If you inspected the parrot image below, you would probably think of it as being red, green, yellow, blue, white, brown and black. Maybe you’d add pink and a darker blue and gray. But in your head this is conceptually a simple image.

It actually has 190,418 colors.

What if it doesn’t need some of those colors? What if it doesn’t need most of those colors and it would look effectively the same to you?

Want to guess the number now? Click →1

This isn’t even a “bad” image in terms of colors. Most images we see on the internet are 300k+ colors. Some even as high as 1.5 Million or more distinct shades.

ColorSmith is a tool I have been working on that gives you control over how many colors your image has. It isn’t that color is bad, quite the opposite, for the past 3+ years I’ve made my living helping people express more colors from their 3D Printers. The issue is using hundreds of thousands of colors when just a few would do. It makes handling and manipulating images so much harder.

Want to try it out? The ColorSmith site is a live demonstration you can put your own images in and see what comes out. No image data is collected - the code runs entirely on your device so your data stays there. Please read the privacy statement on the site if you have more questions.

ColorSmith Demo

The Philosophy of ColorSmith is this:

• Be smart when you pick the colors to keep using

• Let the user override/update/expand those choices when it makes sense

The algorithm here is called “quantizing”. Some people refer to it as “posterizing”. Basically, reducing the number of colors used to represent an image. Historically the algorithms used for this were all or nothing. They reduce colors with very little concern over whether a color is important to the image or not, and when they are done, you only have one real "knob” you can turn. How many colors total.

But images are complex and vary a lot. And while one hyper detailed image might quantize just fine.

Another might have issues that need to be resolved.

Notice the leaves got chunky and the lips lost their color. We added 38 new colors but the goal isn’t no colors - it’s colors where they are needed. The structure of the image was always intact and we can use the tools to recover what is missing quickly.

Does this have anything to do with HueForge?

HueForge is a limited color system - using Filaments and layers to blend a finite number of colors to represent an image. One thing you’ll notice when looking at quantized images, they look a lot like the HueForge Preview window.

Which makes you start to think. Can ColorSmith identify images that are good candidate for HueForge? Or at least can it point out images likely to be difficult in HueForge? I believe it can. But more importantly, Color Matching against under 100 colors is so much easier and more repeatable than color matching against hundreds of thousands.

This is the reason that ColorSmith’s first release will be as a free Plugin for HueForge. A bit of a new kind of plugin too. One that runs in the main HueForge window, not just in a separate dialog. It will automatically load your project image, quantize it, let you adjust that result and then replace your project image with the quantized image. I know quite a few people who vectorize their images to reduce color counts for HueForge. With the ColorSmith plugin, this becomes an unnecessary step.

If you haven’t yet, try the ColorSmith demo and notice you can drop an hfp file (HueForge Project) directly into it if it has the image information embedded (the default).

ColorSmith Demo

Tools like AutoForge also rely on a first quantize step but that step loses too much detail. ColorSmith output could provide a much more detailed starting image.

What EXACTLY Is ColorSmith

So what is ColorSmith itself going to be? It is two things. It’s a standalone application and it’s a HueForge plugin. Some of the changes in 0.9.4.2 are to make ColorSmith work better as a plugin. You won’t need to update HueForge for ColorSmith to work if you are running a 0.9.4.x version or later. Built from the ground up with lessons learned from HueForge, it ships with a tutorial system including per-function tutorials for the various correction functions. (Both the plugin and the desktop app)

The ColorSmith plugin will release as a free plugin. The ColorSmith standalone software will be paid software though I haven’t set a price yet (it will launch hopefully 4-6 weeks after the plugin, depending on feedback). But I plan to run the same, buy once pricing, that I do for HueForge. That is, unlimited usage and 2 years of updates. ColorSmith will ship with a single license tier for full commercial rights. It will also run fully offline.

More on the Standalone version in the future, but in the meantime, here is a quick screenshot of the UI.

What Doesn’t Work?

ColorSmith is far from perfect and shallow gradients tell the story the best.

While the water, mountainside and shrine look fine, the sky is - well it’s bad.

And that’s because the sky really DOES need a lot of colors. Images with soft, shallow gradients are currently very hard. I can improve the sky with tools, but it can quickly become tedious. To the point where simply merging the sky into a one color is much easier and works better - taking just a minute or so to do.

The worst part is that ColorSmith currently thinks this image "scores” very poorly (63) and the previous image scores very well (90). In what seems to be a habit of mine, the ColorSmith Logo itself does not render cleanly.

This might be familiar to those coming from HueForge. It wasn’t until Color Match was launched that HueForge could even remotely create it’s own logo. Honestly the colors here mostly aren’t the problem, it’s the jagged color transition, and I already think I know the shape of the solution. Again, the scoring doesn’t realize how much this version differs to a human eye and I’m working on figuring out how to calculate that.

So the real struggle is very shallow gradients, especially if it’s also combined with a lot of different hues. Some of this can definitely be overcome.

In the meantime let me know if there are uses or features you would really like in the comments section.

Website Changes

Buying and downloading on the HueForge shop has never been ideal. The download links are hard to find and with annual commercial licenses, or upgrades from personal to commercial (not to mention Plugin orders), users get multiple order numbers to pick through. I’ve been working on a unified download page. A download button will automatically load on the store page if you are logged in and have orders under your account. That download button will take you to a page with all of your orders on it.

Let’s get the “bad news” out of the way. You can see the “Update Window” listing on this screenshot. Yes, I’m finally going to be cutting off maintenance updates for users more than 2 years past their most recent purchase date. This has always been in the terms since the very beginning, but I didn’t have the infrastructure to give users access to their last authorized version. Cutting off users without access to redownload their last authorized build was not acceptable. I will be giving everyone access to 0.9.4.x through this interface, my earliest supporters will not be penalized and set back to whatever their 2 year expiration build was.

UPDATE: 1st Party Plugin purchases (at this time ColorDrop and FlatForge) now provide a 1 time, 6 month extension to your maintenance window on HueForge. It will be applied from date of purchase or added to the end of your current maintenance period, whichever is a later date. This benefit is both retroactive and applies to future orders.

This interface also makes it much easier and clearer to pay for maintenance updates for as little as $9/year and for the first time, you can add beta updates from any license tier at any time without updating to commercial. (Commercial Licenses still come with beta access for 1 or 2 years depending on the license). Getting both at once also provides a bundle discount. There is no requirement to "keep up”. This interface will also provide the Beta builds when they exists to those entitled to them. As always, beta features are only restricted access while in beta. When they are fully released, everyone will have access to the features in HueForge. HueForge (and the plugins) will continue to provide all features to all users regardless of their license tier.

HueForge 0.9.4.2 - Release Notes

HueForge 0.9.4.2 is a substantial update focused on SpotFix reliability, Color Pop and Color Aware behavior, back-lit color accuracy, TD1 firmware and recovery, plugin security, crash reporting, and rendering stability.

It also includes a large collection of fixes across color matching, project loading, autosave, export, and mesh generation.

There are no updates to Plugins at this time.

Bugs Found since release:

• If you set your project folder first, then name your project exactly the same name as the folder, the folder name gets removed from your output folder path and you end up saving a level higher up than you intended.

• Ctrl+I and Ctrl+Shift+I don’t work as intended in SpotFix mode, instead they are shortcuts for Load Image and Open another HueForge instance.

New Features

SpotFix 2.0

SpotFix has received a major reliability and workflow overhaul.

• SpotFixes now save their settled pixel footprint with the project, so fixes resolve to the same regions on every machine and at every working resolution. No more drifting when a project is reloaded.

  • Older projects convert automatically on first load with a one-time progress dialog.

  • Unfortunately, if an older SpotFix already loads incorrectly, I was unable to reliably reconstruct the originally intended region.

• SpotFixes are now stable across model resizes and reloads.

  • Resize-and-back is an exact round-trip.

  • Thin-line seeds, such as anime outlines, stay locked to the intended region.

• New loop capture tools:

  • Select a loop and press I to capture the area below it, such as valleys or gaps.

  • Press Shift+I to capture the area above it, such as peaks.

  • Press Ctrl+I or Ctrl+Shift+I to capture the loop interior into a new SpotFix group. UPDATE - This conflicts with other commands on Windows at least. It will need to be fixed.

  • The hotkey overlay and help have been updated to match.

  This functionality existed previously, but did not work reliably enough to be particularly useful.

• Hold the middle mouse button to temporarily hide the selection overlay and see the true filament colors underneath.

• Added several new SpotFix controls:

  • Clear - confirmed and undoable

  • Recalculate

  • Up/Down Arrow navigation through the fix list

  • Show Seeds view, which marks each fix’s seed pixel

Color Pop & Color Aware: Modern Band Model

HueForge now has a new per-project Legacy / Modern band model, available from the luminance toolbar.

In Modern mode:

• Bright Adjust and Brightness Compensation remain inside independently normalized bands.

• The Color Pop split survives layer-height changes.

• Existing projects continue using Legacy behavior unless you explicitly switch them.

• Switching modes is undoable.

Color Aware also receives several improvements:

• Region boundaries can now be dragged by layer.

• Boundaries are validated and snap to the nearest layer edge.

• Brightness-compensation gradients are now visualized inside their bands.

Back-lit Color Accuracy

Back-lit prediction has been substantially revised to better match real back-lit prints.

• Per-layer color contribution no longer accumulates at half strength.

• Absorption blending is now the default.

• Back-lit blends darken with accumulated thickness according to each filament’s Transmission Distance.

• Stacked layers now become genuinely darker as material thickness increases.

The live matcher remains pinned to front-lit candidates. As a result, back-lit projects using Default Color Match will produce different - and improved - results.

