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.
Just noticed that this is the right place to make feature requests. I note that I can only choose between sRGB (v2 and v4) and Adobe RGB when I save out my processed imaged from APP. It would be so great if users can be allowed to save out images in any colour profile of their choice, which can be loaded from the profiles directory of whatever OS one is using. Most raw conversion software support this, and PixInsight has more choices too. My primary motivation is that in many wide-field and also deep sky astro images, the subject's dynamic range is huge; there are a lot of stars that are very bright and near or at clipping. The additional gamut headroom of larger colour spaces is good to help prevent clipping of these colours, which can then be later compressed in a pleasing way into a smaller output space, for printing let's say, or sRGB for the web. But if these colours are hard clipped at an early stage, they will be lost forever and may not look as good as one might like. There may be other reasons to use colour spaces other than sRGB or Adobe RGB, maybe DCI P3 space if you are on MacOS (Instagram supports it now from iOS devices I gather) or if one is creating HDR images that are in Rec2020 colour space for HDR displays/TV, etc.
