Saving Projects

Posted by: @mabula-admin

Hi @Ianties,

Yes indeed, it has been requested several times. It's on my list, so it will come for sure 😉

Saving/loading projects and also saving/loading of all settings in all menus.

Mabula

Even if this came in two or three phases it would be very welcome.  For me, the priorities, in order of most useful first, are:

A)  Everything in the file list and 1) LOAD tabs.  I rarely touch the 0) RAW/FITS tab but probably for people with OSC this should also be top priority.

B)  Settings on the other tabs, especially those that are not "Automatic" now

C)  Selections for those Tools that allow you to draw boxes.  E.g., save all the boxes chosen in the "remove light pollution" tab so we don't have to re-draw these for each filter or when repeating for a multi-session project

D)  The ability to save and load all the above as one "Project Settings" file 

E)  The ability to save and load the settings for a single tab or tool as a "Process Settings" file that can be loaded without affecting settings on the other tabs

Cheers,

Rowland

We hear you, I'm not working directly on APP at the moment, but I have mentioned this to Mabula a lot already and he has it on the priority list. It will be here, I just don't have a view on when exactly. I think he'll at least make it so what you're setting up is saved for a restart. But I can definitely see things like multiple profiles or something like that.

Its been 4 years since the last post on this thread and as yet no ability to save a project. I just want to bump this thread in the hopes that it will serve as a reminder that this is a serious deficiency. 

Also, as a former software engineer who still develops software as hobby, this is not a hard feature to implement. Just write the values out to a JSON, or XML, format file and provide the option to reload them.  One big advantage of using either JSON or XML is that there are extensive libraries available to work with these format. 

At least start with the simple ability to save all the parameters of the LOAD tab. That would be a relatively easy implementation and a huge step forward.

I just got an email pointing here for a post that read.

"I finally gave up and switched to PixInsight. Not only does it save projects, its a much more robust software....."

It doesn't seem to be here any more has it been deleted? 

I waited years for this change but now also have PixInsight and there implementation of Projects works very well.

I suppose my post will be deleted too.    

Ok, let me explain; we hear the criticism and criticism is totally fine. But we do want that to be constructive, which this wasn't and removed because of that. This entire thread is clear and we keep up all those posts (including the criticism from Tom some posts above here), but let's not go into a negative spiral over a feature that is not there yet. We know fully well, it's up to Mabula to add it.

@midnight_lightning

Hi, same here. After posting in this thread last spring, I stopped using APP last summer. Also waited for the GPU acceleration😞

Regards

F.

GPU acceleration aside (that is not an easy task at all), I do recognize the sentiment.

A) It has been mentioned by loyal users so many times over the year as a major omission. B) It has been recognized by Mabula and promised over 2 years ago C) It has been acknowledged by the moderators here, but at the same time been referred to as "Mabula needs to implement that and only Mabula knows".

As a courtesy to loyal users and as a means to give some perspective, I would suggest to act on the last item and have @mabula-admin comment on the reason why this seemingly simple-to-code user feature has not been implemented (yet). Maybe there is a bigger issue or a development plan that we are not aware of. Maybe Mabula is working on hard stuff, but forgetting this low hanging fruit. We do not know. Being kept in the dark makes no one happy. In the end it is the developer that decides (and stubborn developers that follow their vision make beautiful software) and it is happy users that rave about developer responsiveness (even if it is an argumented "no") that make software a lasting success. 

Just my two cents on this issue that is getting "hot"

Thanks Anne, yes that's exactly what I did today. Mabula is very busy at the moment (moving and next release), but I did ask him to comment here as well. I do want to point out that I understand the sentiment completely, I understand it can be frustrating and having it mentioned a long time ago already wasn't the best decision (same for the GPU feature). But we do need to keep the discussion a bit constructive and respectful towards each other.

I think Anne hits one of the nails on the head. My gripe with this isn't so much that we still don't have projects yet but that I have been expecting projects to be developed for a long time and its just drifting on. 

Far better if Mabula says when or if he is going to do it and then sticks to a timescale. I know its difficult being a sole developer, I've been there it.

APP is a great package for Pre-processing and I would like to see this area continue to improve. 

Posted by: @foucault

@midnight_lightning

Hi, same here. After posting in this thread last spring, I stopped using APP last summer. Also waited for the GPU acceleration😞

Regards

F.