Lighting

• Added a custom white LED color temperature control in Kelvin.

• Lighting changes now recalculate blend colors everywhere they are displayed:

  • Color Match table

  • Mesh Core strip

  • Mesh palette

TD1: Online Firmware Updates

TD1 firmware updates can now be handled directly through HueForge.

• Automatic firmware check once per day when connecting a TD1.

• New manual Check for Update Online button.

• Release notes are displayed before updating.

• Firmware downloads are SHA-256 verified.

• Downloaded firmware is cached, so updating a second device does not require downloading it again.

• Firmware too old to update directly receives a guided UF2 recovery suggestion.

• Flip Display now correctly hides on firmware versions that do not support it.

TD1: License Safety & Connection Reliability

TD1 recovery and communication have also been significantly improved.

• New Backup Status... menu shows whether the device’s license and settings are safely cached.

• The bootloader prompt now displays a green or amber backup-status icon.

• Recovery verifies the actual cache state and offers Back Up First when appropriate.

• Legacy recovery now presents its unplug/replug instructions before beginning the process.

Serial communication has been overhauled:

• Transfers and firmware updates no longer desynchronize or stall.

• Retries now actually retry the failed operation.

• Post-update reconnection has been reduced from roughly 23 seconds to about 2 seconds.

Plugin Trust & Security

HueForge now uses a tiered plugin trust system.

• HueForge plugins and curated Trusted Publisher plugins install silently.

• Other plugins receive a signature-details confirmation dialog before installation.

• The About dialog shows each plugin’s:

  • Trust tier

  • Publisher

• Every binary shipped with HueForge is signed.

Crash & Failure Reporting

Crash reporting has been significantly expanded.

• Crash reports now capture the actual faulting stack with full symbols.

• Reports include a loaded-module list.

• Memory-corruption faults such as:

  • Heap corruption

  • Stack overruns

  are now caught and reported. These previously often terminated HueForge without generating a usable crash report.

Renderer startup failures are also handled better:

• Renderer initialization failures now show a troubleshooting dialog instead of silently exiting.

• If HueForge cannot write to its normal log directory, logging falls back to the platform-default location.

Rendering Backends

The modern OpenGL renderer is now a first-class rendering backend on every platform.

• Linux now defaults to Vulkan when available.

• Linux falls back to modern OpenGL when Vulkan is unavailable.

• The previous legacy OpenGL option is now labeled:

  OpenGL (Legacy GL33)

• Existing rendering settings are migrated automatically.

Menus & Library

• Tutorials now have their own top-level menu.

• Update Tutorials is always available.

• Added the Bulldog-3D vendor filament library.

Improvements

Camera & View

• The 3D camera view is now preserved across window and panel resizes.

• HueForge only automatically re-frames the model when:

  • Loading a project

  • Loading a new image

Filament Editing

Filament edits now propagate consistently throughout HueForge.

• TD edits update:

  • Active filament entries

  • Favorites

  • Library rows

• Library edits now apply the complete filament definition:

  • CMYK

  • LAB

  • Secondary color data

  • Brand

  • Name

These changes also propagate correctly into:

• Core sliders

• Back-lit blending

• Color matching

Updates & UI

• Pre-release versions such as alpha, beta, and rc now correctly compare as older than their corresponding final release during update checks.

• Filter checkboxes persist across sessions.

• Added tooltips to 11 previously unlabeled buttons.

• Glyph icons have been replaced with theme-aware painted icons.

• The tolerance label no longer clips.

Mesh Budget

The mesh budget setting is now correctly labeled:

Max Vertices (Millions)

The previous Num Triangles label was incorrect and typically caused users to select values roughly 2x lower than intended.

HugeForge

• HugeForge now warns that SpotFixes are not applied to tiled exports.

Fixes

Color & Image

• Edit Image brightness compensation has been restored to its full 0.9.3.x strength after being accidentally reduced to one-fifth strength in 0.9.4.

• Zero Brightness Compensation adjustment no longer darkens saturated content.

• Bright Adjust no longer gets baked into the saved project and then applied a second time after reload.

• Fixed a Color Match median-filter off-by-one error.

  • Some edge pixels may move by one layer as a result.

  • This is intentional and removes the previous directional bias.

• Dot Product matching no longer sends near-gray pixels to the bottom of the filament stack.

• Projects opened under a different UI language no longer:

  • Crash

  • Select the wrong brightness-compensation curve

Stability

A substantial number of field-reported and internally discovered crashes have been fixed.

• Field-reported luminance crashes fixed.

  • Luminance computation is now serial by default.

• Dialogs opening mid-frame no longer deadlock the renderer.

• Meshes exceeding the configured budget now safely truncate instead of corrupting memory.

• Fixed malformed STL import crashes.

• Fixed palette over-reads.

• Fixed negative-collapse failures.

• Fixed unclamped shader palette lookups.

• Fixed Color Aware / Color Pop Inf and NaN failures.

• Fixed split-layer out-of-bounds crashes.

• Fixed Mesh Core palette crashes.

• Fixed an unnecessary idle redraw loop.

Projects, Autosave & Export

• Loading a project no longer incorrectly marks it as modified.

• Project thumbnails no longer capture a temporarily flattened mesh.

• The recovery dialog no longer appears over a project being opened by double-clicking it.

• Failed restores now report the failure correctly and preserve the autosave data.

• STL export cleanup can no longer accidentally delete files belonging to a sibling project.

• Projects created before External Borders existed now load as External, matching the UI’s historical behavior.

• Changing layer height no longer shifts layer masks.

  • Results are now identical across Windows, macOS, and Linux.

• macOS cold-start Open With no longer loses a Color Match.

I’ve started work on generating context to make machine translations more context aware to allow more complete and usable machine translations it did not get finished by the time I hit 0.9.4.2. I will release it as 0.9.4.3 (just a language update) and all users will get access to that version as well regardless of your maintenance window.

What about 0.9.5?

Scheduled to be originally released as a Beta, 0.9.5 has some extremely exciting new features. Let’s just say that the way you select and match colors, and filament colors is about to change, hopefully it’s going to get a lot easier. These will all be core features or be part of free plugins. I’m not quite ready to say exactly what I mean about those parts yet. (The free plugins should work with 0.9.4.2 - if they won’t, I will release a 0.9.4.x update to get it there)

Right now, I can talk directly about the native SVG support.

In more recent versions, the SVG support was greatly increased. The most recent version supports even more SVG formats (I never knew there were so many), and the raster image is made at the desired output resolution fresh every time you resize, but it’s still turned into an image. The new SVG Mesh Mode follows the exact SVG paths and gives sliders that directly control the height of those loops. Simple SVGs are best, flat colors render in minimal triangles and are trivial to adjust in height as needed. All loops of the same color will be controlled by the same slider on the SVG Mesh Core. No color matching happens so it’s very fast. That being said, complex or textured SVGs are also supported as a mixed mode. The outlines are exact matches, but the inside is the grid mesh you are familiar with. The system cannot support EVERY kind of SVG but many are supported and give great results.

There will be at least two new Mesh Modes in 0.9.5 with SVG Mode being one of them. The other modes are, in my opinion, a bigger deal than SVG mode. However, there are going to be a lot of usability issues to deal with. I think 0.9.5 is likely a September/October beta release and will need a lot of UI feedback.

Meanwhile, if you’ve gotten this far, stay tuned. I will have another announcement later this week that I think you will love. I’ll just leave this as a hint.

This update focuses on smoother rendering, better color matching, more reliable plugin installation, and several platform-specific fixes across Windows, Linux, and macOS. Primarily just a bugfix release.

Rendering and Performance on Windows

HueForge now handles the newer RHI rendering path more reliably on Windows.

The renderer no longer switches graphics backends mid-session, which should prevent one source of D3D stutter. Viewport animation is now capped at 60 fps and automatically pauses while dialogs or popups are open, reducing unnecessary GPU load.

There is also a new one-time informational tip for NVIDIA G-Sync and high-refresh-rate setups, since those configurations can sometimes cause visible stutter. This appears as an informational popup, not a warning, and can also be found later under:

Help -> Stuttering on NVIDIA

The newer RHI mesh renderer also now correctly uploads STL geometry.

Color Matching

This release adds a new OKLab color-match mode, along with a Standard Luminance model setting that includes an OKLab option.

Several color-match bugs were also fixed:

• Lab colors are now recomputed correctly when switching into a CIELAB color-match method. Avoiding blank or stale color blends when you first switch (without moving a slider)

• Undo and redo routing has been fixed.

• Color Match edit-image overrides now behave correctly when loading projects with them set opposite the user settings.

STL Import

STL import received several quality-of-life and correctness improvements.

HueForge now offers to align the layer height when loading an STL. Disabled and masked layers now stay correct when the base height or first-layer height changes, and HueForge now guards against a zero layer height.

Plugins

Plugin installation and loading are now much more reliable.

The failed-plugin dialog is clearer now too, with a plugin’s DLLs grouped into one entry instead of being shown as separate confusing failures.

Linux

The AppImage build has fixes for:

• Save Defaults path handling

• Opening external links correctly on systems with Qt UIs built in.

macOS

macOS received several startup and permissions improvements:

• Fixed permission-dialog focus and startup timing

• Improved folder-permission checks

• More robust translation and localization loading
  

Coming Soon!

First Class SVG Support. Load your SVG and HueForge will draw the outlines smoothly and allow easy manipulation of individual loop heights. Basic functionality is in, handling large numbers of loops or similar but not identical colors and merging them smoothly is still in progress. Resulting meshes are also VERY low triangle.

You still run with a Mesh Core, but it contains the merged loop colors and directly controls them so it’s fast to update with no color matching having to happen. Then simply apply your colors on the Color Core as usual.

