What’s New in TPE Web 4.10: H-Alpha Skies and Depth of Field

TPE Web 4.10 introduces three major new capabilities for photographic planning: H-alpha emission in the 3D night sky, comprehensive Depth of Field visualisation and calculations and support for Tilt/Shift lenses.

The release also makes it easier to discover and work with celestial targets, organise your saved Shot Plans and explore photographic compositions in 3D.

Together, these additions bring new possibilities for nightscape, landscape, architectural and deep-sky photography, while continuing to make detailed planning more efficient.

Explore the H-alpha sky

The 3D night sky in TPE Web now includes an optional hydrogen-alpha (H-alpha) emission layer, revealing the extensive clouds of ionised hydrogen that populate our galaxy.

These regions emit light at the characteristic red wavelength of hydrogen-alpha, approximately 656.3 nm. Many are relatively faint in ordinary photographs but become prominent when using H-alpha-modified cameras or narrowband imaging equipment.

The new sky layer includes major emission regions such as:

• Barnard’s Loop, surrounding much of the Orion constellation
• Cygnus, with its extensive hydrogen emission regions
• Carina, home to some of the southern sky’s most spectacular nebulae

H-alpha emission in the Orion region, displayed alongside TPE’s existing star map and Milky Way.

Plan compositions with hydrogen emission regions

The H-alpha layer makes it easier to explore how emission nebulae relate to the surrounding landscape and other celestial objects.

You can investigate where these regions will appear above mountains, buildings or other foreground subjects, and assess how they fit within your intended camera framing.

Enable H-alpha emission in the 3D Settings panel, where an intensity control lets you adjust the appearance of the emission regions.

The layer follows your selected Milky Way resolution and responds to changing sky conditions, becoming less prominent in twilight and moonlight alongside the rest of the celestial background.

H-alpha is turned off by default and can be enabled whenever you need it.

As with TPE’s Milky Way rendering, this is a planning visualisation rather than a prediction of photographic exposure or the exact appearance of an image from a particular camera.

New: Depth of Field planning and visualisation (PRO)

TPE Web 4.10 brings Depth of Field (DoF) calculations directly into your planning workflow.

Previously, TPE could show the Field of View of your chosen camera and lens, helping you understand what would fit in the frame.

Now it can also help answer another essential photographic question:

What will be acceptably sharp at my chosen aperture and focus distance?

The Field of View panel now includes a dedicated Focus tab, where you can set the lens aperture and focus distance and examine the resulting Depth of Field.

TPE calculates:

• Near limit of sharpness, the closest distance considered acceptably sharp
• Far limit of sharpness, the most distant point considered acceptably sharp
• Hyperfocal distance, the closest focus distance at which the far limit of acceptable sharpness reaches infinity
• Total Depth of Field, the distance between the near and far limits

The calculations take account of your camera’s sensor size, focal length and aperture, including the effects of any configured teleconverter.

See Depth of Field in the 3D scene

The biggest advance is that TPE doesn’t just display the numbers. It shows the calculated depth of field against the landscape you’re planning to photograph.

In the 3D First Person View, terrain and buildings outside the calculated zone of acceptable sharpness are marked with magenta hatching.

Different hatch directions distinguish between areas that are too close and those beyond the far limit of sharpness.

When the far limit falls short of infinity, the sky is also marked, making it immediately apparent that stars, the Moon and other distant objects would not be acceptably sharp.

Depth of Field visualisation in First Person View. Magenta hatching identifies parts of the scene that fall outside the calculated sharpness limits.

The same depth-of-field boundaries are displayed on the map and in the 3D Orbit View, allowing you to examine the relationship between camera position, subject distance and focus.

This can be particularly useful when planning compositions that combine a close foreground with a distant mountain, skyline or celestial subject.

The 3D visualisation is only as detailed as the terrain and building models available at the location, so very small foreground features may not be represented.

Understand how blur changes with distance

The Focus tab also includes a new blur-by-distance chart.

Rather than relying exclusively on a sharp/not-sharp distinction, the chart shows how the calculated blur changes with subject distance.

