1.5.0
Added
- • 32-bit (float) mode: a new per-document precision mode processes the whole graph in 32-bit floating point with linear-light compositing and overbright (HDR) values preserved end to end; switch in the new Color menu (requires a Pro license or trial).
- • Color management: 32-bit documents pick a working space (Linear, sRGB, ACEScg, ACEScct, Linear P3-D65) and a display transform (the ACES views, AgX, or the plain Standard view) in the Color menu, with a bundled ACES configuration and an Input Color Space picker on Image In and Image Folder.
- • Overbright authoring: in 32-bit mode, colors brighter than white can be authored directly (Canvas, Pad, Noise tint), a zebra-stripes preview indicator marks pixels above white, and the color picker, eyedropper, and histogram read float values.
- • Cryptomatte node: decodes Cryptomatte ID matte data baked into a render engine's EXR into a pickable object matte. Click objects directly in the preview to build the selection (an armed Pick+ / Pick- pair, or Ctrl+Click / Ctrl+Alt+Click, or a Ctrl+Shift drag that adds every object inside a rectangle at once, Ctrl+Alt+Shift to remove, with the preview automatically switching to Colored IDs while a pick is armed), with a hover tooltip naming the object under the cursor, a matte list with removable entries and manifest autocomplete, and Matte / Colored IDs / Highlight / Premultiplied output modes.
- • Multi-part and tiled EXR import: multi-part EXR files from render engines, such as one file holding a beauty pass alongside per-light or per-AOV passes, now load, with every part's layers listed together in the layer picker. Tiled EXR files load as well.
- • High-bit-depth import: Image In and Image Folder read 16-bit PNG, 16-bit TIFF, float TIFF, and OpenEXR files, with a layer picker for multi-layer EXR renders; hovering a layer in the picker previews it live in the main view, and 8-bit documents convert them down on import.
- • EXR export (Pro): Export Image and Export Batch write OpenEXR at 16-bit half or 32-bit float with an Output Color Space picker, preserving overbright values.
- • High-bit-depth export (Pro): 32-bit documents gain a PNG/TIFF bit-depth selector on the export nodes (16-bit PNG, 16-bit TIFF, 32-bit float TIFF).
- • Export color handling: a Color section on the export nodes chooses how a 32-bit document's colors are written: as displayed, converted to a chosen color space, or raw working-space values, with a clipping warning that suggests the Clamp node.
- • Scene-referred ranges: in 32-bit mode the Glow threshold, Levels white points, and Exposure offset accept overbright values, with sliders that expand past their 8-bit maximums.
- • Relight node: relights artwork with point and directional lights driven by a normal map, with on-canvas light gizmos, ambient and specular controls, and Lit / Lighting only / Specular only outputs.
- • Hex Tile node: hides the visible repetition when a texture tiles. The image is covered with a grid of hexagonal cells, each showing the source at a random rotation, scale, and offset, with neighboring cells blending smoothly; the output is itself a perfect tile by default (Seamless Output), and an Output Scale control grows the canvas up to 8x to synthesize a large non-repeating texture from a small tile. Rotation Steps (60/90/180 degrees) tames semi-structured textures, a Normal Map option rotates the normal vectors with each cell's content so a hex-tiled normal map still lights correctly (keep the same Seed across per-map copies to keep a whole texture set pixel-aligned), and a preview overlay shows the hex grid with each cell's rotation. Works best on a seamless input; use Seamless Blend first.
- • Merge node: coverage-based compositing with eleven operators (Over, Under, In, Mask, Out, Stencil, Atop, Xor, Plus, Divide, Multiply) and a Mix slider that dials the result back toward the untouched B input, in a new Composite category, for knock-outs, stencils, premultiplied linear adds, and unpacking or repacking a light or albedo pass; hovering an operator in the dropdown previews its result live in the main view.
- • Apply LUT node: applies a LUT file (.cube, .3dl, .clf, .ctf, .csp, .vlt) as a color-managed look, with input/output color-space pickers, interpolation choice, and a Mix slider.
- • Despill node: removes green, blue, red, or custom key-color spill after keying, with Neutralize and Desaturate modes and automatic key-color detection.
- • Clamp node: limits colors to a range with an optional soft knee, per channel or hue-preserving, for taming overbright values before delivery.
- • Premult and Unpremult nodes: convert between straight and premultiplied alpha for compositing workflows.