Color Counter

If you missed my announcement, I’ve also added a fun little tool on the HueForge website. The Color Counter just drop your image into it and it will tell you how many unique colors it has. You will likely be surprised. All processing is done on your machine and no data is transferred to the store, and I never see what you count.

Let me know if you can beat my 1 million color image without cheating!

This might also be a hint at what I’m working on. Or maybe not.

I know you are here for the 0.9.4 Release Notes, but let me take a moment first to introduce the first ever 3rd Party HueForge Plugin. The 3MF Export Plugin!
This has been a widely requested feature, but it’s a HUGE task given how different every slicer is in how it implements and uses the 3MF format. Additive Atom took on the task of working with all the slicers and figuring out their formats to make it easy to export HueForge projects as 3mf files instead of STLs. It can’t solve EVERY possible output need, but it’s a huge step forward in ease-of-use.

In case you are wondering why this isn’t built into HueForge - Slicers all have their own variations of the 3MF format. It isn’t a “standard” so much as a “packaging format with a couple of rules” but anything that falls outside the scope of those rules is fair game. Vendors can and do handle things differently and they regularly change their formats. This is too much for a one man dev shop to handle along with primary HueForge development. Which is why I’m super exited that Adam took on the challenge.

UPDATE: Two fixes in the past 24 hours. First, borders now work in v1.0.1 and v1.0.2 added Anycubic Slicer support.

Release Note for HueForge v0.9.4

New Rendering Engine

HueForge now uses a modern hardware-accelerated rendering pipeline:

• Direct3D 11 on Windows (default)

• Metal on macOS (default)

• Vulkan available as an option on Windows and Linux - you will need your own libvulkan.so.1 on Linux. The VulkanRT Installer is included in the Windows installer.

This resolves long-standing crashes on AMD multi-monitor setups, improves compatibility across Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA GPUs, and allows HueForge to recover automatically from GPU driver resets instead of crashing.

The render backend will startup in it’s default modes (so Metal on MacOS and D3D11 on Windows) and can be changed in Settings. A restart is required.

UPDATE: Some users with high refresh rate monitors and G-Sync have seen stuttering menus. Turning off G-Sync in the NVIDIA Control Panel for HueForge specifically seems to solve the issue. (Manage 3D Settings → Program Settings → add HueForge → set Monitor Technology to “Fixed Refresh”)

This change alone would make this a worthwhile release. But it wasn’t enough for me.

Community Filament Libraries

You can now subscribe to community-maintained filament libraries alongside the official vendor libraries. This is a big deal and should make sharing curated filament lists much easier. Finally letting the Community Libraries shine.

Want to create a Community Library? Go to https://github.com/thehueforge/hueforge-community-library-example and fork the repository then follow the Readme instructions. If you set it up correctly, simply updating the library json files and committing them to the repo will update the manifest for you automatically.

Community sources can be added and managed from:

Filaments -> Manage Community Sources

When a community filament conflicts with a vendor library entry, the new Community Library Settings let you choose which source takes priority.

Community filaments now appear with a badge showing their source.

Filament Library Auto-Updates

HueForge can now check for updated vendor or community filament libraries and download them in the background.

You can check manually from:

Filaments -> Check for Library Updates

HueForge can also check automatically on startup.

Individual library entries can be suppressed if you do not want them updated.

Fixed the Palette in STL Export

The printable palette (Options→Attach Palette is again correctly appended to exported STL files.

Palette configuration is also saved and restored with Named Defaults configs.

SpotFix

SpotFix received several workflow improvements:

• Each SpotFix now shows a collapsible list of its constituent sub-regions

• Sub-regions can be removed easily by deleting it from the list.

• Hovering over a sub-region highlights it live on the 3D mesh

• Individual SpotFixes can be enabled or disabled

• All On and All Off buttons manage the full list at once

• A Recalculate button forces fresh region detection without rebuilding the full mesh

• Clicking any pixel in the 2D view while in SpotFix mode jumps directly to that layer

• The tolerance setting is now remembered when switching modes

Edit Image Brightness

In Edit Image mode, if you deselect Alternate Edit, the Bright Adjustments now uses perceptual CIE Lab lightness making it more useful and closer to the Mesh based adjustments when Edit Image is off.

This gives more natural highlight and shadow adjustments without blowing out bright areas or crushing dark areas.

Color Matching

Fixed incorrect color matching results for:

• Achromatic colors

• Whites

• Grays

• Blacks

• Very dark colors

Removed some “Dead” code in the shaders that was causing issues on Intel GPUs, but also turned out not to be fully dead and was degrading image quality. Images should be sharper now.

Color matching is also significantly faster, especially on low end GPU hardware. This resolved GPU timeouts that could crash the preview.

TD1 Connectivity

TD1 handling has been improved:

• Better detection and handling of multiple HueForge instances with a TD1 plugged in. (Only one HueForge can connect)

• TD1 reconnects automatically after a firmware reflash

• A port with a permission error can now be retried without restarting HueForge

Multiple HueForge Instances

Running more than one HueForge window at a time no longer causes plugin conflicts.

Each instance now uses its own private copy of plugin files.

Compatibility Warnings

HueForge now detects and warns if third-party software is injecting code that can corrupt the 3D preview/crash the application.

This includes:

• Nahimic

• ASUS Sonic Studio

• RivaTuner / RTSS

Settings

The Settings dialog has been reorganized into tabs:

• Model

• Project Tree

• Exports

• Updates & Network

Export Permission Check

HueForge now checks whether it can write to an export folder before attempting the export.

If the folder is not writable, HueForge blocks the export and shows a clear error instead of silently failing or partially writing files. It also doesn’t close the dialog so you can fix it and retry without having to relaunch the dialog in question.

This applies to:

• Save as STL

• 3MF plugin - The first 3rd Party HueForge Plugin made by Additive Atom!

• FlatForge

• HugeForge

ColorDrop

Non-Modal Dialog

ColorDrop now stays open while you work.

You can make changes in HueForge and see ColorDrop update automatically without reopening the dialog after every adjustment.

Color View Modes

A new Color View dropdown lets you choose how the ColorDrop preview renders the model:

• Slicer

• Back Lit

• Front Lit

Per-Piece Independent Blending

Each color nest in the 3D preview now blends independently.

This gives a more accurate representation of the final print.

Tight Cutout Per Nest

Tight Cutout can now be toggled individually per color nest instead of applying globally.
In normal cutout mode, the anchor color layer is used as the template for cutting out the hole. This is often correct, giving you outlines and letting larger areas of the base anchor be used. But sometimes it leaves gaps you don’t want. So the cutout instead is created by the remaining base layer. Perfect for stained glass made using Color Drop.

Auto-Sync

ColorDrop automatically refreshes when you change:

• Filament stack

• Blending settings

• Model height

Camera Persistence

The ColorDrop 3D preview camera angle and position don’t reset every time you toggle an option making it easier to compare them.

Height Summary

After exporting, ColorDrop shows the original model height alongside the resulting print height.

Fixes

ColorDrop fixes in this release include:

• Blank preview on export

• Wrong border color in certain configurations

• Tight Cutout showing incorrect geometry on first launch

• Nests not re-detecting after a filament change

• Auto-suggest not recovering after clearing a selection

• Height estimates incorrect for star-pattern nests

• Duplicate color piece names when the same filament appears more than once in the stack

• Reduced lag on slider moves

• Sliders no longer trigger a full mesh rebuild

HugeForge

HugeForge benefits from the FlatForge and core engine stability improvements in this cycle.

This includes:

• New render engine

• Export permission check

• General tiling reliability fixes

FlatForge

FlatForge fixes in this release:

• Fixed crash when exporting large models

• Exporting very large prints, such as 250 x 250 mm at fine detail is more stable on low end systems.

• Fixed 3D preview on older graphics

• FlatForge viewer now renders correctly on OpenGL 3.3 hardware, including Intel integrated graphics

This update window was all about reliability. We focused on fixing edge cases that could interrupt workflow, especially around SpotFix behavior, filament library consistency, macOS stability, and render-thread safety.

A few things - Some users have gotten black color cores with zero sliders on them. I’m not sure why this is happening, but the fix is to go to Options→Reset Defaults to Factory

Issues with TD1 License request should also be sorted out. The boot_out.txt now saves properly and the instructions are clearer.

What’s fixed

• Saving a Project with Advanced Options but not Split By Color was making a shorter STL than it should. This has been fixed.

• SpotFix loop expansion now behaves predictably and no longer over-selects unexpectedly large regions.

• SpotFix traversal now respects already-masked regions, enforcing exclusive loop ownership to prevent accidental stacking/over-claiming.

• SpotFix undo/redo and merge behavior were tightened so loop edits restore correctly instead of drifting into invalid transparency states.

• Transparency/base-thickness mask behavior now survives Min Depth changes correctly.

• Active/Favorite filament rows now stay in sync with the main filament list when edited (including ownership/state consistency).

• macOS project save permission recovery was hardened so failed writes can recover cleanly instead of silently failing.

• TD1 “permission denied” dialog loop was fixed to stop repeated popups.

• A monitor sleep/wake crash path was fixed by keeping offscreen surface handling on the GUI thread.

• Color Match LUT access was made render-thread safe with a lock-free snapshot path.

• Mask-toggle paths now include stronger bounds checks to prevent heap corruption in edge cases.

• Help/readability issues across dark/light OS themes were fixed.

• HugeForge/FlatForge fill-height mismatches were corrected so tiled outputs are consistent.

• Also the HugeForge/ColorDrop/FlatForge path produces consistent height tiles.

