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.
I shoot a bunch of subs using a dual-band Ha/O3 filter and then I extract color, Ha and O3.
If I then tools/combine RGB the Ha and O3 FITs files, each one loads once and all is OK.
After that, I batch crop the color, Ha and O3 files together, and APP saves each image cropped.
Now, if I once again combine RGB the cropped Ha and O3 FITs files only, each file loads three times! (it asks for mapping of R, G and B) . As if R, G and B channels have been embedded into the cropped file.
I figure it has to do with having included the color file with the Ha and O3 in the crop.
So I batch crop just the original Ha and O3 files - but once again the cropped result loads 3 times!
Why is that?
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Tks
@museceleste i think the answer to this is that after the initial extract, which saves  a one channel monochrome file e.g ha mono, when you load them back in and save out again after crop, it saves automatically as a three channel rgb file, but with all three channels the same . I.e r,g,and b are exactly the same mono luminosity, with no colour.
Then upon loading that cropped file, its sees its a three channel file and asks you to pick. In actuality, it does not matter which channel you pick to load , r,g, or b, as they are the same mono cropped image in each channel.Â
you can just accept this and just load one channel, and cancel the other two, or upon saving the cropped file, see it you can change the format to monochrome 32bit fits.
Tks Andy,
I haven't found how you specify monochrome when saving 32bits (in APP or in Siril) so I went with the 'cancel' approach.
It works, but I still don't understand why APP would be programmed that way. Anyway, its not a big thing.
Hi Gilles @museceleste, @andybooth
I will have a look at the Batch crop tool to check this behaviour 😉 Expected behaviour would be to crop to a file with the same amount of channels as the original of course, so the current behaviour is not logical as you describe it.
Mabula