- • Lens Distortion node (formerly Spherize): the Spherize node is renamed Lens Distortion and gains two new modes alongside the classic bulge/pinch (now the Bulge mode): Sphere wraps the image onto a glass-ball hemisphere (negative amounts give the concave inverse), and Lens (the new default) applies camera-lens barrel or pincushion distortion across the whole frame, with an Edge control for wavy mustache distortion, a Correct direction that exactly removes lens distortion from photos, and a Scale control whose Fill Frame option (on by default) keeps the result automatically fitted to hide blank borders as settings change, with a one-shot Fit button when it is off. A new Feather control smooths the boundary of the bulge and sphere effects, an on-canvas gizmo drags the center, radius, and feather directly in the preview, and an optional warped grid overlay shows exactly how the distortion bends the image. Searching the node library for "spherize" still finds it, and existing projects open in Bulge mode and render unchanged.
- • Mirror node: a new Radial direction mirrors the image kaleidoscope-style around a movable center point, with 2 to 32 segments, a Reflect toggle for mirrored (kaleidoscope) or rotation-only (mandala) symmetry, an angle control, and an on-canvas gizmo for dragging the center and rotating the pattern.
- • Noise node: ten new texture types: Blue (high-pass pixel distribution), IGN (low-discrepancy golden-ratio pattern), Voronoi fBm (cellular turbulence), Crater (pitted terrain), Scratches (random wear strokes with Direction, Spread, Density, Thickness, Length, and Waviness controls), Curl (flow lines), Paper (fibrous paper texture), Stone (marbled stone), Wool (woven strands), and Erosion (eroded terrain with ridges and gullies), most of them tileable via Seamless, which now also covers the existing Voronoi type (its feature scale snaps to the nearest size that tiles cleanly); Voronoi also gains a Smooth Cell return type with a Smoothness control for adjustable soft per-cell blending.
- • Noise node: a new Color Output control turns the noise chromatic: RGB for full-color static, Tint to multiply by a chosen color, and Hue Cycle to drive hue from the noise value; Voronoi also gains a Colored Cells return that colors each cell. The default (Monochrome) output is unchanged, so existing projects look identical.
- • Noise node: new Contrast and Brightness controls, and the Scale maximum raised from 100 to 200.
- • Displace node: a new Map Midpoint control sets which map value counts as zero displacement (0.5 = mid-gray neutral as before; lower toward 0 to read the map as a height field), so one map can drive either a signed offset or a one-sided push.
- • Batch fan-out (M x N): Palette Remap and Separate now take a multi-frame batch and output every input image combined with every variant; use
{source}_{name}in Export Batch for names liketree_purple.png, with a per-session cap to prevent runaway expansion. - • Separate node: a new Grid slicing mode splits the image into a regular rows by columns grid of tiles (each 1 to 64) instead of detecting objects, so you can chop a sprite sheet or atlas into evenly sized frames; the original object-detection behavior is now the Connectivity mode and is unchanged.
- • Canvas, Shape, Gradient, Noise, Pattern, and Text nodes: a new Color Mode (RGBA / Grayscale) control lets each generator output a single-channel image directly, so you can build a mask, height field, or single-channel chain without adding a conversion node. In Grayscale mode the color pickers become gray sliders; switching modes keeps the visible brightness by carrying each color's luminance to and from its gray value, and the switch is a single undoable step.
- • Image In and Image Folder nodes: a new Output Format control (Auto / RGBA / Grayscale) keeps a grayscale source file as a single-channel image instead of always widening it to RGBA, with a Grayscale From option (Luminance, Red, Green, Blue, or Alpha) for reducing color sources. Auto (the default) preserves natively single-channel files and promotes the rest; Image Folder applies it per frame, so a mixed folder yields a mixed batch, and existing projects open unchanged.
- • Export Image and Export Batch nodes: a new Output Channels control (Auto / RGBA / Grayscale) saves a single-channel image as a genuine grayscale PNG, TGA, or TIFF instead of always writing RGBA, with a Grayscale From option (Luminance, Red, Green, Blue, or Alpha) for color sources. The Parameters panel and a node-body badge show the incoming channel type and what the format will write (JPEG and WebP still upcast grayscale to color).
- • Filter and structural nodes: most (Blur, Sharpen, Curves, Levels, Vignette, Pixelate, Mesh Warp, and more) now accept a grayscale or mask source directly and produce a matching single-channel output, so a mask stays a mask through a chain of effects.
- • Gradient Map and Normal Map nodes: now accept a grayscale or mask source directly on their image input (no color conversion needed); both still output color.
