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.
Astro Pixel Processor 2.0.0-beta43 release notes
- IMPROVED INTERNAL MEMORY CONTROLS / FASTER AND MORE STABLE ON BIG DATASETS
As reported here : https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/community/main-forum/randomly-stopping-freezing-during-integrations/#post-34236 APP could stall/slow down or even freeze when processing big to very big datasets (500+ frames). The lastest APP releases have many code optimizations making it quite a bit faster, but the memory clean up internally was not able to keep up with all the GigaBytes of data that were processed. The old memory controls internally were fragmentating the memory causing these instability issues now and more quickly as well. Luckily, we are able to prevent this fragmentation completely by using a very different memory configuration internally. Technically, we have switched APP from using java's default G1 garbage collector with many G1 tweaks to using the more advanced Z garbage collector. This proves to be much better for data throughput and stability. Processing big datasets should not slow down APP at all anymore after having done several 100s of frames in integration.
- FIXED CPU IMAGE VIEWER
Beta42 introduced a regression bug in the CPU image viewer, so it no longer worked. This is fixed.
- FIXED NARROWBAND EXTRACTION DEMOSAIC ALGORITHMS
Beta40, 41 and beta42 had several bugs for Multi-Narrowband and also Narrowband processing using OSC / RGB camera's. These are all fixed now. These bugs were regressions from introducting the new resample and drizzle engines in beta40. These new engines are quite a bit faster and now should be bug free as well.
