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 am testing APP (just got my trial license) and every step of the pre-processing (from analysis to integration) takes forever
I have a quite fast MacBook air and all these processes take no time when I use other software such as Pixinsight. I also do stacking sometimes with my windows computer using DSS and the whole process takes 1 or 2 minutes at the most.
The other problem I noticed with APP is the time it takes for an image to refresh in the screen every time a change is made, sometimes is 30 seconds
I managed to complete the stacking of 1 image of only 27 subs and it took me almost 45 minutes.Â
Then when the stacked image is ready, the post-processing controls are quite challenging. Very minimal changes produce huge alterations and then the image takes time to reload
In general. I think the very detailed integration gives good results, but at the expense of a painful and long/time consuming process
I would appreciate some feedback on whether this issue will be resolved in the near future. what is been done and/or any suggestions from other users
Thank you
Alicia Rossiter
What version are you using? If you download the latest beta, you may get better results already. Is your Macbook M1 based? Because that will also make a difference in the beta. You can download it via the links on top of this forum, make sure to choose the correct one (M1 for M1 based CPU's and X86 for Intel).
Besides all that, the speed will depend on settings you have set and also what kind of algorithms APP is using, APP can do very nice calibration which makes mosaics an almost automatic experience, but the algorithm for calibration are more complex to make this possible and can be slower.
Thank you very much for the info, very helpful
I downloaded the beta version for my MacBook M1. It does seem to be a little bit faster. However, I had to force quit every program running in the background because of warning messages of lack of memory. This is new, I usually have several applications open (including PixInsight + Photoshop ) and never ran out of memory.
I still think APP is a good tool for stacking but the memory requirements and the speed need improvement
Thank you
There must be a problem with your system or configuration. Â I run APP on an M1 Mac Studio and it absolutely rips through integrations. Â I stacked 2 nights of Andromeda, 200 lights with master flats/dark flats/darks and bias frames in 25 minutes. All 20 M1 cores maxed out the full time, no memory pressure at all.Â
