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’ve been enjoying APP and it has significantly improved my images. I’ve been really impressed with the OSC with a narrowband filter that others have done, but have struggled to get good images using the HOO, SHO... templates.
There are two challenges I run into. The first one is the walk-throughs are done by multiple users with different (older) versions of APP. Each user seems to have his or her own workflow. When users post these, they don’t fully understand the options and can’t explain the differences and workflows that could be taken. And I know this hobby is an art, and there is no one approach, but I would like to see your walk-throughs updated. It would be great if you would create a channel on YouTube for them.
The next challenge I find is when you use the combine RGB tool, the colour adjustments need to be tweaked to get a reasonable image. It would be great if the sliders would be at approx levels. Instead they are at 0 or 100. I find it very challenging to figure out the multipliers and the colour levels to get it anywhere close to looking good. It would be very helpful when you pick a template like SHO that the colours and multipliers levels would be preconfigured and could be tweaked afterwards. Maybe this isn’t as easy as it sounds?
Thanks for all of your hard work.
Yes we need to update these tutorials indeed and the tools themselves could use an update as well, which we do have on the todo-list, other priorities are there now though like mentioned here; https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/community/release-information/astro-pixel-processor-1-083-preparing-next-release/
The presets usually do work ok though, many times it'll depend on the input data to get a good result out of the box and then requires some tweaking of the preset values. Not exactly sure what you mean with the slider being at either 0 or 100, you can change those to any value in between, of course the values set will depend on the other sliders.
Thanks for the reply. What I mean by the 0-100 sliders, is that when you pick a template like HOO from tab 0. You then feed in different channels. If you pick Ha, O3, or a colour, APP applies a colour to the channel. Each colour has 4 sliders and these are the adjustments I struggle with.
It would be these I would like to have some ballpark defaults preconfigured.
Thanks!
Ah, well there are a few presets in there, but the problem with narrowband data is that there is no real good color to begin with. The presets are a starting point basically, what comes out is what the user wants and will differ to the taste of each person. We could add a few more of course, but that may also introduce a bit of cluttering maybe.
