LightZone Engineering Release Notes

Note: This is text file for engineers only. Please feel free to be verbose.

Changes for 3.1, rXXXX, 3-Sep-2007

New Features

You can now restrict every tools' effect to a range of color or luminosity.
The Raw Adjustments tool now automatically removes "hot pixels" from your raw photos.
Crop and Rotate have been improved.

Camera Support

Raw files from the following cameras are now supported: Olympus E-400, E-410, E-510; Ricoh Caplio GX100.

Changes for 3.0.6, rXXXX, 28-June-2007

Fixes (all platforms)

Upgrading from pre-3.0 versions of LightZone Basic to 3.0.x LightZone Basic now works properly.
A DNG image created from a Fuji raw image was not handled correctly. This has been fixed.

Fixes (Windows only)

The font used in menus was too big. This has been fixed.

Changes for 3.0.5, r8780, 27-June-2007

New Features

LightZone Basic is now available again.

Fixes

Some Sony raw photo were opened with the wrong dimensions. This has been fixed.
In some cases, you would get a Save dialog even though the Auto Save preference was enabled.

Camera Support

Kodak P712, Nikon D40X, Olympus SP-550UZ, and Samsing GX10 raw files are now supported.

Other changes

If a photo is read-only, the ability to edit metadata is now disabled.

Changes for 3.0.2, r8648, 8-June-2007

Fixes

Fixed oversaturated colors in the sharpening tool.
Fixed related issue in noise reduction.

Changes for 3.0.1, r8637, 7-June-2007

New Features

Adjusting the Exposure slider of the Raw Adjustments tool so that the value is negative performs highlight recovery.

Fixes

Removed artifacts that were sometimes introduced when using the Relight tool.
The Black & White and Color Balance tools have had minor corrections.
In some cases, vibrant colors were overly saturated. This has been fixed.
Editing of metadata works much better.
Fixed generation of IPTC and XMP metadata for JPEG files that previously resulted in an incompatibility with Photoshop CS3.
Fixed obtaining the artist information from CR2 files.
A photo's rating is now properly stored when generating new TIFF files.
Fixed obtaining the exposure-time/shutter-speed information from Canon raw files.
Fixed reading of artist, copyright, caption, and rating metadata from DNG files.
Styles now appear in the Import Styles dialog.
The capture date/time from CRW files is now included when converting to JPEG.
Now writing IPTC metadata in a more standards-conformant way using the Dublin Core XML schema.

Camera Support

Fuji Finepix S5 Pro raw files are now supported.

Other changes

LightZone now shows both the "Edit Size" and the "Version Size" for an edited photo and its original.
LightZone now goes to the "Discover LightZone" help page instead of the cover when first launched.
You can now sort by file type in the browser.
The Browser menu now includes Select Recent and Unselect All menu items.
You can now use the Delete/Backspace key to delete a region while editing a region.
When converting to JPEG, lens metadata is now preserved.

Changes for 3.0, r8440, 21-May-2007

User Interface

LightZone now has distinct browse and edit modes.
There is now context-sensitive help throughout LightZone.

Photo Browser

Related photos can now be stacked.
You can now move photos via drag & drop to folders in the Folder Navigator.
You can now select only the most recent versions of your photos in a given folder.
You can now edit IPTC metadata.

Photo Editor

LightZone now comes bundled with many ready-made Styles.
The Relight tool (an improved ToneMapper tool) has new Depth and Fuzz sliders.
There is now a History tab that shows you all the edits you have make to your photo since opening it for the current editing session.
The Raw Adjustments tool has a new As Shot button.
LightZone no longer uses LZN files and now always saves your work as either JPEG or TIFF files for maximum interoperability with other applications.

Camera Support

Canon EOS 1D Mark III raw files are now supported.

Changes for 2.4, rXXXX, XX-Apr-2007

New features

The Black & White tool has a new Strength slider.
The Hue/Saturation tool has a new Vibrance slider; the Luminosity slider has been removed.
The Noise Reduction tool has been simplified.
There is a new Raw Adjustments tool.
The ToneMapper tool has new Shadows and Highlights sliders that replace the Radius and Gamma sliders.

New requirements (Windows only)

LightZone now requires a computer that has a CPU with SSE2 instruction support.

Fixes (all platforms)

An integration issue with the French and German versions of Lightroom has been fixed.
An integration issue with other applications and photos that have no color profiles has been fixed.
Users can no longer get an arbitrarily long trial license period by setting the computer's clock to a date in the future.
The color temperature of photos from Canon cameras is now displayed.
The rating is now included in the metadata of exported TIFF images.
IPTC metadata as XMP is now also included in exported TIFF images.
IPTC metadata dates are now exported correctly.

