Changelog

Everything that's shipped. Follow along as imagic evolves.

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imagic is in active beta

We're actively developing and improving imagic with regular updates. Your feedback is incredibly valuable to us — every suggestion, bug report, and idea helps shape the product. We'd love to hear from you!

v0.7.0

July 2026 Download
New Improved Fixed
  • Your exports finally match your edits: Heal / Remove, Red-Eye, Portrait Polish, super-resolution and lens blur used to look right in the editor and then disappear from the exported file. They now render into your exports at full resolution, so what you see on screen is what lands on disk. This was the biggest known gap in v0.6.0 and it is closed.
  • Mask layers: Every mask you make (AI, manual, lasso, Snap, Select Object) becomes its own named layer with its own tab and its own settings, so you can build up several local adjustments on one photo and come back and edit any of them later. Masked adjustments now save with the photo and reach your exports, which they previously did not.
  • Global edits leave your masked area alone: A masked region is now governed by its own layer, so pushing exposure on Global no longer drags the masked pixels with it.
  • Much sharper mask edges: AI masks are refit to your photo's real edges instead of being scaled up and left blocky, measured at 45% better boundary alignment. Hair and shoulders come out crisp. Sky selection now finds the actual horizon rather than guessing from brightness, and new feather plus grow / shrink controls remove the bright halo that local exposure lifts used to leave around a subject.
  • Select Object: Drag a box around anything and imagic cuts it out as a mask, with options to keep it, refine the edges, or flip to selecting the background instead.
  • Snap to Object for Heal / Remove: Scribble roughly over the thing you want gone and the selection tightens to its real outline. Heal now hands you a brush straight away, is fully undoable, and repairs with matched grain and a feathered blend, so blemishes and sky spots heal seamlessly instead of leaving a smooth plastic patch.
  • Search your library by meaning: Type what you are looking for, like "bride laughing" or "sunset on the cliffs", and imagic finds it without you having ever tagged a thing.
  • People view: imagic groups the faces across a shoot, you name each person once, and then you can filter the whole library down to them with a click.
  • Sensor dust, marked once: Mark a speck on one frame and imagic cleans it across the whole shoot, skipping the frames where it falls over detail and would do more harm than good. It tells you what it plans to touch before it touches anything.
  • Smarter culling: Culling now compares the frames covering the same moment and picks the best one, instead of judging each photo against a fixed bar. Frames that lose out are set aside rather than trashed, and each one tells you why.
  • Cancellable Export All: Start a 700 photo export by mistake and you can now stop it. Everything already exported is kept.
  • Every tool is unlocked: Heal / Remove, mask layers, Portrait Polish and watermarking were showing a padlock to customers who had already bought the licence. There is one imagic licence and it now includes everything.
  • Fixed: AI masking was quietly broken on Windows. Choosing People, Subject or Sky returned a mask covering roughly the wrong half of the frame, because the segmentation model was never actually loading. It loads now, and the masks are correct.
  • Also fixed: the film strip scrolls with a normal mouse wheel, "Press Esc to cancel" genuinely cancels, grade previews use your own photo as you have edited it, and the licence agreement in the installer no longer shows garbled characters.
  • New, on the web: share.imagic.ink client proofing galleries. Upload proofs, give everyone on the client side their own private link, and get back an edit queue ranked by how many of them picked each frame. Plus password reset on your imagic account, which previously had no recovery at all.

Available for Windows, and for macOS on both Apple Silicon and Intel, signed and notarized by Apple.

v0.6.0

July 2026 Download
New Improved Fixed
  • Native Apple Silicon build: imagic now ships a native macOS build, signed and notarized by Apple, so it installs and runs cleanly on modern Macs — no more workarounds. A separate Intel build is available too.
  • No more freezing: Exports, AI tools, and app startup were rebuilt to stay responsive — the "Export All" freeze, the AI-masking stall on large RAWs, and the startup hang are all gone, each replaced with real progress feedback.
  • New AI editing tools: One-click Portrait Polish (skin smoothing), Heal / Remove to erase distractions inside a mask, Red-Eye Removal, and sharper subject masking with a smarter model plus Keep / Invert / Discard controls.
  • Non-destructive editing: Deeper undo/redo that survives switching photos, plus named snapshots you can save and restore per photo.
  • Copy & paste edits: Copy a photo's edits and paste them onto the next photo, every photo in the workspace, or a batch you pick — with a preview of the copied source in the sidebar.
  • Watermarking & export recipes: Add a text or logo watermark, resize on export, and save your favourite export settings as reusable recipes.
  • New Home dashboard: A proper landing screen with quick start, the video tutorial, live library stats, tips, and what's-new.
  • Clearer Settings: Every setting now explains what it does, including which RAW engine is in use, plus new options for export format, duplicate sensitivity, and optional AI models.
  • Organised exports: Exports are grouped into a per-shoot folder, and "Open Folder" jumps straight to your latest session.
  • Dozens of polish fixes across culling, the style chooser, dialogs, and readability throughout the app.

