Improved internal memory controls (much more stable and faster on big datasets), fixed CPU image viewer, fixed Narrowband extraction demosaic algortihms.
New improved Normalization engine, Fixed random crashes in integration, fixed RGB Combine & Calibrate Star Colors, fixed Narrowband extraction algorithms, new development platform with performance gains, bug fixes in the tools, etc...
Apr 14 2026: Google Pay, Apple Pay & WeChat Pay added as payment options
Update on the 2.0.0 release & the full manual
We are getting close to the 2.0.0 stable release and the full manual. The manual will soon become available on the website and also in PDF format. Both versions will be identical and once released, will start to follow the APP release cycle and thus will stay up-to-date to the latest APP version.
Once 2.0.0 is released, the price for APP will increase. Owner's license holders will not need to pay an upgrade fee to use 2.0.0, neither do Renter's license holders.
[Sticky] Light integration settings with large number of subs
Always use "average" integration mode. Only use median with small stacks. Average is superior for a large number of subs.
The composition mode will not have influence on the quality of integration, choose whichever you need, in most cases you want to use "full" to integrate the whole field of view of all your subs combined.
Local Normalization Correction: first make an integration without LNC. Then one with LNC at degree 1 and 1-2 iterations. This will give you an indication if your data needs this. If you have clearly changing gradients in your data, your integration will strongly benefit if you enable LNC. Be aware, LNC can take a long time to complete with a lot of frames. The progress of LNC can be clearly followed in the console panel.
I would suggest to always use MultiBandBlending iwth 5-10% to reduce stack artefacts at the borders of your integration field of view.
For outlier rejection, use sigma or winsorized sigma clipping, only 1 iteration with kappa of 3 to start with. This setting will not be destructive to your SNR and with a large amount of subs will easily remove all outliers.
Don't use linear fit clipping if you use LNC, linear fit clipping is redundant if you apply LNC.
The current implementation of linear fit clipping is really slow (needs improvement), so I wouldn't suggest to use it. Use LNC with sigma or winsorized sigma clipping.
You can enable output maps. These are usefull to get a better grip on what is happening with outlier rejection, MBB and the quality of normalization.
Pixel interpolation: use Lanczos 3 without no under /over shoot with a lot of frames. But if you were to enable it, the difference will be hard to see. It will prevent under and overshoot of the lanczos3 algorithm.
And finally start your integration.
Let me know if all of this is clear 😉 and if the result(s) are pleasing.
We are 7.5 years later, computers are much faster, APP is on version 2.0.0 beta34.
I have a MacBook M3max with 64 GB RAM ... integrated 360 lights of 26 Mpixel APS-C camera (Fuji X-H2S) ... in c. 45 min.
--> My main question: Was (is) it okay, to leave all parameters on default ?
My only change was "Lights to stack" = 95%
--> Do you have updated recommendations for the best parameters to stack 100s of images ? As I started with an unguided mount, I need to do short lights, just 10sec (for 600mm lens) to 30sec (for 280mm) lens.
I can only mention here that your camera X-H2s, being a X-trans camera, the X-Trans demosaicing of the sensor is a bit of a bottleneck when loading images. I would recommend you in the 6) integrate step, to not interpolate, but rather perform Bayer/X-Trans Drizzle 😉 if you are not already doing that. Besides that, all should be fine.
Oh, wow ... I simply did not look at any of the parameters in my 1st week of using APP.
I re-integrated one session, now setting
in 6) integrate the INTEGRATE parameter to "Bayer/X-Trans Drizzle", leaving scale at 1.0
but then received an error message, saying that I need to set in 0) RAW/FITS the algorithm parameter other than "no interpolation"
--> I chose Adaptive Airy Disc.
The results are much better: clearer stars, galaxy more defined, background darker and less walking noise. (I cannot guide in the moment) See attached compare-image.
... with this steep learning curve ... I am looking forward to achieving brilliancy in a few weeks 😊.
Great, for Bayer/X-Trans drizzle with scale 1.0, ideally, you want to set the drizzle droplets to 2.0. The result with droplets of 2.0 will have less noise than droplets of 1.0 😉 and it will have same sharpness as a regular integration with demosaicing/interpolation.
Oh - I thought that I should set drizzle>1 only, if I have dithered. But possibly/probably, I am mixing things up ... and need to learn what "dither-drizzle" is and what "X-Trans drizzle" is.
Nevertheless, I will re-run and post the compare-image.
I have another topics - maybe better not in this thread ... so please let me know than I open a separate.
1. What is this noise pattern?
Bad PA? Noise from the uncooled Fuji sensor @ISO 16000? Walking Noise?
I can tame it quite good - desaturation of the background, later in Photoshop I use NoiseXTerminator. I like the end result - my first Deep Sky photo ever 🙂
Integration of 4 sessions, nearly 7 hours:
360x10s, ISO 1600, 280mm, so so PA
240x30s, ISO 1600, 280mm, so so PA
360x30s, ISO 1600, 280mm, nonsense PA (I aligned to the CSP, had nice drifting)
476x10s, ISO 3200, 600mm, good PA
All with the right flats, darks, bias and a BPM of 200 darks à 2min.