• FlatForge tiles have even fewer gaps than before. Still some issues but cleaner than they were.

• ColorDrop/FlatForge was dropping layers with duplicate filament names.

• Config Wizard now blocks invalid configuration moves into the app directory.

• macOS startup was stabilized further by hardening early-init paths.

Surprise! ColorDrop Plugin Released with HueForge 0.9.3

Get More Details Here

Also checkout out - About HueForge and check out the Mesh Modes descriptions for help understanding how HueForge works.

In the meantime, some of you love release notes so… these are for you.

Currently Release for Windows/MacOS. Linux hopefully early this coming week before RMRRF. That’s the plan. It’s building but way under tested.

You WILL need to download the updates for HugeForge and FlatForge to keep them working

HueForge 0.9.3 Release Notes

SpotFix — New Feature

SpotFix is a new tool for making targeted height adjustments directly on your model.

Click any region in the 3D view to create a SpotFix, then adjust it up or down by layer to fine-tune problem areas — without touching your source image.

Key Capabilities

• Region-based selection — Click to select a color region; Ctrl+Click to expand to adjacent regions

• Layer delta control — Push regions up or down by layer count (+ / -)

• Flatten modes — Snap a region to a specific layer instead of nudging (F to cycle)

• Inside-loop fill — Fill enclosed regions like letters or shapes (I to toggle)

• Eyedropper — Sample a target layer from another part of the model (E)

• Tolerance control — Adjust how aggressively regions are selected (W / S keys)

• Undo / Redo — Full undo stack within SpotFix mode (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y)

• Non-destructive — SpotFixes are saved in your project and adapt automatically when layers or size change

SpotFix Hotkeys

• Click — Create new SpotFix at cursor

• Ctrl+Click — Add region to selected SpotFix

• / - — Adjust layer delta

• F — Cycle flatten mode between the most common, top or bottom layer of the selection.

• I — Toggle inside-loop fill (only after clicking)

• Del — Delete selected SpotFix

• Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y — Undo / Redo

• Esc — Deselect

• W / S — Adjust tolerance (above / below)

• 0 — Reset tolerance

The SpotFix toolbar button shows an amber indicator when fixes exist in your project.

Project Tree — New Feature

Project Tree introduces a visual branching history for your project.

You can capture snapshots at any point and move freely through your edit history without losing work.

Features

• Automatic snapshots on mesh mode changes and Project Save

• Named snapshots with custom labels

• Searchable snapshot list

• Visual branching graph

  • Blue paths = undo history

  • Green dashed paths = redo branches

• Separate User Tree (manual saves) and Autosave Tree (automatic captures)

Keyboard Shortcuts

• F4 — Create named snapshot

• F5 — Quick snapshot

• F7 — Navigate backward (undo path)

• F8 — Navigate forward (redo path)

• F10 — Toggle Project Tree panel

Filament Library Improvements

• Favorites — Mark filaments for quick access at the top of each category

• Active Filaments — Currently used filaments grouped together automatically

• Import / Export Personal Library — Move your filament collection between machines (JSON format)

• Preview on import — See what will be added, updated, or unchanged before applying

• CSV import fix — Missing optional fields no longer cause rows to be dropped

• Safer saves — Atomic writes prevent corruption during crashes

Mesh Optimization

Flat surface regions are now heavily optimized.

Uniform flat areas are merged into larger triangles instead of using a full per-pixel grid, dramatically reducing file size with no visible quality loss.

Optimization is uniformly applied to all output. Modes like FlatForge will not benefit as much given the non-flat mesh geometry.

Background Removal

The old manual background removal step is gone.

Transparent image backgrounds are now automatically excluded from mesh geometry across all save paths with optimized bottom mesh layers.

Performance Improvements

• Luminance calculation — 4–7x faster (multi-core)

• Height updates — 2–4x faster

• Mesh generation & splitting — Significantly faster

• Project load — Eliminated redundant rebuilds (previously 2–3x per load)

• SVG rendering — Now re-rendered from vector source at target resolution (no pixel upscaling)

Color Matching Improvements

• HSV matching — Much more accurate for stylized and illustrated images

• Dot Product matching — Improved performance for photographic images

Stability Fixes

Fixes across:

• Out-of-bounds and null dereference crashes when moving sliders on the Color/Mesh Core

• Sliders — Undo behavior corrected; handles update immediately

• Project loading — No longer drops filaments used across multiple sliders

• OpenGL — Fixed texture leaks, validation errors, and deprecated usage

• Shutdown — Fixed hanging processes (Windows) and exit crashes (macOS)

• Background tasks — Proper cleanup before shutdown

• macOS — Fixed incorrect default config directory on fresh installs

Other Improvements

• First Layer Height — No longer required to be a multiple of layer height (plugins + advanced options)

• Named Defaults — Save and manage multiple default project configurations

• Help/Tutorial Menu — Now supports live-updatable content

• Borders now save properly when saving with Advanced mode. Though still no borders for non-rectangular models.

HugeForge Plugin v1.1.2

This release adds a new Checkerboard Tiling Mode, improves borders and spacing behavior, adds destructive crop support, and fixes several reliability and sizing issues.

Checkerboard Tiling Mode — New

A new tiling mode for creating staggered layouts such as chess boards, mosaics, and decorative wall panels.

• Checkerboard mode places tiles in an offset grid, with odd rows shifted by half a tile width

• Max Per Row and Total Tiles controls for tighter layout control

• Square Tile option to lock tile width and height together

• Skip First Tile option to invert checkerboard parity for generating the second color set

• Rotate Source 90 to rotate the image before tiling

• Image Offset slider to shift the crop window when tiles do not perfectly cover the image

• Smart tile size defaults auto-calculate when switching to Checkerboard mode based on project dimensions

• In-app help added with a ? button next to Checkerboard mode, including SVG diagrams and chess board setup instructions

Borders and Spacing

• External borders for tiled prints now extend around the full assembled piece instead of only individual tiles

• Partial borders can be applied per tile edge, such as outer edges only for interior tiles

• Border on each tile option added for Checkerboard mode to apply full-frame borders to every tile

• Tile spacing is now reflected in final assembly dimensions, including border width

Destructive Crop

• Crop spacing from image now permanently crops the image at tile boundaries, creating image gaps between tiles.

• Final size calculations now correctly account for both destructive crop and border width

State and Reliability

• Persistent state for HugeForge settings is now saved and restored when you reload your project.

• Tile generation stabilized with fixes for stalls, spike removal timing, and empty-layer crashes

• Split-state resilience improved for interrupted or partially completed tile exports

Fixes

• Fixed settings not persisting between dialog opens

• Fixed resize handling when switching between modes

• Fixed tile size snapping by using round instead of truncate to avoid floating point precision loss

• Removed limitation on Base Layer Height being a multiple of the layer height.

FlatForge Plugin — Release Notes (v1.1.2)

Layer Gap Stitching

• The biggest quality improvement for FlatForge prints. Previously, separated color layers could have visible gaps at boundaries where layers meet. Fewer gaps in flat surface.

• FlatForge meshes are now completely watertight and should work with Mesh Booleans and not just Negative Modifiers.

Performance

• Parallel mesh generation — layer meshes are now built concurrently across threads, with a 2 GB memory budget to prevent OOM on large models

• Per-mesh progress reporting — progress bar updates for each layer as it builds

• 8.7x faster HeightMap setup

• Reduced mesh allocation overhead

Memory

• Preview meshes freed before export — halves peak memory during STL generation

• Dialog close cleanup — FlatForge meshes, heightmap data, and preview data are all released when the dialog closes, fixing memory leaks that accumulated with repeated use

• Null guard on setHeightMapData to prevent crashes

Other Changes

• Fixed cap layer z-position using consistent zSpacing

• Fixed double-sided export and folder path handling

• Background removal (cutout) now happens by default — removed the separate CutoutSession

I wanted to have these releases out earlier, but also wanted to fix some pretty significant crash bugs in HueForge and the PlugIns. I also ran into some “fun” MacOS Permissions issues that I’m still not certain I’ve fully sorted out, but I was able to save pretty much everywhere I tried to save.

IMPORTANT NOTE: HugeForge v1.0.1 will crash HueForge versions below v0.9.2.2 when run.

New Features

• Added the ability to replace Plugins with newer versions. Simply install your Zip files, it will show you which plugins it will replace. Then they will be replaced the next time you start HueForge again.

• Also added the ability to drag and drop Plugin zip files or .plugin bundles on MacOS directly onto HueForge and have the install process run.

Bug Fixes (HueForge and Plugins)

• Lots of MacOS Permissions fixes. Apparently moving my Dev environment to MacOS 26 completely revised how permissions work. It broke Recovering TD1 as well as made multiple users have constant requests for access to Documents. Hopefully this is sorted out (I know the TD1 Recovery works, I ran in multiple times), though you MIGHT get asked one more time.

• Fixed STL Export error on MacOS that made it impossible to export a single STL

• Fixed Project Save errors related to checking the wrong directory for where to save (both Windows and MacOS)

• Fixed only 1 file being created when saving a standard HugeForge Plugin (not Split by Color)

• Fixed crash when adjusting the height of the Flat Fill Cap

• Fixed crash when saving FlatForge/Fill with one or more layers unchecked

• Fixed unexpected behavior when choosing Save Project in Folder. Now it will append the folder if it isn’t there.

• When saving into folder, it won’t treat that folder as the last Project location when trying to open a new one.

• Fixed HugeForge making zero thickness transparent caps when printing flat, face down.

• Fixed Full Range behavior for HugeForge Plugin. You do not need to turn it off before using HugeForge, it will be locked to the original image Full Range when using HugeForge - this should actually work with v1.0.0 now as well.