v0.5.0

June 2026 Download
Improved Fixed
  • Instant Manual Culling: Keep, trash, and review decisions in the culling gallery now update immediately instead of freezing the app while status changes are saved.
  • High-Quality Culling Preview Restored: The gallery keeps the larger RAW preview experience, but loads bounded high-quality previews after the decision UI is responsive.
  • Batched Gallery Saves: Gallery culling changes are collected while you work and flushed when the gallery closes, so rapid keyboard decisions stay smooth across long review sessions.
  • Safer Status Persistence: Manual culling metadata is persisted through a dedicated background worker and flushed during shutdown so decisions are not lost.

v0.4.9

May 2026 Download
Fixed Improved
  • JPG and PNG Imports Fixed: Folder import now accepts the file types the app already advertised: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .tif, .tiff, and RAW files. Non-RAW images no longer disappear during import as if they were unsupported.
  • Safer Export Completion: Batch export now reports partial failures honestly and only marks an export as successful when the expected output file exists.
  • Responsive Editor Sidebar: The editor controls panel is now resizable and its controls reflow at narrow widths instead of pushing beyond the screen edge.
  • macOS Installer Branding: The custom DMG background now regenerates from the current project version so the installer no longer shows stale version text.
  • Windows and macOS Hotfix: This release ships the customer-facing JPG/PNG import fix with matching Windows and macOS package metadata.

v0.4.8 macOS Import/Export Hotfix

May 2026 Download
Fixed Improved
  • Reliable macOS Imports: Import now waits for the real background scan to finish, refreshes the library immediately, and respects the recursive folder option.
  • Clearer Import Feedback: The app now reports how many photos were imported, surfaces scan errors, and avoids silently advancing when a folder has no supported images.
  • JPG/PNG Import Clarity: The import screen and built-in tutorial now explain that regular JPG, JPEG, PNG, and TIFF files are supported alongside RAW files.
  • No More Stale RAW Loop: New imports clear the previous editor batch so customers are not repeatedly returned to an older RAW file after importing a different folder.
  • Mac/Windows Build Parity: Release metadata now stays aligned with the shared desktop version so macOS packages ship with the same app updates as Windows.

v0.4.8

April 2026 Download
New
  • White Balance Presets: A new WB row at the top of the BASIC panel gives you one-click presets — Auto, Tungsten (3200K), Fluor (4000K), Daylight (5500K), Cloudy (6500K), and Shade (7500K). Click a preset and Temperature jumps to that colour temperature; Tint resets to neutral. Auto runs the grey-world WB estimator on the current image.
  • Live Kelvin Readout: The WB row also shows the current Temperature slider value as a Kelvin estimate, such as 5500K, that updates in real time as you drag, so you always know roughly where you are on the colour-temperature scale.

v0.4.7

April 2026 Download
Fixed Improved
  • AI Optimize All No Longer Wrecks Backlit Photos: The batch optimizer was lifting exposure on cafe/window/sunlit-subject scenes that already had blown highlights, then piling on contrast and saturation from your user-style blend. v0.4.7 now detects backlit and high-dynamic-range scenes and switches to a recovery-only profile: highlight pull-back, gentle shadow lift, no positive exposure, and no extra contrast.
  • Stopped User-Style Bleed Into Tonal Sliders: The “learn from your first 10 edits” blend was leaking into contrast, saturation, exposure, highlights, shadows, whites, and blacks. The blend now only touches taste keys like temperature, tint, vibrance, clarity, texture, and dehaze, and is clamped to ±50.
  • Saturation Removed From Auto Recommendations: The auto-enhance algorithm no longer suggests raw saturation, which could push skin tones out of gamut on JPEGs. Vibrance is still used and capped tighter at 12.
  • Visual Refinement No Longer Adds Contrast: When the post-edit proxy looked flat, the refiner used to pile +8 contrast on top. It now reduces shadow lift or highlight recovery instead of adding contrast.
  • Tighter Auto-Enhance Caps: Exposure capped at 14, contrast at 10, vibrance at 12, and dehaze at 6–8, so optimization feels like an assistant rather than a maximalist filter.

