiii, extract Ha" or any other dual band Ha/Oiii debayer as before
Yes, a debayer friendly crop for all of the frames (lights, darks, bias, flats) as part of the front end stages would be great! I use a camera that is a bit too big a sensor for my illuminated field, but I really only need to crop a bit off the width, this would be an excellent tool for me.