Fixes (Mac OS X only)

LightZone no longer switches back to the other application when opening another photo.

Other changes (Windows only)

Improved appearance of Save and Export dialogs.

Changes for 2.3.2, r7735, 26-Mar-2007

Fixes (all platforms)

The trial license dialog now displays the expiration date better.

Fixes (Windows only)

Under Windows Vista, users' home folders (as well as some other folders) incorrectly showed a long, alphanumeric string (a GUID) rather than the folders' name in the Folder Navigator. This has been fixed.
LightZone and its installer are now digitally signed. This eliminates the "Unknown publisher" warning.
The eSellerate engine is now installed by the installer rather than during the first run of LightZone.

Changes for 2.3.1, r7718, 21-Mar-2007

Fixes (Mac OS X only)

When opening a photo directly from another application other than Aperture, Lightroom, or iPhoto (e.g., drag-and-drop from the Finder), you'd incorrectly get a dialog asking you to choose "Unknown" followed by an AppleScript error. This has been fixed.
When doing a "Save As..." for a file that already has _lzn in the name, LightZone would incorrectly insert _lzn again. This has been fixed.
Selecting an item from a pop-up menu by click/drag/release didn't work. (Selecting by click/release/move/click/release worked, however.) This has been fixed.

Changes for 2.3, r7705, 19-Mar-2007

New features

There is now seamless integration with Apple's Aperture, iPhoto, and Adobe's Lightroom via the new Direct Save preference.
There is a new Red-Eye Reduction tool.
The new Black & White tool replaces the Channel Mixer tool.
The Sampler now includes Lab color information.

Fixes

The Check for Update preference wasn't being honored. This has been fixed.
They keyboard shortcuts that rate and rotate photos in the browser are now enabled only when you click in the browser. This fixes an interaction problem when typing into text fields.

Other changes (all platforms)

The "TIFF Writeback" preference has been replaced by the new Direct Save preference.
Disabled buttons now look more disabled.
A gear icon is now being used for the tool pop-up menu.
When trial licenses expire, images are now watermarked.
The browser now remembers the selected photos after a sort-order change.

Other changes (Mac OS X only)

When saving, _lzn is now inserted as a filename suffix to help prevent accidental overwriting of original JPEG and TIFF files.

Changes for 2.2.2, r7443, 9-Mar-2007

Fixes

Fixed the opening of the LightZone Help window for non-English locales.

Changes for 2.2.1, r7434, 6-Mar-2007

Fixes

Fixed a bug that prevented saving or exporting images to disks other than the system/boot disk.

Changes for 2.2, r7421, 5-Mar-2007

New requirements (Mac OS X only)

Java 1.5 Release 5 is now required. If you have not already updated to it, get it by selecting Software Update from the Apple menu.

New features

You can now rate your photos.
Raw conversion has been improved.
Orientation changes (and ratings) are now stored in sidecar XMP files for interoperability with other applications.

In previous versions of LightZone, orientation information was stored in a LightZone database. To preserve the orientation of photos you've already rotated, the first time your browse a folder with LightZone 2.2, it will create a new sidecar XMP file for every photo in that folder that's been rotated using LightZone's browser. If the folder is read-only, no XMP files can be created so orientation information will be lost for photos in that folder.
Printer settings are now saved with your work so you can easily reproduce prints.
The user interface has a darker and all-gray appearance to reduce color distractions.

Camera support

Nikon D40 raw files are now supported.

Fixes

All known printing problems have been fixed.
Fixed a problem where rotating a photo would also rotate all saved versions derived from that photo.
Fixed a compatibility problem between sidecar TIFF files created by LightZone and opening them in other applications.
Fixed a crash with some display color profiles.
Fixed artifacts with the noise reduction and Tone Mapper tools.

Other changes

Performance on computers having Intel (or compatible) processors has been improved.
The way preview images are generated has changed. The first time you click on a thumbnail, it may take several seconds for the preview to appear.
XMP metadata embedded inside JPEG files is now read.
The browser menu previously available only via right/control click has been given its own menu in the menu bar.
You can now edit a photo simply by clicking on its preview image.
The behavior of the "eye" button that shows the before and after versions of your photo has changed: you now need to click and hold the button to see the before version.
Support for PNG images has been removed.

Changes for 2.1.2

Fixes

Fixed several issues for batch processing.
The photo sort order is now remembered between launches of LightZone.

Other changes

Improved performance for reading, processing, and zooming in/out of large photos.

Changes for 2.1.1

Fixes (all platforms)

Very small files having a .tif or .tiff extension that aren't actually TIFF images will no longer cause crashes.
Problems encountered during batch processing now have better recovery.

