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 would love to see a comet stacking mode in APP. Both stacking the comet itself with allowing the background stars to move, and for stacking both stars and a comet to have a fixed star field with the comet in it.
Yes, it's in the planning but for a later version. Top priorities now are HDR, noise reduction, saving settings and such.
Sure would be a much welcomed addition
Agree, would be such a welcome addition with Neowise in the sky now... 🙂
Has anyone figured out an alternative method of comet stacking on a Mac? I have 55 Neowise subs that I'm itching to stack and it is not proving to be easy.
Yes, now I have Neowise images to stack! 🙂
Yes, absolutely great time to implement it now, yesterday!
how else to proceed? Register in pixinsight with comet alignment process and load these into APP and then step 4 "no registration"?
Align / register for the comet in another program (DSS or PI), then save the registered files and stack in APP without registration... is this working?
PixInsight produces XISF files which APP cannot read. I am not sure if you can tell PI to save the images in, say, TIFF format but if you find out how to do that then you should be able to load them into APP for further processing.
On the other hand, this comet doesn't seem to move very quickly so why not give it a try and see if you get a blurry comet or not? This is what I get with 12 images of 10 sec each using a Canon DSLR camera and a 135 mm lens. Not a perfect image, mostly due to the light pollution and the house in the foreground, but the comet seems sharp enough to me.
sure you can do that, here 30 times 60 sec with 135mm, lots of bg reduction
still, best would be to register on comet and stars seperately
I was wondering if a planetary stacking software like registax could do it....
You can do a comet stacking in PI and save it as fits, which APP can read. You can use APP for calibration purposes of the single frames and save those. Then use PI for comet alignment and APP again for its nice light pollution correction tools. As long as you keep it in a fits format or something else APP can read.