- • Resize, Pad, Offset, and Transform: replace their separate Image and Alpha pins with one combined input that accepts a color image or a grayscale/mask and outputs to match; existing wiring is preserved.
- • Mask inputs: wiring a color image directly into a mask input now uses the image's brightness as the mask (previously its transparency, so an opaque image acted as an all-white mask that appeared to do nothing). A new Mask From control appears when a color image is connected, with Luminance, Alpha, Red, Green, and Blue choices; single-channel wires and channels picked through Channel Split behave exactly as before.
- • Mask Fit on more nodes: the Mask Fit control (None / Stretch / Fit / Fill) now also appears on Scatter, Film Grain, Halftone, Separate, and Mask Boolean, choosing how a differently sized mask maps onto the image.
- • Remove Background and Upscale nodes: two free nodes that run in the cloud, returning a clean background-removed cutout or a 4x upscale. No credits or subscription required; a free account with email verification is needed to use them. Both are in a new Cloud category in the node library, which a Settings > Interface > Display toggle can hide; rate limits and a monthly cap apply. Existing files that contain these nodes open and display their cached results as before.
- • Node search: the node library and add-node search now also match common names for the same tool from other image and compositing apps, so "flip" finds Mirror, "hue" or "saturation" finds HSB, "gaussian blur" or "motion blur" finds Blur, "unsharp mask" finds Sharpen, "green screen" finds Chroma Key, "content aware" finds Inpaint and Smart Scale, "grayscale" finds Black and White, "feather" finds Mask Refine, "stroke" finds Outline, "ramp" finds Gradient, "solid color" finds Canvas, and more. Typing a node's exact name still returns just that node.
- • Corner Pin node: source corners are now adjustable (as a percentage of the foreground image), so you can pin them onto a perspective-distorted region of a photo and flatten it into a rectangle; a Straighten button in the preview toolbar converts the destination quad to an axis-aligned rectangle matching the source proportions; a new Crop to Destination output mode emits a tight crop at the destination quad size instead of the full reference frame.
- • Scatter node: five built-in presets (Organic Field, Random Tile Grid, Seamless Texture, Ring Pattern, Spiral Pattern) set the layout and scatter parameters in one click.
- • Canvas wiring: hold Shift and drag off an output pin that already has connections to move all of its wires onto another output pin at once, rerouting them to a new source instead of pulling out a fresh wire; works with a single connection too, so you can relocate one wire to a different node.
- • Preview histogram: hovering a pixel now marks it on the histogram, with a line at the pixel's brightness tinted with the hovered color plus thin red, green, and blue lines at each channel's value; drag the top edge of the histogram strip to resize it.
- • Preview: a new Preview Resolution control (Auto / Full / 1/2 / 1/4) next to the zoom controls sets how much detail the main preview (including the single-frame batch view) draws; Auto (the default) keeps large images responsive while you are zoomed out or actively editing, and shows the source at full detail once you zoom in close, so scrubbing a parameter or panning a large photo no longer briefly pauses the editor.
- • Parameters panel: right-clicking a slider, numeric field, text field, or dropdown now offers Copy Value and Paste Value alongside Reset to Default, so you can carry a value between two nodes; Paste is greyed out when the copied text would not fit the field (for example, text into a number), and dropdowns copy and paste by their option name. Copy All / Paste All Parameters in the node gear menu do the same for every value on a node at once, in one undoable step.
- • File path parameters: right-clicking a file or folder path now offers Convert to Relative Path (stored relative to the saved project so the project stays portable when moved) and Convert to Absolute Path; the option is greyed out until the project is saved, or when the file is on a different drive than the project.
- • Drop files onto path fields: drag a file from your file explorer onto any file or folder path field in the Parameters panel to set it directly, without opening the file browser.
- • HSB node: a new Model control picks the brightness axis: HSB (the default, unchanged) scales toward vivid full-saturation color, while HSL is symmetric around mid-gray and washes toward white or black.
- • Brush tools: the size bracket keys auto-repeat when held, Shift+bracket adjusts hardness, and a cursor ring shows the soft edge while you adjust it (Paint and Mask Paint).
- • Import nodes: Image In, Image Folder, and SVG Import gain a Reload button that re-reads the file or folder from disk.
- • Reroute nodes: can now be added from the node library and the add-node menu, not only by double-clicking a wire, so you can place a routing dot before wiring it up.
- • Arrange node: a new Grid direction packs frames into a fixed number of columns, wrapping to new rows.
