Improved internal memory configuration (lower ! memory usage), fixed beta45 startup issue, fixed Set Save Directory & 2-panel mosaics.
May 27 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta45 has been released !
Fully Multi-Threaded LNC, many improvements for the registration engine, platform upgrade, and further tuning of internal memory consumption and memory release back to OS.
Apr 14 2026: Google Pay, Apple Pay & WeChat Pay added as payment options
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.
What can I say? A big step forwards and a lovely Christmas present thanks Mabula and team. I am using some borrowed equipment at the moment and the camera was impacted by the invalid FITS header issue which 1.083B2 resolved, but it would throw the random registration errors.
B3 resolves the FITS header problem (Which my own camera never suffered from anyway) reliably registers data that B2 threw errors on, and it does seem snappy and faster to process. The new file saver module is very nice, and the star reducer/remover is a big step forward, at least on the subset of data I have had a play with it on.
Star reducer and processing time were greatly improved. File saver is much better.
What settings did you use with star reducer? I don't know if you can see the circles on the stars, they were not there before star reducer. I know I need to tweak it somehow!
You probably need to experiment as it will probably be different for every data set. I assume you are using reduce not remove there? I styarted with "Remove stars" and increased the "Correct star radius" bit by bit until I was reasonably happy (More or less all the litte background stars were nicely removed) then increased "Correct star halo" until I was happy with the rest, then I changed it to reduce instead of remove stars and the settings seem to carry over quite nicely.
My first reduction job I used 1.2 for the radius and 1.0 for reduce halo.
Love the star reduction thingy - works great in my tests both for reduction and for removal! For use with "star removal", would it also be possible to show the "stars only" output? Would make it easier to plop them back in after further processing.
What can I say? A big step forwards and a lovely Christmas present thanks Mabula and team. I am using some borrowed equipment at the moment and the camera was impacted by the invalid FITS header issue which 1.083B2 resolved, but it would throw the random registration errors.
B3 resolves the FITS header problem (Which my own camera never suffered from anyway) reliably registers data that B2 threw errors on, and it does seem snappy and faster to process. The new file saver module is very nice, and the star reducer/remover is a big step forward, at least on the subset of data I have had a play with it on.
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A big thumbs up from me.
Thank you very much for your feedback @the_bluester, and very happy that you like it!
Star reducer and processing time were greatly improved. File saver is much better.
What settings did you use with star reducer? I don't know if you can see the circles on the stars, they were not there before star reducer. I know I need to tweak it somehow!
Love the star reduction thingy - works great in my tests both for reduction and for removal! For use with "star removal", would it also be possible to show the "stars only" output? Would make it easier to plop them back in after further processing.
Yes, we will put it in the stable release that you can also get an image with only the stars and it's inverse as output, should not be difficult now to implement this.
Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention, I will check the issuewith the analytical graph immediately and will fix it.
The LNC calculation is really difficult to parralize, it is a big mathematical regression. But we might be able to make it multi-threaded going forward, that would help greatly for speed indeed! The LNC algorithm also needs an update in general now I think.
Edit: I think we can soon make LNC and multiple-view mosaic calculation multi-threaded đŸ˜‰ ! Our algebra library was updated with that capability recently ! So more speed increase coming soon đŸ˜‰
Mabula
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This post was modified 5 years ago by Mabula-Admin
Just downloaded beta 3 and tried the new star reducer tool. I'm new to AP so I'm trying to keep things simple. I kept default settings and just decreased star size and star intensity to 65% (I also cropped the new image a bit). I'll keep experimenting but the new star reducer tool seems to be much improved.
Image was shot with a 60mm refractor on a little AZGTi mount with 533mc and L-eXtreme filter. Here is the before and after.  Thank you Mabula! APP keeps getting better and better!
Just downloaded beta 3 and tried the new star reducer tool. I'm new to AP so I'm trying to keep things simple. I kept default settings and just decreased star size and star intensity to 65% (I also cropped the new image a bit). I'll keep experimenting but the new star reducer tool seems to be much improved.
