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'd like to use APP for RGB-combining my SHO data to get a hubble palette image.
I'm able to do so using Gimp and RawTherapee but APP seems to be able to provide less noisy results ...
I'know basically how to use the tool but I get no useful result. Also the sliders do not make sense to me.
I'd like to know exactly what th x and bg sliders do and why I see blue color if I only have red and green component added.
I'm quite experienced with image processing but I do not understand at all what's going on.
Can s/o please help me !?
I uploaded the registered fits here: https://treasure.arcane-mirage.de/index.php/s/d7cMy5bea9QtyA8
Feel free to experiment. I'd like to know which slider values give a useful result.
Thank you in advance : )
Another question: needs it to be done with stretched fits or unstretched fits ?
The combination and all processing is always done linearly, so unstretched (the preview you see is an auto-stretch, but not saved as such by APP). When combining narrowband data, you do need to make sure the different channels are properly aligned and registered to each other. You can then load them into RGBCombine and pick one of the presets or change it yourself, the presets should give a good starting point already usually.
Thank You,
understood this and already did it this way.
I just solved my issue by using a normalization method in the rgb combine window without multiply.
The normalizations "none", "add", and "add-scale" seem to work. The default "multiply-scale" or "mutiply" don't work for me.
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