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-beta46 release notes
- Improved Internal Memory configuration and improved performance as a consequence.
The latest beta's all had changes relating to memory controls, that means how much memory APP can use, how much memory it will reserve for usage and how much memory will be released back to the Operating System while processing. We have done more testing and beta46 probably has the final optimized configuration going forward for the 2.0 stable release. Beta46 will use quite a bit less memory than beta 43,44,45. It will compact it's memory usage now using the Shenandoah garbage collector from the OpenJDK development platform. The compact mode ensures that while APP receives memory allocations, APP will immediately clean things up and release the memory if possible. So instead of APP using a big part (30-70 %) of the computer's memory, beta46 will show much less usage and as a consequence, it will show better performance. Using more memory can actually be a drag on performance it turns out. We see several % performance improvement because of this change in several benchmarks.
All the optimizations that were implemented in the last year or so, gives APP a big performance boost and the old way of the memory controls that was used until beta39 became problematic. The memory could not be cleaned up in time because of the performance improvements, causing memory defragmentations and stalling of performance on big datasets. With Beta 46 this should definitely be a thing of the past and performance should continuously be good even on very big datasets.
- FIXED Set Save Directory
2.0.0-Beta45 had a regression bug where setting the Save Directory did not work as expected. This has been fixed. It was reported here: https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/community/windows/problem-setting-save-directory-in-app-2-0-0-beta-45/#post-34703
- FIXED 2.0.0-beta45 startup issue
Beta45 would not start on a computer that has less than 8 cpu threads. This has been fixed.
- FIXED ArrayIndexOutOfBounds Exception in SumSignalInCropWorkerÂ
As reported here https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/community/appreleases/beta-44-crashes-when-trying-to-register-existing-stacks/#post-34587 APP would throw an error in the SumSignalInCropWorker module if you try to normalize a multi-channel image with a monochrome reference image. This bug is a regression from previous optimizations and rewriting the normalization engine. It has now been properly fixed and you can normalize multi-banded images with a monochrome reference and vice versa.
- FIXED 2-panel mosaic works now in mosiac mode
As reported here https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/community/main-forum/2-panel-mosaic-error/#post-34674 it you would try to register a 2-panel mosaic in the mosaic mode, it would error with an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException. The data could still be registered though in normal mode. The mosaic mode works now as well.