Fixes (Windows only)

More problems renaming or deleting files from the browser have been fixed.

Changes for 2.1

New features (all platforms)

LightZone can now operate as LightZone Basic (formerly LightZone RT).
You can now specify a resolution when exporting images.
When saving a template, you can now select which editing tools from the tool stack are saved.

New features (Mac OS X only)

There is now a Show in Finder menu item that shows the selected photo in the Finder.

New features (Windows only)

There is now a Show in Explorer menu item that shows the selected photo in Windows Explorer.

Camera support

Leica Digilux 3, Panasonic DMC-L1, and Pentax K10D raw files are now supported.

Fixes

JPEG images having CMYK color profiles are now both read and exported correctly.

Other changes

The Multipage checkbox has been removed from the Save dialog box when saving (not exporting) as TIFF. Multipage TIFF images are now created only when integrating with either Aperture or Lightroom.

Changes for 2.0.6

New features

The Crop Tool now allows user-specified, constrained aspect ratios.

Fixes (all platforms)

Fixed a crash when navigating some folders.
Fixed the White Balance tool for photos taken under fluorescent light.
In some cases, better preview images are now generated.
Fixed a bug where the browser would sometimes not show a thumbnail for a photo if it was the only photo in its folder.
Saving your work as a multipage TIFF image now correctly includes the tool stack as part of the metadata.
Fix a bug where deleting a selected region using either the backspace or delete keys would also delete all regions linked to the selected region.
LightZone can now correctly open and export to JPEG images having color profiles that are greater than 64K in size.
Fixed incorrect values shown for photometric interpretation metadata for TIFF and DNG images.
IPTC metadata is now correctly exported to JPEG images.

Fixes (Mac OS X only)

Bundles (e.g., applications, Aperture's library, etc.) no longer show up in the folder navigator.
If you have many color profiles installed on your computer, displaying either the save or export dialog boxes was slow. This has been fixed.

Other changes

The interface for the Noise Reduction tool has been simplified.

Changes for 2.0.5

Fixes

Fixed a problem where thumbnail images in the browser were sometimes shown at an incorrectly low resolution.
Improved performance in the histogram.
Improved display of histogram.
For tools that used an eyedropper cursor (such as the Color Balance tool), fixed a crash if you clicked the mouse outside of the photo area.
Fixed a bug where if you typed the Enter key rather than clicking OK in the Save Template dialog, your template name would not be used.
Fixed a bug where you would get two copies of default raw adjustment tools when pasting tools onto a raw file using the browser.

Other changes

Improvements in performance and overall stability.

Changes for 2.0.4

Fixes

Fixed a performance issue in the browser.
Fixed problems with interaction with other applications like Aperture and Lightroom: if LightZone was set as the external editor in such applications, LightZone would sometimes open a received photo in a new window, and sometimes would not show a received photo in the Editor Layout.

Changes for 2.0.3

Camera support

Fuji S9000 raw images are now supported.

Fixes (all platforms)

Improved performance in the browser.
Scrolling the browser with a mouse wheel now scrolls one row at a time as opposed to three at a time.
The help for the Color Balance tool and for Copying & Pasting tools was completed.
Files containing Unicode characters are handled better.
Fixed crash for View > Zoom to Fit when the LightZone window was very small.

Fixes (Windows only)

Windows XP x64 SP 2 is now supported.
Fixed a crash when using either the ToneMapper or Noise Reduction tools on computers having a Pentium 3 processor.
You can now actually delete photos from the browser.
Multiple instances of LightZone are now handled correctly again.

Other changes (Windows only)

The location of the LightZone.log file has been moved to your "My Documents" folder for easier access when submitting requests to Light Crafts' customer support.

Changes for 2.0.2

Fixes (all platorms)

Overall performance has improved for caching image data.
Fixed a crash for some rare cases of TIFF file.

Fixes (Mac OS X only)

Fixed incorrectly requiring a minimum version of Tiger of 10.4.4 (10.4.3 is the correct minimum version).

Fixes (Windows only)

Now able to run on computers having at least SSE support instead of requiring SSE2.

Changes for 2.0.1

Fixes

Fixed "mesh-like" artifacts for Olympus raw files.
Fixed previews for some raw image files from remaining low-resolution.
Fixed not being able to open photos or folders whose names contain accented characters.
Fixed batch processing that would sometimes overwrite files even when the "Create new files" option was selected.
Fixed the wrong ISO value for some Canon PowerShot cameras.
Fixed an incorrect link for Blend Modes in the help.

Other changes

A Reset button was added to the Preferences dialog. Clicking the Reset button will reset LightZone to have its original factory settings. This can sometimes resolve some problems you may experience.