• Fixed font color for Capability Tabs to be readable

• Fixed Transparent Layers on the Color Core not updating the Mesh

• (0.9.2.3) Fixed issue with .plugin installation instead of .zip files.

Known Issues

• MacOS 26 has entirely different layouts for Message Boxes, which can lead to cutoff text.

• Linux under GNOME, child windows cannot be dragged around, only resized. Dragging them drags the parent window. This is apparently a known GNOME bug.

• Wayland is not working in the AppImage. I can run it locally (extracted package) but when running in the AppImage it would crash every time so I removed it. XCB is the only option. It also has dialog resizing issues.

• You may need to install libxcb-cursor0 libxcb-xinerama0 libxkbcommon-x11-0 on your Linux distro

• MacOS and Linux are not recording the dialog sizes for HugeForge and FlatForge to bring them back up at the same size as before like Windows does.

• MacOS still crashes on exit occasionally. Especially when saving the Filament Library on exit. I know where it’s happening, I’m not sure how to stop it.

• TD1 Recovery is slightly different on MacOS - you need to tell it where to save the file (just press Save) and it can do so. On other systems it doesn’t prompt for the save. This is to solve what looks like a Permissions bug when trying to get permissions for the root folder of a drive.

• It might not be possible to get permissions for the root folder of external drives on MacOS. You should be able to create a folder and get permissions for the folder. It is unclear if this bug is fixed yet or not, but my experience suggests it might not be.

This update is NON-Critical for those not experiencing Crash bugs. But it does fix some unexpected behaviors so in general I think it’s worth updating to. Check out the Bugfixes and Updates to help make your decision.

I have also released a Windows Shell Extension to give previews for HFP files in File Explorer. You can download that from GitHub here and you too can have File Explorer windows that look like this:

And thanks to a helpful user, OneDrive folders (which I was unable to get working) now work as well. You can download the source code if you are so inclined and modify further/expand or you can just grab the 1.1.0 Release version and install it if you’d like.

You might notice that there is a still an unpreviewed project file. Old projects that don’t save images and thumbnails internally will not have a preview. Also it can take time for the full folder to update with the preview - but once it does, it should be quite quick.

Bugfixes for v0.9.2.1

• Fixed Crash bug in MacOS when loading HueForge with an active non-English Translation

• Fixed Crash bug/no STL when using Advanced Options to Save Project In Folder but not using Cutout Background or Split by Color.

• Fixed behavior around missing Output Folders

• Check to make sure a folder is writable and handle when it isn’t with an error message

• Automatically add the project folder when the option is checked if it isn’t already at the end of the path after clicking Ok.

• Automatically Remove the project folder when unchecking Save Project in Folder if the end of the path includes the project folder

• Ignore project Folders when Saving or Loading projects again so you don’t always have to navigate up a folder.

• Fixed crash on checking version when there isn’t a Beta build (in Qt 6.9.3)

• Fixed inconsistent rendering issues for Transparent layers

Updates

• MacOS Development required updating to Qt 6.9.3 for development in MacOS 26. So both Windows and MacOS have been updated meaning you need the entire zip folder for the update as all of the Qt plugins (separate from HueForge plugins) and DLLs have changed.

• Color Sorting order has been changed for Find Closest Filament. It should be more intuitive in the way it groups colors now.
  

HueForge v0.9.2 is primarily the Plugins build. But there are some bugfixes and minor feature updates in here as well. I will have the standard Bug fixes and New Features at the bottom. You are here for PlugIns.

HueForge handles plugin installs and removals for you directly from zip files.
Installation happens immediately and doesn’t require a restart:

Install easily and directly from the downloaded Zip file.

Removal does require a restart:

Once you are done with your HueForge work, simply go to the PlugIns folder and run either HugeForge or FlatForge/FlatFill on the existing HueForge and it will run the processing while giving you live progress. If you have both HugeForge an FlatForge, you will be able to flatten HugeForge prints as well.

Each PlugIn has it’s own Dialog to interact with. More in-depth instructions will come in the next week but for the most part these are pretty simple processes.

When loading FlatForge/FlatFill models, you must grab the whole group and import as a Multi-part model

Then you can assign colors based on the model name instead of layer swaps.

The Describe.txt file will give you information specific to your plugin

One further note - the FlatForge and FlatFill models will be MUCH sturdier than standard HueForge prints. You do not need to have much Base Thickness to get great solid prints.

KNOWN ISSUES:

• Meshes aren’t always manifold. This doesn’t seem to affect printing or slicing as long as it is 10s of non-manifold edges per model, not thousands.

• There are some gaps on the top layer that pretty much don’t show up in the final prints. Both of these issues are going to be the focus of future work as I believe they are both things that can be solved.

• FlatFill is not available for HugeForge or other plugins currently.

• If you adjust the FlatFill offset height it will crash on save.

• If you uncheck the Transparent layer for facedown, it will crash on save. If you do not have transparent to use, you can simply not load the transparent layer into the slicer for now. (And print your first layer at 0.04 or 0.08mm).

• If you are on MacOS and select a non-English translation, it will crash on start every time. I have this fixed, but was required to update much more than I wanted when I updated to MacOS 26 to figure out the issue (both reported on MacOS 26) and am doing more testing to make sure there aren’t significant regressions. I’ve already fixed a couple that were pretty big.

Bug Fixes -

• MacOS delete button not deleting sliders without the Fn button pressed as well is fixed.

• MacOS translation install was not putting translations in the correct folder.

• Removed debug TD1 menu options

• Remove any Disabled layers that are above the Max Blending Depth before saving to avoid breaking disables on load.

• When “Save Image in Project File” is unchecked, fix the image path so it saves with the Project as before.

• Made Font Resizing Persistent (and fixed multiple bugs and scaling issues).

• Better colors for Light Mode to make the UI more readable

• Fix Blend Assistant Dialog placement to avoid situations where it cannot be closed.

• Added tooltips for some missing controls

• Fixed bug with loading Layouts when in different languages.

• Find Closest Filament now works when in a non-English language

• Flatten First Slider will flatten the lowest Color Core slider now in Color Match Mode (previously it was the lowest mesh core slider). Does not work with Split by Color currently.

• Unchecking Save Image Inside of Project File correctly creates an image in the folder with your Project and with the correct name.

New Features -

• PlugIn Menu with Install Plugin/Remove Plugins option. Installation done directly from download zip files, no need to unzip or move files manually.

• Bold/Regular font options

• Progress indication when saving Projects/STL files.

• Color Core Right Click→Make Single Layer Transparent will drop the mesh height to 0 for anything that should be at that layer. Multiple layers can be set but one at a time (Shift-T is the hotkey to toggle). Transparent layers are indicated by a half color/half transparent checkerboard visual. This is MOSTLY useful to remove white backgrounds without an image editor. More options may come in the future.

  

• Save Project now gives options

  

  
  Clicking on the Advanced Options checkbox gives you the option to either Split By Color (so you can color by object instead of layer in the slicer), or Remove Background (get rid of the rectangle behind cutout prints)

  

  Both options create more triangles but have their advantages. Split by Color will also remove the background.

• TD1 and TD0 are supported and it will intelligently switch between them changing menu options etc. TDFree will connect without checking an option, but it still doesn’t work in Windows. I was unable to get mine working with the new firmware to attempt tests.

• Recovery TD1 will now restore to v2.0.1. TD0 recovery will recover to v1.0.0

• Shipping with v2.0.1 which is a 2 stage update that HueForge supports. So it will automatically install the first part, then the second part after the TD1 restarts.

• Filament Library layout has been streamlined a bit and is more consistent with font sizes etc.

• Added 3D-Fuel filaments.

• Fix for Linux Black Screen on newer kernels that also works on older kernels.

• Fix for issue with Translations invalidating your Layouts and only working in the Language they were created under. This fix will break any layouts made under a different language but they will now carryover between languages without issue.

• Fix for occasionally deleting the personal_library.json and overwriting with a blank version.

• Fix for missing TD-1 files and it will clear out old files if they exist.

• Fix for version number not including the final .x in the check. It will correctly check for that now and the version number has been updated. However, the old version will not correctly identify an update existing when the release version is longer than the source version, so v0.9.1 or earlier won’t see the new version (but going forward it will)

• Attempted fix for Pla+/PLA+ mismatch when pulling filaments into the merged PLA/PLA+ menu in French with Placeholder Translation.
  

As described in the Known Issues post, v0.9.1 is mostly about Translations and bugfixes for v0.9.0. There are a FEW exceptions and some extra bug fixes

Bug Fixes

• Fix crash on Ctrl+N (New Project) with a layer height of 0.08mm

• Fixed crash when changing Steps in the Blend Assistance without first setting Source and Target Colors

• Fixed MacOS Drag/Drop to not require the release of the Cmd key to drop. FYI this is a MacOS specific issue where it treats a drag with Cmd pressed as being a global drag and pulls it out of the application. I rewrote the entire drag/drop stack to fix things for MacOS. Hopefully I didn’t break anything - I spent a decent amount of time testing this.

New Features

A few new features snuck in but they were, by design, very minimal. These don’t include Translations which are handled in the next section.

• TD-1 (or TD1s) firmware version 2.0.0 included.

• Changed all TD-1 Menus and menu items to TD1

• Fixed the recover TD1 option to work reliably

• Added Release Notes dialog for TD1 firmware updates

• Added “What is TD?” Information pop-up with more details on why TD matters and how to measure it. This will alternate with the HueForge Resources dialog at startup until “Don’t show this again” is checked. This can be accessed through the Help menu or the ? link in the Filament Dialog next to TD afterwards.

