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.
Hi,
I know busy times, so, maybe someone can tell me if I should find other solutions?
When I am doing mosaics, APP seems to struggle with some things:
1. No 360 degree projection. APP fails to me when stitching 3 panels of 40mm fullframe already (see other thread a month ago)
2. Sensors get bigger and when I am doing mosaics with about >10 panels with a 36 megapixel sensor APP "tells" me here and there to "buy a new PC" 😏 since 32 gb RAM are not enough. With PTGUI that was not a problem more than 10 years ago.
3. The lightpollution tool is crucial, especially for mosaics. It would be good to be able to individually remove boxes and not only the latest ones set.
4. Memory of (last) working dir?
5. Time remaining is not correct. It is always at 28% when LNC starts
6. Improved response time in the forum?
just some spontaneous thoughts. APP's great strength is doing mosaics, yet there are these big downsides imo ...
regards,
stefan
Is there a reason why I only can upload files limited to 30 bytes?
Sorry for the delay!
1. Yes, it doesn't have full support for entire milky-way field of views yet. At least not in an easy way, I got it to work a bit with a lot of experimentation but a better solution should be in the works.
2. That probably depends a lot on how APP does the mosaic calculation, which is a lot more sophisticated. Improvements there are also in the works with GPU acceleration added to that as well.
3. Yep, good suggestion for @mabula-admin
4. On the list already and being worked on.
5. @mabula-admin can tell more about that
6. Yep, a 2 man business is tricky unfortunately, the success is sky rocketing and it doesn't help that I'm travelling a lot at the moment. We are going to improve this as soon as possible.
The downsides come with any new program that's not yet having all the features everyone wants, unfortunately that's simply a matter of time. The focus though is to make the things it does, best in class. Hence why it's already popular for mosaics and calibration in general.
