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.
For those images that need tons of boxes to remove tough gradients, it would be nice to have a “hide boxes” button so we could see our progress more clearly, by temporarily hiding the boxes.
Thanks!
Jeff
Hi Jeff @jeffreyhorne,
How many area select boxes are you placing then? Even with very difficult images, you want to keep the number of area select boxes minimized, and homogenously spread over the image if possible. That will normally give you the best corrections. Placing the image full with correction boxes is dangerous even, because it will be easier to surpress signals that you want to preserve.
It would not be difficult to implement your request, but I am a bit hesitant to do so since it should not really be needed I think. I have never had a problem with this and the tool can correct very difficult images with some experience in this regard.
Maybe you can show us a screenshot of what you are doing and how many boxes you think you need to place? Maybe we can give you some pointers on do and don't when it comes to Light Pollution/gradient removal.
Mabula
@mabula-admin Hi Mabula! I've still been thinking about this. I often use lots of boxes with great results. I live in a Bortle 8-9, and I image over many nights for one target (often times 15-20 nights). My gradients can definitely get out of control, but I've been able to use APP's LPR tool to great effect using quite a few boxes.
I tried Graxpert (a tool that's not unlike APP's LPR tool) last night, and though I didn't like it quite as much as APP's LPR tool, I really do love being able to hide the selection boxes at will, so I can really see the faint nebulosity in the image as I'm placing boxes and running multiple preview iterations to get my boxes just right.
I'd just like to make another mention of this, as I think it would be a pretty valuable addition to APP.
Thanks again for your consideration on this!
Jeff
I would like to see a "load and save" for the boxes. That would be a huge help to remove the gradients from the different filters.
Thanks, Robert
