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 like that APP has improved my processing workflow immensely (I don't need a degree in astrophysics or imaging to use!) - but user interface design is an important aspect not to be overlooked in usability and think there could be improvements. In a future V2.0 release, I would like to see the interface improved:
- A huge help is the navigated approach: Step 1) Load, Step 2) Calibrate... Step 6) Integrate - but I think moving this to flow from Left to Right along the top and full width of the screen will enhance this feature.
- Along with the navigated panels along the top of the screen, each panel should be context sensitive.
- Currently most of the up front effort is done using a small portion of the screen - the loading of images, adjusting of calibration, etc. The rest of the screen estate is wasted. The result is that important information might be compromised to fit into a small window. By using a context sensitive panel, so that loading files will show feature related to loading files, presented in a more user-friendly way. Or Calibration may give a better workflow if the whole screen can be used instead of squashed over to the left.
- Image editing window that is always displayed on the right is painful! It has letters representing important sliders, and it takes a good few scans of the interface, or "trying sliders" to work out what they do. It's also unclear whether a label belongs to slider above or below because the spacing is equal. ST? BA? If you had more screen to work with, these would be so cryptic and much more user-friendly.
Kev
I  also agree with the second point. The shortcuts are often confusing and the scale of the sliders should be from 0-100.
CS Gernot
This is the RFC section of the forum, a request for change. We of course always read those, but we sometimes have to pick and choose with answering questions versus requests etc. Due to busy schedules, sometimes it happens all at once. Sorry for that. In many cases for the RFC section, I can't really help either, just respond with the fact these are (as per usual in this community) great requests and we're taking them along.