You can examine the expected blur for nearby subjects, distant background features or objects effectively at infinity, and compare it against the circle of confusion used to define acceptable sharpness.

This helps explain why a particular combination of aperture and focus settings works for one composition but not another.

The new Focus tab provides numerical depth-of-field calculations alongside a visualisation of blur at different distances.

Hyperfocal focusing made easier

A dedicated Hyperfocal control automatically sets the focus distance to the calculated hyperfocal distance.

When enabled, it continues adjusting the focus as you change aperture, focal length or teleconverter settings.

Disable it to keep the current focus distance while experimenting with other settings.

You can also focus directly on your chosen subject or at infinity.

Set focus directly in the 3D view

In First Person View, you can now right-click a point in the scene and choose Lock focus here.

TPE calculates the required focus setting from the selected point, whether it’s on terrain, a building or a distant subject.

A small magenta marker indicates the focus point. It remains in place while you recompose the shot, disappearing when you change the focus setting or camera position.

A separate Set subject here command allows you to set the subject distance without changing the focus distance, useful when you want to explore the relationship between foreground subjects and a more distant focus setting.

Depth of Field planning is a PRO feature, but users without PRO can explore an example of the calculations, chart and controls in the Focus tab.

Depth of Field settings are preserved in saved Shot Plans, Visual Searches and shared links.

New: Tilt/Shift lens support (PRO)

TPE Web 4.10 also introduces support for the specialised movements available on Tilt/Shift lenses.

These lenses provide control over both perspective and the orientation of the plane of focus, making them valuable tools for architectural, landscape and product photography.

Lens shift and perspective control

With a compatible Tilt/Shift lens selected from your gear, the Field of View panel provides controls for vertical and lateral lens shift.

In the 3D First Person View, shifting the lens moves the photographic frame without rotating the camera.

This allows you to include more of a tall building, for example, while keeping the camera level and the building’s vertical lines parallel.

A new level guide and precise pitch readout help you establish the correct camera orientation before adjusting the lens shift.

Lens shift allows the photographic frame to move while the camera remains level, avoiding the converging verticals caused by tilting the camera upwards.

Tilt and swing: change the plane of focus

For lenses supporting tilt and swing, TPE allows you to adjust the orientation of the plane of focus.

With an ordinary lens, the plane of focus is perpendicular to the optical axis; tilting the lens allows the plane of focus to rotate.

The resulting depth-of-field region changes shape, becoming a wedge rather than a region bounded by parallel planes.

TPE visualises this geometry directly in the 3D scene, including where the near and far sharpness boundaries intersect the terrain and buildings.

A new Tilt to ground control calculates the tilt and focus settings needed to align the plane of focus with the ground beneath the camera.

This provides a practical starting point for landscape compositions where foreground-to-background sharpness is important.

The effect of lens tilt on the plane of focus and depth of field can now be explored directly in the 3D view.

More precise camera controls

We’ve also introduced additional First Person View controls:

• Shift + drag constrains camera rotation to either bearing or pitch.
• Option/Alt + drag moves the camera sideways or vertically (PRO).
• Cmd + Option + drag on Mac, or Ctrl + Alt + drag on Windows, adjusts lens shift (PRO).

A new keyboard shortcuts button in the 3D view provides a quick reference for these and other navigation controls.

The Field of View panel also gains a Pitch slider, allowing precise numerical adjustment of the camera’s vertical angle.

Lens shift, tilt and swing settings are retained in saved plans and shared links.

More powerful Celestial Targets planning

The Celestial Targets tools have received several improvements, making it easier to find objects, understand their apparent size and work with them across TPE.

Find and select targets more easily

The Bodies panel can now search the celestial target catalogue directly, in addition to your saved favourite targets (PRO).

Search for a name or catalogue designation and add a matching object to the map as a session target, without first navigating to the Celestial Targets page.

You can also choose Show on map from an object’s Celestial Targets page.

We’ve improved target naming throughout the application. Familiar names such as Orion Nebula now appear consistently in the timeline, altitude chart, map and other planning controls, alongside catalogue numbers where appropriate.

Several catalogue-identification issues have also been corrected.