v0.4.6

April 2026 Download
Improved Fixed
  • Editable Slider Values: Every adjustment slider in the right-hand panel now shows its value in an editable spin box. The numbers are no longer cropped off the edge of the panel and you can click the field to type an exact value.
  • More Precise Slider Control: Sliders now move in single-unit steps and clicking anywhere on the track jumps the handle directly to that point instead of paging by 10. Keyboard arrows and the spin box give exact integer control.
  • Snappier Live Preview: The on-screen preview proxy was downsized from 1800px to 1100px max dimension, cutting per-frame pixel work by roughly 2.5× while keeping visual fidelity at typical canvas sizes.
  • AI Optimize Tuned Down: Auto-enhance caps were lowered for exposure, contrast, vibrance, dehaze, and sharpening, and the user-style blend was rebalanced in favour of per-photo analysis. Each photo now keeps its own character instead of being pushed toward a single look.
  • No More Console Window Spam on Import: Importing TIFF files and other already-decoded images no longer pops empty terminal windows on Windows. Thumbnails for TIFF, JPEG, PNG, BMP, and WebP now use a fast in-process Pillow path instead of shelling out to RAW CLIs.
  • Quieter RAW Tooling: External CLI calls such as RawTherapee, darktable, and exiftool now run through a hidden-window helper so background processing cannot flash console windows over your work.

v0.4.5

April 2026 Download
Fixed
  • Stopped Phantom Update Prompt: v0.4.4 installs reported the runtime version as 0.4.3, so the update checker kept saying a new version was available even after installing the latest build. The desktop app now reports its true installed version.
  • Release Version Hygiene: Aligned the runtime app version, packaging metadata, and installer default so future builds cannot silently drift apart.
  • Server Fallback Bumped: The latest-version endpoint’s built-in default now matches the current release, so a missing environment variable can never accidentally downgrade the advertised version.

v0.4.4

April 2026 Download
Fixed Improved
  • AI Masking Stability: Fixed crashes when selecting Subject, Sky, People, or Background masks on systems missing ONNX runtime backends.
  • Safe Fallback Masking: rembg initialization now fails gracefully and automatically uses fallback mask generation instead of aborting the task.
  • Cleaner AI Error Handling: Suppressed noisy backend startup output and improved runtime handling for AI masking worker failures.
  • AI Cancel Reliability: Esc/cancel handling in the AI loading modal now consistently interrupts active masking tasks and closes cleanly.

v0.4.3

April 2026 Download
Fixed Improved
  • Fixed RAW Decode Hang: Resolved a bug where the editor would stay stuck on "Decoding RAW…" forever if a file failed to decode — the overlay is now properly dismissed on error
  • 4x Faster Batch Optimize: AI Optimize All now uses half-resolution DHT demosaic instead of full-resolution AHD, dramatically speeding up processing for large batches (1000+ photos)
  • Non-RAW File Support in Editor: JPEG, PNG, and TIFF files are now loaded directly via Pillow instead of being passed to rawpy, preventing decode errors for non-RAW imports
  • Decode Error Reporting: All RAW decode workers now surface failures with warnings in the log instead of silently swallowing them

v0.4.1

April 2026 Download
Fixed Improved
  • Neutral Dark Theme: Removed all blue and purple tints from the app UI, with clean light and dark grey backgrounds throughout
  • Fixed Text Encoding: Resolved garbled text (mojibake) in editor panel headers and toolbar labels
  • Color Wheel Visibility: Boosted opacity for Shadow, Midtone, and Highlight colour grading wheels
  • Auto-Upgrade Installer: Automatically detects and silently removes any previous imagic installation before upgrading