Same boat here using APP for my large ongoing projects is just a hassle without better support for projects.  I would like to use APP instead of my other solutions as I think some of the fundamental algorithms are the best but the stacked quality difference isn't great enough to put up with the lack of "quality of life" features reasonably expected in modern software.  It is unacceptable you can't quit working on a project and just save state and come back later and load everything back to where you were before.  Even DSS had this back in 2007.

Another area this bites you is when using the background modeling tool and you spend some time defining the samples and then once you are done you lose all that time and effort since you can't save them for future use.

Sometimes things aren't the most exciting to work on as a software developer but will have your customers feeling great or alternately if ignored they will just not return.

Posted by: @mikefulbF.

Same boat here using APP for my large ongoing projects is just a hassle without better support for projects.  I would like to use APP instead of my other solutions as I think some of the fundamental algorithms are the best but the stacked quality difference isn't great enough to put up with the lack of "quality of life" features reasonably expected in modern software.  It is unacceptable you can't quit working on a project and just save state and come back later and load everything back to where you were before.  Even DSS had this back in 2007.

Same here. I love the immediacy of the APP workflow and the quality of its results are excellent. However, all of my projects span multiple weeks. Not being able to go back to a previous integration, add new frames, and know my settings will be the same makes it unusable. I've given up using APP for anything other than quick test integrations leaving everything on default, as otherwise there is no way I can remember what settings I've used. I'm working on getting another solution in place before my licence needs renewing this spring.

Hi all,

As the main developer of APP, I constantly need to prioritize certain tasks. The request of save/load projects and settings has been on my list for a long time, so are many other requests, like fully automatic comet processing for instance.

Now to make it completely clear to everyone, APP 1.083 stable (which is coming!) will have the comet processing feature, a new star reducer tool, and updates of the other tools.

APP 1.084 will be a rather special version in which we will upgrade APP to a more modern development platform (GraalVM and possibly with native executable code). This is needed for several reasons, one of which is the big changes that Apple is making in the latest MacOS versions and their new M1 hardware. This is by far the highest priority at the moment.

Now for APP 1.085 I will make the commitment here, that this version will be completely prioritized for the project and settings save & load functionality.

Please accept my apologies to keep you waiting for so long for this functionality. I hope you can all bear with me until 1.085 is there 😉

Mabula

Thanks for the update Mabula, and for understanding our frustrations. I appreciate it’s always difficult to balance the needs of a diverse user base.

That timeline sounds great. Thank you. I’d love to keep APP in my workflow!

Yay!!!!

Awesome news Mabula - like others I concur that, while having new ways to process data would be great - that's what I own tools like PixInsight and Photoshop for - most of the time I do everything I need inside APP though because I'm not talented enough to process my images to perfection.

Like others, I feel I spend way too much time trying to organise and manage the integration of my data and projects in APP only to have to redo it all again when I start my next integration. - fine tuning my Combine RGB settings, adding and removing boxes for background calibration etc, even simply telling APP where to find the data and keep the Masters for that project.

The hours it saves would be a huge productivity boost, time that can be given back to fine tuning and experimenting with features that today I am too scared to touch because I can never remember what I did from one session to the next. 

Having said that, totally understand the need to move to a new development platform and how painful and time consuming that can be - I think many of us look forward to M1 support however if I had my choice, I would prefer Projects before the platform, then maybe while we're all off busy organising our projects you can quietly get on with re-platforming the world's best Astro Processing tool!

But I also wonder, are the two features related, I can imagine that perhaps the current platform does not allow easy saving of dialogs and settings, it seems to barely co-exist with the native Mac Finder for example - so perhaps APP needs to be re-platformed before it can do what it needs to do (btw - please make sure whatever you choose supports network shares/file servers - NONE of my raw dat lives on my local computer!).

Take care everyone!

I'm new to APP.  In the short time that I have tried this, I have been totally awed and blown away by how good this software is.  In so many ways I have thought that this is exactly what I have been looking for for processing Astro Pics.  This SW is absolutely terrific!  But at this same time, I am completely mystified by the development choices made.  I am a retired SW developer.  I worked for both Intel and Microsoft.  I have to say that in my entire very long career, I don't remember ever releasing, even an Alpha, that didn't have some way to save a project, before exiting the application, and then reloading it when restarting the application.  It seems incomprehensible to me that a developer would work on features such as comet processing and star size reduction before working on saving and restoring project state.  Oh well, this tool is just too fantastic to leave for something else, and genius always has it's quirks.  The development priorities are Mabula's call, not mine. I'll just have to always take careful notes, and repeating the steps each time will help me learn the application better.

