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 all,
Happy new year!
I started using APP a few months ago and am very happy with it! I still have a LOT to learn in using it but basic stacking now works very well for me. Thanks for this great piece of software!!!
However, I have a request. I recently purchased an ASI1600MM-C Pro camera and filter wheel and I am doing LRGB imaging with it. In order to create a colour image, I do separate integrations of L, R, G and B and then combine them (using PixInsight but that's another topic). The stacks created by APP are all called something like
St-avg-480.0s-LNMWC_1_3.0_none-x_1.0_LZ3-NS-full-eq-add-sc_BWMV_nor-AAD-RL-noMBB_1stLNC_it1.fits
which gives a lot of info about the input data and the configuration options used to create the stack. But when I use the same config for another filter, the file name that gets created is exactly the same and APP prompts to ask if I want to overwrite the file, which obviously I don't want to. So the new file is called
St-avg-480.0s-LNMWC_1_3.0_none-x_1.0_LZ3-NS-full-eq-add-sc_BWMV_nor-AAD-RL-noMBB_1stLNC_it1-1.fits
This is a bit confusing and would like to request if it would be possible to include the filter name in the file name. The filter name is present as a key word in the FITS header of the input files so that info is available. The files name then could become something like
St-avg-480.0s-Luminance-LNMWC_1_3.0_none-x_1.0_LZ3-NS-full-eq-add-sc_BWMV_nor-AAD-RL-noMBB_1stLNC_it1.fits
St-avg-480.0s-Red-LNMWC_1_3.0_none-x_1.0_LZ3-NS-full-eq-add-sc_BWMV_nor-AAD-RL-noMBB_1stLNC_it1.fits
etc
Many thanks in advance for taking this under consideration and sorry if this has been requested before!
Clear skies, Wouter
Ah, sorry, I forgot to add one thing. Apparently APP expects DSLR files as input since the output files contain the ISO value of the inputs in their names. However, in case of a non-DSLR camera there is no ISO value but only a Gain value. Could this be detected as well and the file name adjusted to that? Many thanks once more!
Clear skies, Wouter
Happy newyear to you too!
I think you forgot to select to process the data with multiple filters (tab 1 Load, multi-channel/filter processing). Is that the case? If you select that, APP will ask you to assign loaded frames to a certain filter and after that it should have different names for all of them. My wild guess is that this is also the reason why you have trouble going further to combine all these...
Thanks, Vincent. That's it indeed!
And writing that I "have trouble going further to combine all these" may be a bit too strong. I just haven gotten around to trying to find out how to do this in APP yet. I am not a person that likes video tutorials (I prefer text with images) so I haven't had the patience yet to sit through them 😀
Didn't mean that to be a strong statement, sorry about that, I meant it could be related, but it was a guess. 🙂 Happy to help you out with whatever you come across ofcourse.
No worries, I am happy to explain myself better. Thanks for all the help so far 🙂