• Added the ability to choose to check automatically for updates. This checkbox is in the Help menu and follows the idea of never trying to reach the internet without the user knowing. This will check on HueForge startup once per day. You can still check manually if you want.

HueForge Translation

HueForge will now accept Qt Translation files (.qm files) as well as translated version of html or json files that are in HueForge (like the “What is TD?” dialog contents.) Changing Translations will require a restart of the application (and MacOS will often report that it crashed and restarted as it doesn’t like the quick turnaround) to get everything consistent.

There is a public GitHub repo here with the source files needed for translating HueForge as well as instructions on how to create new files. Translations can be loaded dynamically either through Preferences→Language→Manage Translations or by simply copying them into a folder called translations in your Configuration directory. At launch I have most things translated in French (Thanks to Placeholder and Quasar Creations3D) (More UI elements were added after the initial translation), virtually everything in Japanese due to the help of Daisuke and two other collaborators (please tell me the name you want to go by and I’ll add it here) and Simplified Chinese by Evan76. I have another partial Simplified Chinese translation that will hopefully be updated soon that I can include in the GitHub repo.

If your language isn’t there, it’s because I haven’t made contact with community members able to help with the translation. Machine translations have been VERY poor given the 1-2 word controls and no context. But adding new translations as the community makes them is incredibly easy for end users to do as soon as they are available and you can have multiple translations from different sources for the same language and HueForge will coordinate that and let you pick the one you want.

If you are part of a language community without a translation, it is important to note that you could start with JUST the main controls and work from there slowly updating over time. There is no requirement that all text is fully translated before submitting a new translation file. The overall management of the GitHub repo has not been finalized and I will likely be looking for some community managers to help with this task. Let me know if you are interested.

Known Issues

• Choosing New Project on an empty project crashes if your default layer height is 0.08mm. It does not crash for 0.04mm layers.

  • This is fixed in the dev build

• Increasing/Decreasing the number of steps in the Blend Assistant before setting the source and target colors crashes

  • This has been fixed in the dev version

• In some models in Standard/Combo mode, the height of the model is off by 1 layer.

  • Not yet fixed.

What’s Next for v0.9.1

• Bugfixes for v0.9.0

• Localization - Machine translated with hopefully some tester feedback

Yes. That’s it. I am aiming to have this out by the time I’m headed to JRRF in June. I have a lot of other cool, useful, fun features I’m planning on implementing for v0.9.2 to make Color Match easier/more powerful, but translations need a fair amount of effort and learning and I don’t want to delay them any long than necessary. If you have a specific language you would like translated into (French, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese are already on the list) and/or are willing to help proof/improve the translations, please contact me.

Updated: 04/18/2025

• Selecting Sliders on either Core requires actually covering part of them with the selection box but the highlighting implies they are all captured.

  • Workaround is to make sure your selection box goes across the entire Core region.

  • Fixed in next build, selection is now based only on the height of the selection box and does not require you to actually intersect the Slider flag itself with the selection box

• When turning off Edit Image in Color Match, the image does not revert to un-edited

  • Fixed - workaround is to change to Standard Brightness Compensation mode before unchecking Edit Image

• When loading a new image, sometimes the aspect ratio of the image doesn’t change and the new image takes the aspect ratio of the previous image

  • Turning off Options→Show Image at Print Size fixes this issue

  • Currently unable to replicate this issue, I believe it is a race condition. Reloading the project solves it.

• Some MacOS users report crashes when trying to start v0.9.0-beta-1. This appears to be an order-of-operations issue when popping up the request dialog for permissions before the main window has been initialized.

  • This has been fixed and I have updated this single change up to the MacOS version today April 9th. (I will not rev the version since it isn’t an issue for most users)

• Some Linux distros - (Manjaro for sure) require installation of Qt6SerialPort to run. This shouldn’t be the case as the AppImage should include that library, will investigate.

• Some linux Distros crash trying to create the GL Context

  • Preliminarily fixed. A Fedora 42 user with the same error reports success. Now waiting on confirmation.

• Error in the Blending up algorithm is not providing enough distinct shades of the darker color

  • This is fixed pending a final validation print. It is much better than the v0.8.1 or the v0.9.0-beta-1 version. This might justify a short v0.9.0-beta-2 period.

  • Blending up AND Backlighting have been revisited and are both significantly better.

  • This was fixed again, when I accidentally broke regular blending.

• Sometimes moving the top slider does not update the mesh height.

  • Fixed but I don’t like the fix.

• Sometimes dropping a new color on the Mesh Core does not update the color match until it is moved.

• When converting filament to Image Filament (so you can modify it without changing the library filament) blending changes significantly.

  • Fixed in dev build.

• MacOS Browse Projects is not showing anything while Browse Example Projects does.

  • Workaround, Preferences→Add Directory Permissions
    Assign permissions to your Documents folder as a whole. Then use Browse Projects.

  • Solution has been found - this was a bug, I wasn’t getting permissions properly.

• When changing Base Thickness in Standard Mode, it does not properly register the movement of the sliders (they do move up, but they don’t update the mesh). Changing modes clears the issue.

• Very log describe text can exceed the desktop space.

  • It has been reformatted to be resizeable and scrollable if it gets to long

New Features (because I can’t help myself)

Updated : Added 04/15/2025

• Recently Opened Files (up to 10 will show in the order they were opened, top being the newest)

  • Saved projects now get added and this will only show Project Files.

• You can now save Window Layouts and then restore them as desired. This could allow different layouts for different projects or computers.

  • Multiple issue with this have now been sorted out.

• You may now turn off the hex codes in your Describe.txt

• Amazon Affiliate Links added for Filament brands that do not have a direct affiliate relationship with me.

• The ability to flatten your mesh to the level of you first slider above Min Depth. This removes texture from flat backgrounds which may or may not be desirable. It will still allow blending to that color if you need with a color below Min Depth.

I absolutely failed.

While PRIMARILY a UI update, this update also hosts a bunch of other changes as well.

Key New Features:

• MacOS Permissions now works for any arbitrary location you give permission for. You may save to Downloads/Desktop/External Volumes etc.

• You may hide Filament Brands and Types you don’t own/want to see. You can also merge PLA/PLA+ into a single tab.

• Configuration may be moved to anywhere you like - including shared cloud storage drives like OneDrive

• UI Streamlining by changing most Dock Widgets to Tool Bars and allowing smart Font Resizing. There may still be a few Dialogs which don’t properly resize. Controls are moved but almost all still here. ToolBars may be rearranged as desired.

• Much better user experience for 1366x768 resolution users.

• Experimental Secondary Filament effects like Glow, Color Shift, and Fluorescence (One type per print, multiple filaments may share an effect)

• Filament Tagging system which is searchable and some are active for rendering (like Silk)

• Experimental lit renderer. Gives a more real-world visualization of your print, maybe. Including filament shine (or lack for matte) and color shifting effects like Starlight filaments)

• Replaced Filament Sets with Core Fragments, drag and droppable sets of filaments with fixed slider distances that can be inserted, overwritten or merged into a core.

• Min Depth and Max Depth are changed to Base Thickness and Blend Depth. Blend depth is always applied on top of Base Thickness and sliders are automatically adjusted when it is changed.

• Experimental Blend Assistant to help figure out what color to use to get the result you want. (Thanks to Eli Mamane for the idea!)

• Momentary buttons are recolored to be distinguished form Toggle Buttons that are off.

UI Changes:

MOST of the changes are captured on the Wiki

But a few changes have happened since then

• The delete key can be used to remove sliders from the Mesh/Color core, not just zero them. Delete cannot be undone.

• When a slider is in TD mode, the arrow keys (up/down) now also adjust TD. This is done for touchpad users.

• In TD Mode, holding down Shift while mouse wheeling up/down or arrowing up/down will act as a “fine” adjustment with 0.2 intervals instead of 0.5.

• Bug fixes to the Blending Assistant to work anywhere on screen. It also now accepts drag and drop from filaments or image colors into the Start or Target color.

• Added filament hex codes into the Describe text.

• Allow optional Brand and Name for filaments in the instructions section of Describe for cases when using multiple filaments with the same color name.

• Starting your filament filter with # will search on color code for matching Filaments (CIELAB DeltaE2000)

• Added options for putting the palette on the Left or Right of the print and making it attached or separate (for test printing ahead of time). Also fixed the palette on MacOS/Linux

• Added Preferences for Always/Never enter Edit Image when going into Color Match

• You can convert a real filament to an “image” filament so you can change the TD and not change the underlying filament in the library.

• Fixed a bug with image filaments not undoing properly after being dropped onto the bar

• Fixed an issue with really high width aspect ratios causing the predicted model to be upside down.

• Added “R” key to be a shortcut to reset view, and the Image gets reset as well.

Bug Fixes:

There are a lot of bug fixes from v0.8.1 here is an overview

• Fixed issue with loading STLs on Linux

• Fixed Border Bug in Color Match

• Fixed issue with Mesa 24.3+ and HueForge OpenGL

• Fixed OpenGL workflow errors

• Fixed improper coefficient in CIELAB conversion (better matching)

• Improved algorithm for “blending up” to darker colors from bright colors

• Fixed issues with Backlit Prediction going black too quickly.

• No longer crashes on ASCII STLs, will load them natively. It is still recommended to convert them as they are much larger.

• Correctly create Log and TD-1 folders on a new install

• Corrected code for reflashing TD-1 to work correctly.

• Fixed Color/Mesh Core sizes, especially on lower resolution displays. Much closer to using the full height all the time.

• Disabled layers load correctly when your project has a greater Max Depth than the defaults.

• Reset to Default Windows Layout works, and doesn’t require a restart.

• AMD Compatibility mode is no longer necessary.