v0.4.0

April 2026 Download
New Improved Fixed
  • AI Masking: Select Subject, Sky, People, or Background with AI-powered mask generation for targeted edits
  • AI Lens Blur: Depth-based bokeh simulation using MiDaS depth estimation for realistic background blur
  • AI Face Detection: Detect and highlight faces in photos with OpenCV DNN and optional dlib embeddings
  • AI Super Resolution: 2x and 4x upscaling via Real-ESRGAN or enhanced bicubic with sharpening fallback
  • AI Enhance Details: Multi-scale detail decomposition for fine-detail enhancement without upscaling
  • AI Adaptive Presets: Scene-aware automatic adjustments — detects Portrait, Landscape, Night, Indoor, Macro and applies targeted corrections
  • 3-Way Color Wheels: Shadow, Midtone, and Highlight colour grading with interactive visual wheels and luminance sliders
  • HSL Hue Sliders: 8-channel hue shift control (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Aqua, Blue, Purple, Magenta) added to HSL panel
  • Texture Slider: Fine-frequency detail enhancement in the Presence panel
  • Rotation Control: Precise rotation slider in Lens & Geometry panel
  • Tone Curve and Lens & Geometry promoted from expert-only to always-visible main panels
  • Premium UI Overhaul: Neutral dark theme with refined colour palette, gradient section headers, improved scrollbar styling, and polished visuals across all views
  • AI Cancel: Press Escape or click cancel to interrupt AI batch processing mid-run without losing completed results
  • AI Model Caching: Background-removal model loaded once and reused across multiple operations for faster processing
  • Fixed thumbnail cache eviction off-by-one error that could cause spurious cache misses
  • Fixed AI worker race conditions and proper thread cleanup on batch completion

v0.3.2

April 2026
New Improved Fixed
  • Fixed crop tool: crop now persists across undo/redo, save, and editor reopen
  • Crop preview: applied crops are shown in the live preview after confirmation
  • AI Suggest Crop: new button in crop mode uses composition analysis to suggest optimal framing
  • Aspect ratio lock: choose Free, Original, 1:1, 3:2, 4:3, 16:9 etc. while cropping
  • Clear Crop button to remove crop and return to full image
  • In-app auto-updater: download and install updates directly from the app instead of opening the browser
  • Progress bar in update banner showing download status with MB counter
  • Automatic fallback to browser download if in-app download fails
  • Export options dialog: choose file format (JPEG/PNG/TIFF), quality, and export scope (single photo or entire batch) before exporting

v0.3.1

April 2026 Download
New Fixed
  • Added TIF/TIFF as supported input formats (scanner, config, and defaults)
  • Fixed product key activation for licenses without a linked user account

v0.3.0

April 2026 Download
Improved Fixed
  • Simplified installer to always bundle RawTherapee — no separate "standard" variant
  • Fixed activation token not persisting between app launches
  • Disabled heavy AI models (Florence-2, pyiqa) by default to speed up small batch analysis
  • Parallelized thumbnail generation with thread pool for faster startup
  • Added visible update notification banner in the main window
  • Fixed build script stderr handling for PyInstaller on Windows

v0.2.0

March 2026
New Improved
  • Desktop purchase flow with Stripe checkout and automatic email delivery
  • License activation system with device-bound tokens
  • RawTherapee bundle option in installer
  • Scene-aware PP3 profile auto-selection (portrait, landscape, low-light, high-contrast)

v0.1.0

March 2026
New
  • Initial public release of imagic Desktop for Windows and macOS
  • AI quality scoring across 5 metrics: sharpness, exposure, noise, composition, detail
  • Burst & duplicate detection with perceptual hashing
  • Full editing suite: histogram, exposure, colour grading, sharpening, noise reduction
  • 6 editing style presets with live preview thumbnails
  • 30+ cinematic colour grades (LUT-based)
  • Batch export with multi-threaded processing
  • Crash-resilient export pipeline with auto-resume
  • RawTherapee integration for true RAW demosaicing
  • PP3 profile generation for RawTherapee
  • Feedback learning AI that adapts to your keep/trash decisions
  • CLI & headless mode for automation
  • 9 RAW format support: CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, ORF, RW2, DNG, PEF

What's next

Upcoming
Planned
  • Linux desktop builds
  • Browser-based version (coming later in 2026)
  • Portrait-aware culling with automatic face quality ranking
  • Plugin system for custom export pipelines
  • Improved feedback learning with per-category style models
  • Cloud sync for edits and library across devices
  • Batch AI presets — apply adaptive corrections to entire folders in one click

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