For processing, I followed your RGB mosaic tutorial, and applied NoiseXTerminator in the end.
I have another topics - maybe better not in this thread ... so please let me know than I open a separate.
1. What is this noise pattern?
Bad PA? Noise from the uncooled Fuji sensor @ISO 16000? Walking Noise?
I can tame it quite good - desaturation of the background, later in Photoshop I use NoiseXTerminator. I like the end result - my first Deep Sky photo ever 🙂
Integration of 4 sessions, nearly 7 hours:
360x10s, ISO 1600, 280mm, so so PA
240x30s, ISO 1600, 280mm, so so PA
360x30s, ISO 1600, 280mm, nonsense PA (I aligned to the CSP, had nice drifting)
476x10s, ISO 3200, 600mm, good PA
All with the right flats, darks, bias and a BPM of 200 darks à 2min.
For processing, I followed your RGB mosaic tutorial, and applied NoiseXTerminator in the end.
It is clearly walking noise, this happens not because of Polar Alignment quality, but rather the lack of dither or insufficient dither step size. Your camera is uncooled and that makes it quickly visible, but also cooled sensors will show this without proper dithering.
Each image has it's noise patterns in it, because each camera's sensor has noise patterns. Many photographers do not realize that all camera's, also the cooled and latest CMOS astro camera's, have noise patterns bigger than 1 pixel. These patterns can have size of 5-10 pixels... when you do not dither, these noise patterns are amplified and you will start to see these paths in your integrated results as a consequence. Hope that will explain it in a way that you can visually understand what is happening.
So if you can dither, do so and do with steps of 5-10 pixels, you will be amazed about how clean your result will look compared to these results. If your setup does not allow for dithering automatically, simply dither manually. I have done this myself when I started with astrophotography. If you shoot 20 images, then try to dither manually roughly every 5 pictures or so. Dithering manually means that you simply move the target in your camera slightly in both left/right and up/down direction. The target only needs to move a couple of pixels on your sensor. Then resume your captures. In this case, the dithering is not ideal versus dithering between each image, but you will also see that noise pattern go away very quickly.
It is clearly walking noise, this happens not because of Polar Alignment quality, but rather the lack of dither or insufficient dither step size. Your camera is uncooled and that makes it quickly visible, but also cooled sensors will show this without proper dithering.
Each image has it's noise patterns in it, because each camera's sensor has noise patterns. Many photographers do not realize that all camera's, also the cooled and latest CMOS astro camera's, have noise patterns bigger than 1 pixel. These patterns can have size of 5-10 pixels... when you do not dither, these noise patterns are amplified and you will start to see these paths in your integrated results as a consequence. Hope that will explain it in a way that you can visually understand what is happening.
So if you can dither, do so and do with steps of 5-10 pixels, you will be amazed about how clean your result will look compared to these results. If your setup does not allow for dithering automatically, simply dither manually. I have done this myself when I started with astrophotography. If you shoot 20 images, then try to dither manually roughly every 5 pictures or so. Dithering manually means that you simply move the target in your camera slightly in both left/right and up/down direction. The target only needs to move a couple of pixels on your sensor. Then resume your captures. In this case, the dithering is not ideal versus dithering between each image, but you will also see that noise pattern go away very quickly.
Hope this helps.
Mabula
I was guessing / afraid that this is walking noise. And my googling has lead to the same "you must dither".
And here it's finally clear that I will move to a cooled camera and a guided mount. I can only do 10-30s subs with my Fuji and the current mount ... and will not manually dither for hours every 0.5-2 minutes.
The ASIAIR, ASI2600MC and AM5N are on order 😉
-----
Dear Mabula, thank you so much ...
... and in a few weeks my next question will be, how to integrate dithered subs.
In the meantime I will continue to learn processing and reading/looking tutorials.
I integrate more than 400 subs in OSC. When I do travel photography I prefer to max the capabilities of my staradventurer mount as opposed to adding weight to the bag, so I go for short exposures on my Sony A7III camera so mount drift isn't a problem. I'm wandering if I'll be abble to drizzle effectively without guiding and letting the PEC of the mount do the drizzle for me.
I’m not sure what software you are going to use for PEC and guiding. What staradventurer do you have? All except the GTI are RA-controlled only, meaning walking noise can still be visible even if you can dither in RA.
I agree with Stefan @digitaliz-se, if no real dithering is done, meaning random moves of the mount in random directions (RA,DEC) between your exposures, but only the drift of the mount, walking noise / burning noise patterns into your result is quite likely to happen. It does depend on the quality of the camera and it's sensor and the typical drift for an imaging session of course, so I would say, the proof is in the pudding. Simply try and see what happens, maybe it works quite okay and even better with some adjustments like a manual real dither between each batch of 20-50 pictures. I know from own experience that a couple of manual drifts can already greatly remove possible walking noise if it would be there otherwise.
