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.
After having problems getting other programs to recognize my master flats, I realized that, instead of the standard key word "FILTER" (which is used in the lights), the MF files contains "FILT-1" and then "FILTNUM." I presume if there were two filters used for the flat, there'd be FILTNUM = 2 and a FILT-2 etc.
I think I understand the reasoning, but that seems to me an edge use case. Meanwhile, only APP recognizes what FILT-1 means, and no other program I tried seems to. Could we name the first filter FILTER like everyone else does, and maybe use FLT-2 etc for the exceedingly rare case that someone uses multiple filters for one flat, if that's needed at all?
I just ran into this and it is a significant problem for me. i just processed two weeks worth of flats at multiple rotator angles, only to find I cannot use them b/c the filter keyword is wrong. I used multi-session to stack them by date and rotator angle, and kept the same dark files. I did this b/c Pixinsight is way too slow to deal with for stacking all these files and the file sizes are insane, not to mention its slow.Â
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However now I am stuck since apparently all of my master flats I just generated are no good.Â
@mikecmp I hear you. For now: Download ASTAP (free) and that lets you easily batch change fits header keywords. It's a workaround, though takes extra steps (and yet another program).
APP allows you to do that too (In Tools), but that does create a new file each time.