- • Separate node: a Name Prefix parameter sets the output frame name stem (defaults to
object; an empty prefix emits just the number). - • Export Batch: a new
{color}filename token resolves to a frame's variant color as a 6-digit hex code (e.g.a020f0). - • Status bar: a 32-bit document shows its working color space and its active display view as pills in the status bar; the display-view pill is clickable to switch views.
- • Node alignment snapping: a new Snap Search Distance setting (Settings > Interface) controls how far away a neighboring node can be and still snap into alignment while you drag, separate from Snap Strength, which sets how strongly nodes pull together.
- • Commercial license: ArcBrush stays free for personal and non-commercial work; commercial use requires a one-time ArcBrush Pro license. A first-run prompt lets you pick personal or commercial use and learn what Pro adds, an in-app purchase dialog and a Help menu ArcBrush Pro page explain and unlock it, and a 14-day free trial with no card unlocks everything to evaluate. Pro adds commercial use plus 32-bit (float) mode and high-bit-depth export, and installs from a license file that works offline.
- • First launch: you are now asked to accept the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy before the editor opens, with the full text of each shown in the prompt. This one-time prompt appears on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and only returns if the terms are updated.
Changed
- • Viewer slots: Export Image and Export Batch nodes can now be pinned to a viewer slot, showing the image being exported (Export Batch in sprite-sheet mode shows the assembled sheet).
- • Curves node: the editor now shows every channel's curve at once with the inactive channels dimmed behind the active one, draws the source image's histogram behind the grid, and displays the selected point's X and Y values; the control handles are a little smaller.
- • Levels node: the histogram now shows all color channels together instead of one at a time and sits at the top of the panel, and still updates live as you drag the sliders.
- • Histograms: the Curves, Levels, and preview histograms now draw as a smooth filled shape with a brighter top edge and light smoothing, instead of hard vertical bars, so the distribution reads more clearly.
- • Mask wiring: any node's image output can now connect to a mask input; previously some outputs were rejected with an error telling you to use Mask From Image.
- • Dropdown menus: long dropdowns now expand to fit as many items as the screen allows instead of capping at eight rows.
- • Preview: switching between soloed viewer slots of the same size now keeps your zoom and pan instead of re-fitting the view each time.
- • Update window: the release-notes pane now renders bold highlights, inline code, and clickable links, instead of showing the raw markup characters.
- • Layer node: each layer row now shows the connected node's custom name next to its title (e.g. "Pad 1 (Background)").
- • Reroute nodes: dragging a reroute now aligns it to nearby pin rows and to other reroutes, with guide lines drawn through the dots, and reroutes follow grid snapping like other nodes.
- • Noise node: seamless noise now matches the contrast and amplitude of the same noise with Seamless off; raise the new Contrast control to restore the old punchier look on existing seamless projects.
- • Separate node + Export Batch
{source}token: a single-input Separate graph's{source}token now resolves to the upstream origin label (e.g.tree) instead ofobject_NN;{name}and{label}users are unaffected. - • Display Color Correction: the display color-management toggle moved from Settings > Interface > Display into a new top-level Color menu in the menu bar; the setting itself is unchanged.
- • Status bar: the processing pill now also counts queued preview, thumbnail, and histogram work (shown as "Display") when it backs up, so a preview that is falling behind is visible at a glance.
- • Brush cursor: the brush outline is now a neutral, contrast-aware color that stays visible over any artwork.
- • Panel scrollbars: the side-panel scrollbars are now noticeably thinner.
- • Canvas pins: node pins are easier to grab and connect: the click target is larger, scales with zoom, and grows while dragging a wire.
- • Tooltips: reformatted app-wide for readability: option lists render as bullet points with bold names, key values are highlighted, and long tooltips wrap at a comfortable width.
Fixed
- • Opening documents: opening a project that contains several large images no longer freezes the app while it loads; the window stays responsive and images fill in as each one finishes.
- • Node groups: dragging a group that contains many connected nodes (such as a cluster of reroute dots) no longer makes the wires between them scatter and jump far outside the group; the connections now move with the group and keep their shape.
- • Large images: generating or exporting an image larger than 16384 x 16384 pixels now fails with a clear message instead of crashing or writing a corrupt or empty file; the Tile, Arrange, and Scatter nodes refuse to produce a frame beyond that size.
- • Linux: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text now displays correctly when a system CJK font (such as Noto Sans CJK) is installed, instead of rendering as missing-character boxes.
- • Linux: signing in now persists across restarts on systems without a secret-service keyring, instead of asking you to sign in again each launch.