• Borders are fixed to be uniform regardless of the image size. You may also choose to add them outside the image or not - if you don’t, your longest side will shrink to maintain correct aspect ratio for the image inside the border.

• Image file monitoring is more reliable (for auto-updating)

• If you extract the image from a project, it will automatically be monitored for changes.

• Fixed filament links in Library

• Fixed “Find Closest Color/Filament” to be CIELAB DeltaE2000 comparison and make TD a secondary consideration.

• Fixed Reset View depth calculation to handle virtually all cases now

• Fixed issue with Blend Depth and Base Thickness not having arrow step sizes equal to the layer height when loading a new project with a different layer height

• Fixed a lot of Dock related issues by simply getting rid of them

• Fixed multiple bugs in calculating mesh size and allocating memory for it.

• Fixed Mesh height mismatches resulting in 1-2 layers taller meshes than Max Depth.

Known Issues

• Filament Sets are inaccessible. They will likely be re-added under the Filaments menu for those few that use them. Core Fragments should replace them mostly.

• Some Linux builds crash on STL files > 100mb. I was unable to recreate with a 196mb STL.

• Some Linux builds still show a Magenta Clear color in the prediction, but otherwise function.

• Optimized Mesh has been removed for a future release.

• Color Shift in Color Aware mode has a 2x effect when in Edit Image mode.

• Buttons between Mesh/Color core are not uniform in size and some fonts render hard to distinguish Unicode text

• Not all dialogs work correctly with the resized font. Finding the remaining dialogs is a Beta priority.

• Crash on Exit on MacOS and Linux on occasion.

v0.8.1 Changelog:

Updated: November 22, 2024

• Fix bugs with TD-1 Updates

  • When updating from zip file, Find Update File button did nothing after the update was found. Fixed

  • Fix search paths on MacOS to find an update.zip in your Users Download folder instead of the Container Downloads folder.

  • Added an option to force upgrade with the currently installed firmware.

• Fix issue with non-ascii paths when double clicking and HFP file to run to launch HueForge on Windows.

• When launching by double-clicking HFP file, do not bring up the Autosave dialog.

• Fixed bug when launching a Color Match HFP File loading a blank rectangle (workaround was to change to any other Luminance Mode and back)

• Fixed error in deleting Autosave after Saving a project. So you should get fewer alerts.

• Added an option to turn off Autosave.

• Fix bug causing Cores to show multiple layers below Min Depth/Lowest slider instead of just 1.

• Fixed bug where at 8mm+ heights, Slider mm indicators would sometimes show more than two decimals

• Fixed bug in help menu not having Tutorials etc. listed. Also added a few more links

• Added hotkey r to reset view

• Added hotkeys , and . or < and > to change which core is active in Color Match, c will toggle between them

• Updated The Seashell Test PDF to have more clear instructions on how to print it.

• Fixed “Export Edited Image” not being available when loading a project with Edit Image selected.

• Only allow Export Image on Projects that have the image saved internally

• For projects with the image file saved as part of the project, automatic reloading of image files now works when changing the image file originally saved into the project.

• Fix screen spacing when loading an STL. It will not correctly collapse the Image pane and make the STL take the full volume.

• Removed Reload Shaders button

• The Add Filament dialog now allows tabbing between ALL elements.

• Reset to Default Layout in Windows works now (requires a restart)

• Fix Light/Dark mode changes not persisting - unfortunately this error means everyone will be blasted with Light Mode when they restart, but it will be fixed after you change it once.

• Loading Example Projects no longer sets that folder as your default Projects folder.

• Fix cores going black with VERY small layers and tall meshes

• Do not copy a 0 filament personal_library.json into the configuration folder, HueForge will create a new empty library instead.

• The Import Configuration tool will display more information when potentially overwriting files to avoid inadvertently smashing your file.

• Center the HF Logo on the Import Configuration dialog when users have very long file paths.

• Fix Dark Outer checkbox sometimes not reflecting View Analysis correctly.

• Warn users when they have Image Colors in the Color Core and look at Describe.

  

  
  

I’ve gotten a ton done in the past week and feel pretty good about the general state of HueForge for full release, but there is a lot of testing to do on MacOS and Linux for some of the current changes and I think it is much more responsible to give that some time. Also, I’m out of town this weekend for a family trip so no work over the weekend.

UPDATE: The image was printing while I made this post and has now finished. Curling is my fault for not cleaning the bed on an 350mm tall print, but I kinda like it in context!

In the meantime, here is what has changed between Beta 2 and now:

• Clicking on a Color or Mesh Core layer will switch the prediction to that core.

• Moved the button to switch, if you prefer that, to between the Cores. This spot is in preparation for a more complete toolbar between the cores, but that is going to be pushed to a future UX update release.

• Windows - Moved all configuration including Filament library to Users/AppData. This means you can unzip into Program Files if you want, but also after this version, you will never have to worry about copying your filaments or configs again. This brings it into parity with Linux and MacOS. In order to support this, at startup, you will get a dialog asking for the location of your previous install and it will automate copying over the files. If you screw this up, there is an option in the File menu to try again (you will only get the pop-up once).

• Example Projects and Tools will now be in ~/Documents/HueForge for all OSes as well.

• Added Export Log File option in File menu for support requests (since the log files are now stored in AppData).

• Remove “Import Personal Library” for Windows users.

• Fixed a bug where filaments on the Mesh Core and Color Core were not reflecting TD changes made on the other core. (And the library was not reflecting Mesh Core changes)

• Streamlined TD-1 Firmware updates. You now provide it the update vX.X.X.zip file (from anywhere on your system) and it will stage it properly, then show you what the differences are and have you confirm the update. This will avoid cases where users accidentally put update files in the wrong folder. It will also apply the update to a standard location that will automatically prompt you to update other TD-1s that get plugged in.

• TD-1 Recovery “Wizard” for corrupted TD-1 units with step-by-step instructions to follow.

• Updated Help→Tutorials with new videos

• Added Help→Work Along for projects like the Red and Blue ball and Vector Frog

• Added Wiki links to the Help menu

• Fixed a crash bug when turning on Borders

• Fixed a bug where View Analysis shows nothing if Edit Image is not selected

• Fixed a bug that allowed exporting an empty filament.json/csv

• Added more Color Match example projects

UPDATED October 23, 2024
Store Updates:

I’ve been busy behind the scenes at the HueForge store. First, I added Download and Discord links back to the Thank You email and also your Order Status pages and added https://account.thehueforge.com to access your order history. There is still a bug on some orders that they do not display the Download link properly. My App provider is working on this issue. UPDATE: The bug has been fixed and as far as I know, everyone now has both an download link and a Discord link there.

I have also turned on local currency for much of the world so you can pay in your local currency and not need to be able to get USD. Along with this, I started a pilot program for variable pricing given purchasing power. I am basing it on the cost of a spool of plain PLA in the countries for the most part as that is a consumable that you will need for HueForge. Currently HueForge pricing is different in Brazil, Argentina, India, Turkey, and the Philippines and hopefully more affordable in those countries. I am limited in the number of different regions and pricing I can have unless I pay more for my Shopify store, but hopefully this helps users around the world.

Release Schedule:

EDIT : Releasing this week does not mean released NOW. It means coming this week.

UPDATE: Both v0.8.0-beta-2 and v0.7.4 are now released!

This week will see v0.8.0-beta-2 and v0.7.4 fixing some high criticality issues. It’s easier to list the changes to v0.7.4:

• Make Autosave less aggressive - delete the autosave after saving a project, don’t autosave if the project hasn’t changed, and allow Discard on load.

• Also show the image being worked on for the Autosave where available.

• Fix prediction for blending up from white to darker colors (any light color to a darker color).

• Minor update to Backlit prediction to increase color contribution.

• Clarify TD-1 Error.txt dialog with title and more description about how to make it go away.

• Connect to an unlicensed TD-1

• Allow TD-1 License file backup.

• Auto-backup the license file of a TD-1 and offer to relicense that TD-1 later if it is connected without a license (if you have to UF2 flash it)

• Contains the v1.0.4 TD-1 firmware update and should auto-prompt to update your TD-1 if it detects it is out of date. As new firmwares come out and are put in the TD-1/updates folder, it will do the same thing.

• Jessie Premium PLA/PETG (Printed Solid) has been added to the filament library.

• More Projects in the included Projects folder.

v0.8.0-beta-2 has quite a few updates, here are few:

• All v0.7.4 changes

• Add Option to save images inside of projects - This will allow projects to be saved ANYWHERE on MacOS, you will just need to export your STL and read the Describe text from the Describe button instead of the text file.

• Add Option to Export Image from Project

• Add Option to Export Edited image from Project

• Add Thumbnails in the project

• Add Project Browse option which shows the project thumbnails instead of just HueForge icons (Ctrl+B)

• Autosave on load will show the thumbnail image of the project in progress.

• Autosave also saves the image intelligently so it doesn’t slow processing down and only updates when needed.

• Dropping an Image Color onto an existing slider will retain the slider’s TD instead of setting it to 1.

• CIELAB Color Match method is improved to take brightness into account more strongly. (It is now my personal default)

• Image Zooming now takes the original image resolution into account and doesn’t get pixelated so quickly. Option to display the image at the resolution for the Print Size. (This can assist with finding pixels out of place in Color Match)

• Fixes to layer height displays after changing Brightness Compensation modes

• When the Mesh Core is selected, highlighting the Prediction will also show the Color Match layer. (It will show a layer when Color Core is selected, but it won’t be associated the way you want)

• Fixes to sliders turning white or getting lost when updating Min/Max Depth or Layer Heights

• Some fixes to Undo after changing Max/Min depth and Layer Heights. (still not perfect in all cases)

• Pressing ‘Z’ while over a Core Slider will set it to zero height (enabled or disabled)

• Fix bug where dropping a new color on a slider would sometimes not update the color blending prediction.