Image was shot with a 60mm refractor on a little AZGTi mount with 533mc and L-eXtreme filter. Here is the before and after.  Thank you Mabula! APP keeps getting better and better!
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Hi Mark @markabbott, that looks great! Thanks for sharing and your feedback đŸ˜‰ that is highly appreciated.
I think for most data, simply reduce the size to about 50%, I keep the intensity at 100% normally, but yes, you can reduce that as well. But the brightest stars might look start to look a bit dull then I think, it is a matter of taste as well of course đŸ˜‰
And on most data, the correct star radius slider seems to give best results at about 1.0-1.2
Mabula
This post was modified 5 years ago by Mabula-Admin
Just to add, I can definitely see the performance improvements and a few other improvements that remove clicks. On the whole, a very good improvement.Â
Where is the bug, or what is the bug exactly ? From those screenshots all looks normal to me. I assume that you refer to the missing color in your nebula?
If so: on your second screenshot: you killed color saturation for data range 0 - 0,0163 with the sky background at 0,0049. So it is not strange that the nebula lost all color here, it will be just above the sky background so you need to lower the HIGH slider to preserve color in the nebula and kill color noise in the background at the same time đŸ˜‰
Just to add, I can definitely see the performance improvements and a few other improvements that remove clicks. On the whole, a very good improvement.Â
Excellent @turtlecat1000, glad it is noticable and that you like it ! Thank you very much for your feedback đŸ˜‰
Where is the bug, or what is the bug exactly ? From those screenshots all looks normal to me. I assume that you refer to the missing color in your nebula?
If so: on your second screenshot: you killed color saturation for data range 0 - 0,0163 with the sky background at 0,0049. So it is not strange that the nebula lost all color here, it will be just above the sky background so you need to lower the HIGH slider to preserve color in the nebula and kill color noise in the background at the same time đŸ˜‰
Let me know if this is clear.
Mabula
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Yes, I perfectly know what you are saying..
With the same setting for the background from 0 to 0.0163 in the 1.082, beta1 and beta2 everything works smoooth with no problem: no nebula color killed, just a bit over sky background that is mainly color noise background. Why doesn't this happen in the beta3 as well with exactly the same setting? I remember in one video where you were talking about color noise in the background, you adivsed to go 1-2% just above sky background with the high slider: so in my case this means 0.0163 more or less. That is the reason for this setting about upper sky background slider...
Hi Mabula, I get a white screen instead of an analytical graph which is quite annoying. I will have to go back to an older version until that is fixed.
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Cheers and you and your team have nice festivity days,
The effect of the Star Reducer appears to "spread" the star into the background. Looking at Before and After there are fewer stars yes, but the background appears a lighter shade of gray. Turning some of the stars into Noise.
So would another trip to the HSL Select Color tool for DeNoise be in order?
Within that tool, select All Colors, 0%-Background, and then Saturation -100%.
The effect of the Star Reducer appears to "spread" the star into the background. Looking at Before and After there are fewer stars yes, but the background appears a lighter shade of gray. Turning some of the stars into Noise.
So would another trip to the HSL Select Color tool for DeNoise be in order?
Within that tool, select All Colors, 0%-Background, and then Saturation -100%.
This is what I usually have been doing since the beginning I started using APP...before saviing in .tiff stretched and go to PS....
1.083beta3 seems pretty solid, no more star analysis registration problems and star reducer is working better for me. Â I have encountered a problem with a very star filled image of North American Nebula
1.083beta3 seems pretty solid, no more star analysis registration problems and star reducer is working better for me. Â I have encountered a problem with a very star filled image of North American Nebula
@mabula-admin I have uploaded North_American_Nebula-LHaRGB_1-crop-lpc-cbg.fits to the STAR-REDUCER-TESTING folder. Â I was able to star reduce a different version of this image where the Ha was toned down to much smaller weight.