So now that 1.083 is out (and I'm testing that faster processing as I type, and will play with star reduction later tonight), that means - 1 step closer to saving projects! Still on for 1.085?

No, it's on the planning for 1.084. 😉

Looking forward to saving projects feature, so I can resume them or add more data at a later date!

I have given up on APP.  We have been told over and over this was coming in the very next release - even that it was guaranteed to be the 100% focus of the next release.  But years later, it's still not here.  Sadly, it just doesn't appear to be of importance to this team.  

Not sure why you think it's not of importance, we've explained in detail in previous posts why we had development issues in the past, but this has completely changed. We've gone to a new development system, increased our release schedule and are working towards finishing the features we promised. That it is very late, I totally agree with, but that has been explained. With the release of 2.0 stable (which is in Beta right now) we will add the saving of projects.

Hi Vincent - 

It's because we keep getting told that you agree it is very important, apologizing for the delays, and promising it for the next release.  But that never happens, and many, many, many other things are done instead.  As the cliche goes, 'actions speak louder than words.'

I know plans change and I think you guys are great people and have good intentions. And obviously it's your product and you get to make these decisions, no question!  

I'm not angry, just disappointed.

Cheers,

Rowland

Yes and this has been happening for the reasons explained earlier, I don't want to get into that again, but just stating that we're on a different path this time. I know apologies were getting old fast, it was a struggle for Mabula back then on a personal level.

Of course the many requests we always get (and which are equally as important to the one that requests it) are difficult to prioritize as well, easier things may get finished first etc. I can only tell you that specifically the above request is something Mabula is focusing on for the stable release of 2.0. I hope we can make up a bit by doing that.

Any estimates on when the stable 2.0 with project saving will come out? Or perhaps, if that feature will appear in a beta before the stable?

I enjoy APP, I'll stay with it, and since the thread got resurrected I'm curious of a timeline. 

We don't have a fixed timeline, because we're still very small this is not very effective and we need a bit of flexibility to have enough time in tackling issues and such. Having said that, beta 13 seems to be very stable now and we think we can work on the saving of projects and a manual now. How long that will take I can't predict unfortunately.

I'm surprised more people don't chime in. One thing I hate, Hate, HATE about recent Windows is the automatic updates. Tried many things to turn them off, disabled multiple services, it keeps returning. Despite active hours Windows just pushed through an update / reboot while APP was running. (I moved to linux to run the telescopes for this reason!)

I have multiple sessions, filters, calibrations on a target from last year and this year. Top of my head, setting up lights in APP, I have a dozen session listed, with assorted flats and darkflats for assorted sessions. And gee, if there was a file list I could save, restarting the mess would be quick and easy...

I don't suppose it could be a feature for beta16? As far as deep and complicated programming goes, it's really pretty simple. Getting more and more tempted to follow what a couple others in this thread have done, and relocated my dollars elsewhere *sigh* bloody learning curves. The main reason I haven't.

Most of us have already bought APP a long time ago. This thread is almost 5 years old. Why should a developer care for somebody who has already paid him. I personally have given up waiting for this fundamental functionality. I don't recommend APP anymore, or when I do then I highlight that there's no way to save a project. I will use APP occasionally, because I have bought it and it works well with my Fuji X raw files. But Siril is taking huge steps in becoming a good Open Source alternative, I also got my way into PixInsight. But it is sad to see, that a loyal user base is ignored such a long time. 

Would be really good to have this feature. Recently I worked on a project with three sessions over three years. Every session extra darks, flats, darkflats... Would also be good to add things (e.g. a new session) to an existing project. That would have helped here a lot...

Just found that in the thread above.

Posted by: @mabula-admin

↑

....
Now for APP 1.085 I will make the commitment here, that this version will be completely prioritized for the project and settings save & load functionality.

Please accept my apologies to keep you waiting for so long for this functionality. I hope you can all bear with me until 1.085 is there 😉

Mabula

@mkeller0815 APP 2.0.0 is the version after 1.083... So we have to wait for APP 2.1 🙁 😉