- • Linux: opening a project that was missing both its fonts and its input files no longer leaves the window frozen behind an invisible dialog; the missing-fonts and missing-files prompts now appear one at a time.
- • Batch preview: the batch grid and Viewer slot tiles now keep updating while you drag a slider, instead of freezing on the pre-drag image until you pause; and panning the All grid until every tile is out of view no longer triggers an error message in the Preview panel.
- • Canvas manipulators: holding a manipulator handle pressed without moving the mouse no longer reprocesses the node continuously while the drag is paused.
- • Canvas manipulators: a handle drag that ends without changing anything no longer adds an empty step to the undo history.
- • Image Folder node: selecting a node whose folder holds thousands of files, or sits on a network or cloud-synced drive, no longer freezes the app while its parameters are shown; the image count now refreshes when the folder settings change or Refresh is clicked, instead of rescanning the folder continuously.
- • Collect and Arrange nodes: batches with different frame counts now combine into one batch instead of failing with a size-mismatch error.
- • Reroute nodes: now fully transparent to channel and pin type, so a mask or single channel routed through one is no longer flattened to white; the routing dot also takes on the color of the data passing through it, so a single-channel (grayscale) signal shows the single-channel color instead of the full-color image color.
- • Sliders: holding Ctrl and clicking a slider no longer allows entering a value outside its valid range, and clicking the track just beside the handle now jumps to the clicked value instead of doing nothing.
- • Glow node: raising the threshold now fades the glow smoothly toward the top of its range, instead of an overly strong bloom just below the maximum that then cut off abruptly at the top.
- • Edge Detect, Luma Key, Trim, Displace, and Pixel Sort nodes: a freshly added node now processes with its documented default settings immediately, instead of using different values until a control was touched (Edge Detect drew an opaque black background instead of transparent).
- • Window placement: the app window now restores to a currently connected display instead of occasionally reopening off-screen after a monitor is disconnected or rearranged.
- • Linux (Wayland): hovering the ArcBrush window now keeps your system cursor theme and size instead of switching to a generic fallback cursor.
- • Tile node: a very large tiled image paged to disk no longer faults back in as a solid black frame.
- • Seamless Blend node: the preview no longer flickers between the blended and unblended image while you scrub a slider in Noise Blend mode.
- • Node groups and sticky notes: editing a group title or a sticky note's text no longer pops the edit field out into a separate floating window when the group or note is wider than the application window.
- • File > New: creating a new file now resets the node graph view to the default zoom and position instead of keeping the previous document's view.
- • Compact Parameters: indented labels (such as the Layer node's Blend and Opacity rows) are no longer clipped.
- • Compact Parameters: the panel now holds still while you work: the label column keeps its width during slider drags, so a row that a slider reveals or hides mid-drag (such as the Noise warp controls or Split Batch's Start Frame) no longer flickers or shifts the slider out from under the cursor, and selecting different Gradient color stops or changing the format on an Export Image or Export Batch node no longer nudges the panel sideways.
- • Preview histogram: the pixel color readout no longer overlaps the histogram (it now sits just above it while the histogram is shown), and switching between nodes no longer slides the histogram out and back in; it updates in place, with the slide animation reserved for showing or hiding the histogram.
- • Preview: a two-finger trackpad pan now pans the view even when a full-image manipulator is under the cursor on macOS.
- • Canvas: the ring that briefly flashes around a node when it finishes evaluating no longer draws on top of open dialog windows.
- • Gradient node: the stop color picker no longer briefly flashes open for a single frame when you select the node.
- • Keyboard: the numeric keypad's Enter key now works for the app shortcuts that already accepted the main Enter (confirming the sole Add Node search match, and Ctrl+Enter to run the graph).
- • Pattern node: the controls specific to the selected pattern type now appear under the Pattern section of the panel instead of under Color.
- • Viewer slots: a viewer grid cell now shows its node's custom name when the node has been renamed, instead of always showing the node type.
- • Export Image and Export Batch nodes: when an export finishes while a different export node is selected, its success or error message no longer goes missing or lands on the wrong node; it now appears on the node that ran the export the next time that node is selected, and a successful export is correctly remembered as up to date.
- • Remove Background node: a freshly added node now uses its documented default model (Bria RMBG 2.0) instead of running the rembg model until the Model control was touched.
Removed
- • Removed the cloud AI image generation features (Text to Image and Image Edit nodes). Files that use those nodes still open and display their existing results; creating new AI-generated images is no longer available.