Improved visibility calculations

We’ve fixed issues that could cause some nights to be missing from the Celestial Targets visibility calendar, particularly at high latitudes or where darkness begins or ends close to midnight UTC.

Target transit times and peak altitudes have also been refined.

The night-sky rendering has additionally been improved so that Moon phase and altitude produce a more realistic effect on the visibility of faint stars and Milky Way detail.

Shot Plans: faster searching, importing and exporting

TPE Web 4.10 makes several common Shot Plan workflows more convenient.

Find matching times from an open Shot Plan

You can now choose Find matching times directly from a Shot Plan tab, without visiting the Library.

TPE sets up a Visual Search based on the saved composition, using the plan’s camera aim and focal length.

Searches now begin from today, rather than from the plan’s original date, making it easier to find upcoming opportunities even when the original plan was created months or years earlier.

The search area is sized according to the lens framing, and searches involving the Milky Way or deep-sky objects take account of your Celestial Targets darkness and Moon visibility preferences.

We’ve also fixed an issue where searches beginning today could miss an alignment later the same day, such as tonight’s moonrise.

Import and export more easily

You can now export a Shot Plan as a .tpe file directly from its tab.

You can also drag and drop a .tpe file anywhere in TPE Web to import it.

If the file contains a single Shot Plan, TPE can open it immediately on the planning page you’re using.

Other file formats supported by the Library import system can also be dropped directly into the app.

A more useful Library

The Library has received a collection of improvements to sorting, filtering and previewing saved resources.

Sort your saved items

You can now sort Library resources by title, creation date, modification date or planned shoot date, where applicable.

For manually arranged lists, sorting doesn’t overwrite your existing order unless you explicitly choose to save the new arrangement.

Shot Plans organised by date

Shot Plans now display their planned date and time more prominently, using the local time zone of the shooting location.

You can filter plans by year or choose Upcoming to see plans scheduled for the next 30 days.

The previous standalone Upcoming page is now part of the Shot Plans view, bringing searching, sorting and exporting together in one place.

Improved map previews

The map preview in a Library item’s details can now be panned and zoomed.

For Shot Plans and saved Visual Searches, it can also display the secondary pin and sight line.

Shot Plan previews show the Sun, Moon and celestial target azimuth lines for the saved date and time, helping you understand a plan without having to open it fully.

Other improvements

TPE Web 4.10 includes numerous smaller improvements and bug fixes:

• Smoother timeline scrubbing, especially when several celestial bodies are selected.
• Improved 3D performance, including better graphics memory management when changing Milky Way resolution.
• More reliable Photorealistic walking, with smoother continuous camera movement.
• Improved elevated camera positioning when standing on buildings or other raised surfaces in Photorealistic mode.
• Better distant terrain rendering, including distant peaks visible from hillsides and valleys rather than only from prominent summits.
• The Sun and Moon now remain visible in the 3D sky, even when their planning overlays are deselected.
• Improved session restoration when opening TPE from marketing or other external links.
• More reliable synchronisation of celestial target favourites, including changes made across multiple devices or browser tabs.
• Better handling of temporary browser storage failures, avoiding unnecessary application crashes.
• Improved historical date entry, particularly for older dates in time zones east of UTC.
• More reliable account and subscription handling, including clearer sign-in and subscription management messages.
• New coordinate export options, allowing you to copy pin coordinates or download them as KMZ for use in other mapping applications.
• New colour keys for Light Pollution and Elevation map layers, making their values easier to interpret.

Explore more of the night sky, and plan with greater precision

TPE Web 4.10 extends photographic planning in two important directions.

The new H-alpha sky layer opens up more of the night sky to exploration, helping photographers discover compositions involving the rich emission nebulae of the Milky Way.

Meanwhile, the new Depth of Field tools go beyond simply showing what fits within the camera frame. They help you understand what will be acceptably sharp, how blur changes with subject distance and how tilt/shift lenses can reshape both the composition and the plane of focus.

Combined with improved Celestial Targets tools, more efficient Shot Plan workflows and continued enhancements to 3D rendering, TPE Web 4.10 provides more ways to discover, evaluate and prepare for your next photograph.

TPE Web 4.10 is at app.photoephemeris.com.