• Fixed rounding error for certain Min Depths causing Color Core displays to be wrong.

• Image change tracking. If you edit an image you are working with in Affinity/Photoshop/Paint.Net, HueForge will see that update and ask if you want to reload it. You may choose hopefully non-annoying options related to that image.

• Filaments with affiliate links to buy now have a link icon next to them in the filament library for easy identification.

• Separate layout presets from non-v0.8.0+ versions so you can change layouts between versions. Autosaves are unique as well.

• Multiple high quality Color Match projects in the Projects folder for you to dissect.

Full v0.8.0 Release When?

I’m aiming for the end of October or early November and feel like Early November is pretty achievable. Looking forward to getting this out to everyone. I will then aim at some faster and smaller updates after this release. Single features rather that massive updates.

Let’s start by talking about “Known Issues”

• Borders don’t work in Color Match

• Undo is unreliable - ESPECIALLY when you change layer heights (workaround is to save after a layer height change and reload the project immediately) - around the color core*

• Crashes on MacOS - still unsure why this is, I need more MacOS crash reports to track this down. It tends to STOP crashing and then work more or less from then on for affected systems.*

• CIELAB CM isn’t very good - color but not brightness drive the algorithm

• MacOS Ctrl+Left Click doesn’t work (this apparently is set to turn a left click into a right click on MacOS). But Cmd + Left Click does work. However you must release Cmd before you enter your drop zone or it won’t register that you have entered - I don’t know why. If you do know why, let me know. (This isn’t a BUG so much as a difference)

• When Shown Color is pointing at the Mesh Core and non-color Match Projects are loaded, you can end up with the sliders having no effect because the Mesh Core sliders are hidden, but active. (Workaround - switch into Color Match and back to the original mode)

• If you have the luminance image format selected and run File→Close it will crash.

• Dragging an image color to the Mesh core does not always force an update (workaround, move a Mesh Core slider)*

• Luminance Preview does not update when a new image is dropped in while in Image Format→Luminace

• Zoom invert only applies to mesh not mesh and image*

• Image/Mesh zoom directions are opposite by default*

• Zooming in shows pixelated image even for high resolution originals

• Actual Depth can be higher than Max Depth (this was actually true before but is even more true now…)*

• Autosave pop-up is abusively regular. (True in v0.7.3 as well)

So what has been done in the interim or “Updates”

The majority of the above bugs are fixed. If they have a * next to them, they are still outstanding in some form. For instance some of the Undo bugs are fixed, but some still remain (I still rarely get undo bugs, but they do happen and are pretty inexplicable when they do. Changing layer heights is STILL the #1 cause of Undo bugs).

But I’ve also added new features/QoL improvements.

Meet the optional Browse Projects window

As part of this, images can now be optionally saved INSIDE the project (they cannot currently be extracted from the project, but that is on the list). They now also save a thumbnail and this includes the autosave, which means when you are offered the Autosave dialog at the start -

It includes the same thumbnail, but also an option to not just cancel the load, but discard the autosave. Thumbnail saving only happens at project save and image saving happens only when necessary (if the image hasn’t changed, it won’t update the save) and is threaded so it won’t slow you down.

There was a “hidden limit” of 4096x4096 mesh points. This has been removed, and as part of this removal, dynamic mesh sizing is now in place so smaller meshes will greatly reduce the memory footprint of HueForge. Only VERY big meshes will cause issues. I have also increase the Max Height and Width allowed to 5000mm each.

When in Color Match, it is common to need to find which layer is matching a particular spike/dip in the PREDICTED mesh and it’s often hard to find the exact pixels in the Image. So long as you have the Mesh Core set active, mousing over the prediction will ALSO select the correct layer on the cores.

Unfortunately, since the Color Core does NOT have to have unique values on it, when the Color Core is selected, the layer height is not necessarily correct.

I have further interactions with the Prediction window that I plan on implementing.

In a BIG update, the first change to the predictive model for filament paintings has been validated. Previously, others have noticed that blending on top of white is not as accurate as blending on top of darker colors. This makes “blending up” difficult to predict.

This is fixed in the current development version, allowing this print using white at the bottom, Penumbra Gray, Fortress Gray, and Black (at the top)

This is VERY useful for avoiding strong edges from earlier layers in images and sometimes for cutting down print times significantly over the other direction. This fix will be included in a v0.7.4 as well as the Beta patch when they go out (the v0.7.4 patch will fix the aggressive autosave as well) as it is useful in Color Pop and Color Aware in the full release version.

Here is an example of using Blending Up to put the red highlights naturally right on top of the black so that there isn’t an edge, or the need for a second black. (This is on the printer right now)

There are more things currently in progress, but I’m not yet at the point where I can discuss them because they aren’t complete. Suffice it to say, the first beta update is going to be a big one.

In the meantime - Come see myself, Ajax-3D, and several of my Discord Mods (and my dad) at 3DPrintopia in Bel Air, MD next weekend (Sept 28th and 29th). Admission is $10 and at a minimum you can see the Droids - and they are worth that $10 all by themselves, not to mention everyone else who will be there, including 3D Printing YouTubers as well as a bunch of your favorite companies. (And maybe some that are mortal enemies.. I don’t know your heart).

Personal Use $24

Limited Commerical $60

Professional Commerical $120

Lifetime Professional $350

Polymaker has agreed to increase their Personal Use filament coupon to match the new price for buyers in the US and Canada. (I'm still more than happy to talk with other vendors around the world who might want to match elsewhere).

The value of the upgrade coupons for higher level versions of HueForge will also increase to match the new values, so PUUPGRADE will be worth $24 off regardless of what you paid when you bought the first time. So upgrading from Personal to Limited Commerical will cost $36 up from $27 currently.

MacOS Beta issues:

Control+Left Click and drag to drag slider or image colors around does not work in MacOS, you need to use Command+Option+Left Click. I will try and normalize this to just Command in the next update.

Some users are reporting crashes at launch or when switching to Color Match. I haven't experienced this on my dev MacBook Air but it's clearly happening. If you have this problem, please email me your MacOS crash log and the log files in Documents/HueForge/Logs if you can so I can try and build up as picture of the cause. I believe I know the overall category of error but these can be very tricky to nail down so all the data I can get will be helpful. I'll update this post if I don't need it anymore.

Happy HueForging!

v0.7.3 is a true bugfix release and contains at least these fixes:

• AMD Compatibility mode for out of support cards. If you can get a new driver for your card, do not use this mode, but if your last driver is 2016-2017, you will need to turn this on. (In Preferences)

• Fix multiple crashes due to removing sliders while an image is loaded

• Fix crash on resizing beyond your triangle limits

• Time based autosave added (to a separate file that can be recovered on HueForge startup)

• Fix bug when using Split Image - true blacks now properly invert

• In Color Aware using Split Image, the lowest color range properly inverts to display the correct brightness order for the color

• Undo Fixes on removing/adding sliders

• Add Ctrl + +/- for Zoom on the Preview.

• Better support for TD-1 Errors and added new allowed files and options for TD-1

• Fix for Power slider values when the default value of Adjust Amount is not Medium and you change CA Presets

• Added Split Image Color Pop demo Projects

• Remove invalid OpenGL calls

• Allow all Filament Sets to be loaded regardless of number of sliders and adjust slider count when more are needed

• Fix multiple issues around changing layer height, mesh height and others causing bad slider height values.

• Fix issue when replacing an image file with an SVG and saving, not correctly replacing the image file for the project with the SVG file.

• Fix bug when undoing a new filament

• Fix dialogs popping up on another monitor for multi-monitor systems

• Fixed bug on image files with no / in their name

These Known Issues Remain:

• Linux has some graphical issues with Mesa v24.x. Hopefully this will be sorted out in the Mesa library.

• Turning borders on and off can lead to display errors in the mm height of sliders originally in the border region

Color Match Beta - v0.8.0-beta Highlights

• Add Color Match Luminance Method

  • Buttons that are not currently active in Color Match are disabled

  • Combo Slider on the far right controls a weighting of where you want the mesh to pick. 0.5 is neutral, higher is a weight toward higher mesh core locations, less than weights towards lower ones.

  • Multiple options - for lower power GPUs, Dot Product should be the fastest.

• Added Preference for loading images by their implied size (by resolution and DPI)

• Added Preference to load to your original Default size so that images don’t get suddenly small or very large.

• Add Active Color Cores with draggable slider flags

• Added separate Mesh Core for Color Match

• Added deferred rendering for Color Match calculation

• Added ability to apply Brightness Compensation and Bright Adjust to the image, not the mesh to support Color Match but it can also be used in regular mode.

  • These edits by default are NOT the same as Brightness Compensation but are more easily controlled.

• Edit Image can also use Alternate Edit which more closely matched the original Mesh Compensations.

• You can invert any of the Color Aware regions by right clicking on the region indicator on the Color Core.

• You can zoom in on the source image.

• Slider buttons moved to the bottom for space.

• Added Clear Slider History button to clear the memory of other Brightness Compensation or Luminance modes so the sliders don’t adjust when checking between them.

• Added Autosave (version specific so it won’t overwrite v0.7.3 autosaves)

• Added Step Brightness Compensation which acts like a pseudo Luminance Posterize/Quantize

Known Issues:

• Same Linux Mesa 24 issue

• Abort on exit in Linux

• Color Match does not always work exactly the way you expect and can be confusing/frustrating, especially at first.

• Work-along tutorial videos are coming, hopefully by Friday August 9th.