ArcBrush 1.5 adds a color-managed 32-bit float pipeline to its node-based image editor

SEATTLE, USA, July 14, 2026: ArcBrush today released version 1.5. The release runs the editor’s whole node graph in 32-bit floating point with color management, adds eleven new nodes across color, compositing, lighting, and texturing, and moves ArcBrush to a one-time commercial license while keeping the app free for personal use.

ArcBrush is a native desktop image editor for Windows, macOS, and Linux, built around a node graph rather than a layer stack. Every operation is a node, the whole process stays editable, and nothing gets flattened. The reason to work that way is reuse: build a pipeline once, and a single source image can fan out into every color variant, size, and format you need in one export pass, all of it updating when the source changes. Until now that pipeline ran in 8-bit. Version 1.5 extends it into color-managed 32-bit float, so the same build-once workflow holds up for grading, rendering, and delivery that has to match a color pipeline.

The main new feature is a per-document 32-bit (float) mode, turned on from a new Color menu. It processes the entire graph in 32-bit floating point, composites in linear light, and preserves values brighter than white from import through export. Documents choose a working space (Linear, sRGB, ACEScg, ACEScct, or Linear P3-D65) and a display transform through OpenColorIO, with a bundled ACES 2.0 configuration and an AgX view for filmic highlight rolloff. Each Image In and Image Folder node tags its own input color space, so a linear render, an sRGB texture, and a tagged plate can meet correctly in the same graph. ArcBrush reads 16-bit PNG and TIFF, float TIFF, and OpenEXR, including tiled and multi-part EXR files, with a layer picker across every layer in the file, and exports back to those formats with an output color-space picker.

Eleven new nodes ship in 1.5, eight of them for color, compositing, and lighting. Relight lights flat 2D artwork using a normal map, with point and directional lights placed directly on the canvas and separate Lit, Lighting-only, and Specular-only outputs. A new Composite category adds Merge, which composites with eleven operators: nine coverage-based (Over, Under, In, Out, Atop, Xor, Mask, Stencil, and Plus) plus Multiply and Divide for math compositing, along with Premult and Unpremult for moving between straight and premultiplied alpha, Despill for removing green, blue, red, or custom key-color spill after a key, and Clamp for taming overbright values before delivery. An Apply LUT node reads .cube, .3dl, .clf, .ctf, .csp, and .vlt LUT files as a color-managed look. A Cryptomatte node reads the industry-standard object and material ID mattes that 3D renderers embed in EXR files, and selects objects by clicking them directly in the preview. Rounding out the creative nodes, Hex Tile hides visible repetition in tiling textures using stochastic hex sampling, with a seamless-output mode and normal-map support, and the Spherize node is now Lens Distortion, adding true barrel and pincushion distortion alongside a matching lens-correction mode.

The release also changes how ArcBrush is sold. The app stays free for personal and non-commercial use, with no account required for the offline editor. Commercial use needs ArcBrush Pro, a one-time $49 license; ArcBrush has never charged a subscription. Pro is delivered as a signed license file that installs from disk and works fully offline. There is no device limit and no repeated check-in to a server. A 14-day trial, which needs no payment details, unlocks everything, including the full 32-bit pipeline and high-bit-depth export. The other two new nodes, Remove Background and Upscale, run in the cloud, stay free, and need only a free account, with rate limits and a monthly cap. ArcBrush uses no generative AI and sells no credits.

“I wanted an image editor where nothing is ever baked in,” said Albert Omoss, the independent developer behind ArcBrush. “The whole process is a procedural graph, so every value on every node stays live. A crop, a blur, a color decision never bakes down; it stays a dial you can go back and turn at any time, so experimenting costs nothing. With 1.5 that same graph runs in 32-bit float with real color management, so you can build a pipeline once and trust the color all the way to export. And I wanted the pricing to be plain: free to learn on, $49 once if you use it for work, and no subscription.”

ArcBrush 1.5 is available today at arcbrush.com for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Availability and details

• Platforms: Windows 10/11, macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon), and Linux (Ubuntu 22.04+, AppImage).
• Free for personal and non-commercial use. ArcBrush Pro is a one-time $49 license for commercial use, with a 14-day trial that needs no card. Pro also unlocks 32-bit (float) mode and high-bit-depth export.
• Native C++ on all three platforms, with no Electron or web runtime.
• A hybrid CPU/GPU engine: nodes parallelize across every core, the heaviest per-pixel operations run as GPU compute, and the preview display pipeline is GPU-accelerated.
• Color management through OpenColorIO with a bundled ACES 2.0 configuration.
• Import: PNG and TIFF (8-bit, 16-bit, and float), OpenEXR (including multi-layer, multi-part, and tiled), and common 8-bit formats. Export adds 16-bit PNG and TIFF and OpenEXR at 16-bit half or 32-bit float. High-bit-depth and EXR export require Pro.
• Project files are human-readable JSON, so they diff cleanly and can live in version control alongside the rest of a project, with rolling auto-save and crash recovery.
• The editor ships 97 nodes.