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.
Hello everyone, after installing Beta2 on a Windows 11 laptop, I noticed the following:
If you want to change the working directory, or just want to add the lights, darks, etc., the system hangs again and again for about 60-90s. Jumping around in the file browser is therefore a real game of patience. Downgrading to the latest 1.083.4 fixes the problem.
Has this happened to anyone else?
I remember this to have been an issue before, but can't remember quite what caused that. Are the directories you're looking in local or network based, or maybe usb connected? Are you using any virus scanner that might interfere somehow?
Hello, I only use local drives in APP. Network drives (NAS) are also connected, but are not used in the APP. The pauses come as soon as I want to change a directory in the browser or I want to integrate files before the browser even appears. Sometimes 2-3 directory changes go without a break, but most of the time APP seems to stand still for the 60-90s. USB drive is not connected. Virus scanner is only the Windows Defender active in Windows 11, but has not reported anything. After downgrading to the last release everything is fine again.
@passerati Hi André. What does "local" mean in this case? Are those internal drives or HDD connected via a USB cable? In case of the latter, does the issue go away if you copy the data to the internal drive?
Hello, they are all internal drives. Internal NVMe/SSD in the laptop.
Laoptop is a Lenovo Legion S7i with i9-10980HK, 32GB Ram, 1x1 TB SSD, 1x512 GB SSD, RTX2060, 4K display. No USB or network drives where the data is located. APP is normally installed on C:\Program... and sometimes for testing on D:\App\... Also tried with the highest privileges and started as admin. Unfortunately without success. Only with the official version does it always work as before.
It could be that APP is still trying to display the NAS directories, I remember that this was an issue for someone else. Are these always available? If not, enabling those may solve the delay. If it indeed is a beta issue, we will investigate that.
Hello and thanks for the answer. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter whether the NAS is on or off. Just tested again. When the file explorer is open, I can sometimes click through the directories a few times if I'm lucky. Then the breaks come again.
Strange, not sure if this is a big hassle, but removing the nas drives from the system, does that help? I did notify Mabula, might still be something we need to tackle.
I made another attempt and installed APP Beta on my observatory computer. There were no breaks here. The same NAS drives are integrated on this one as on my other computer. I then started APP Beta again on my main computer and lo and behold, no more breaks in the file browser. Possible cause: on my main computer I have integrated an additional network drive in addition to the NAS drives, namely a shared folder on the observatory computer, which is otherwise always switched off. Now during the test he was reachable. Maybe that's because of it. But strange that it didn't cause any problems up to 1.083.4.
There were a few changes I believe in that part, so that might have had an influence, but indeed that must be the issue. APP's dialog is trying to reach these destinations and if they are not available, while APP can't tell they are not, it may cause this. I'm not sure we can easily fix this at the moment, but we are trying to use a different file dialog in a future version which may solve this as well.
Same problem with the beta 3. If some network drives are not accessible (switched off), the file browser gets stuck in the APP. Sometimes it goes on, most of the time the system hangs immediately when you change the directory. In the version up to 1.083.4 that never bothered me.
