Focalume for Windows
Versions &
release notes.
See what changed in every recent Focalume release, what is available now, and what we are working on next.
Richer automatic edits, better lighting balance and more reliable processing.
- Richer, more consistent automatic edits, with better use of Creative freedom and saved example styles.
- Improved lighting balance while preserving naturally dark scenes.
- More reliable noise reduction for photographs with visible colour noise.
- Better preservation of good colour and detail adjustments when another adjustment needs correction.
- Improved reliability when processing several photographs.
Creative whole-photo colour guided by preference and safety.
- Creative freedom can now allow supported whole-photo saturation and vibrance choices even when there is no technical colour defect. A stronger setting permits a more expressive choice, which may raise or lower colour; +10 does not guarantee a boost.
- Before-and-after checks assess colour cast, coherence and whether the change is meaningful. Ineffective or unsafe changes are rejected.
- Local foliage, sky and warm-light colour controls stay off when image evidence cannot ground those edits reliably.
- Stale colour decisions are cleared so the updated review can make a fresh decision.
- Includes the Canon lens-profile matching, RAW export reliability and Windows updater improvements from earlier releases.
- M13 crop suggestions are not included; automatic cropping remains disabled.
More reliable lens matching and more informed local colour decisions.
- Improved matching for Canon EF-S 18–55mm f/3.5–5.6 USM lens metadata to the corresponding Darktable lens entry. The matched profile provides distortion correction; chromatic-aberration correction is not claimed.
- Colour review now considers fresh image evidence for foliage, sky and water when assessing local colour adjustments.
- Colour changes remain conservative: Focalume can accept a subtle adjustment when supported by the image, and does not force extra saturation.
- Includes the RAW export reliability fix from 1.1.4-beta.1 and the Windows updater fix from 1.1.3-beta.1.
- M13 crop suggestions are not included; automatic cropping remains disabled.
RAW export reliability with complete sensor evidence and clearer failure reports.
- Sensor analysis now runs for every RAW extension accepted by the workflow, including CR2. Previously, only CR3 inputs received the sensor evidence required by M10 highlight validation, which could stop other RAW photographs at export. The required highlight evidence remains enforced.
- Cached sensor analysis missing the required namespaced highlight proof is rejected and regenerated.
- Export failure warnings now identify the affected photograph, the failure reason and the report location. The Finish step also warns when exports fail, while successfully exported photographs remain available to review.
- The Windows update handoff fixes from 1.1.3 remain included. M13 experiments are not included; composition advice remains experimental and automatic cropping stays disabled.
A more reliable Windows update handoff while Setup downloads and starts.
- Fixed the Windows update handoff so Focalume waits patiently for Setup’s readiness acknowledgement before continuing with hardware detection and the update download. The wait remains cancellable instead of timing out after 20 seconds.
- Windows Setup now runs independently from the Focalume window, so closing Focalume does not terminate the installer. Cleanup remains limited to AI processes owned by Focalume.
- If an update from an older installation is already stuck, cancel Setup, close Focalume, then launch the downloaded installer manually while Focalume is closed. The updater fix takes effect after installing this hotfix.
Resource-aware batch processing, less repeated image work and careful lighting for shaded faces.
- Added adaptive parallel processing for photo batches. Focalume uses available CPU and memory, keeps each photo’s editing order and safety checks, and falls back to sequential processing when the computer or runtime cannot support parallel work.
- Coordinated AI, denoising and mask work through a shared resource queue, with progress updates as photos finish.
- Reduced repeated technical renders and renderer startup for new-photo processing when the required evidence is identical, while keeping the existing image measurements.
- Added selective subject lighting that can gently lift a shaded face without globally brightening the photo. A constrained mask, lossless 16-bit intermediate and fresh before-and-after checks protect intentional darkness, skin, highlights, noise and mask edges.
- Improved tone recovery so shadow detail is checked separately from whole-frame exposure. Any restrained global exposure correction receives a fresh review of the full image, highlights and photographic safety before acceptance or cache reuse; later edits preserve the accepted exposure.
- When a simple numeric exposure correction is not enough, tone recovery can compare a limited set of rendered alternatives. A candidate must pass a fresh whole-frame exposure, highlight and photographic-safety review before it is kept.
- Added a cautious green-magenta white-balance check when consistent neutral areas reveal a subtle colour cast. A paired before-and-after review must show improvement without harming natural colour, brightness or highlight detail; otherwise the change is rejected.
- Made colour review more reliable by keeping comparison crops within the image, fitting the needed evidence into the review, and limiting proposed adjustments to supported settings. Validated choices are retained across retries where possible; a failed review restores the previously accepted settings.
- Tightened scene recognition by checking labels against supported categories, retrying unsupported results and retaining a clear neutral fallback if recognition still fails. The recognition step provides scene facts rather than direct edit controls.
- Updated review details to show the final accepted assessment while keeping earlier rejected attempts in history, so a resolved warning does not appear as the final result.
- Improved processing responsiveness with work outside the interface dispatcher, cancellation support and bounded shutdown.
- Bounded prompt-cache memory and validated persistent cache entries before reuse. Cache cleanup is limited to Focalume-owned cache files; original RAW photos and saved review evidence are left untouched.
- Improved recovery from GPU startup failures in automatic mode; explicit CPU mode disables supported GPU offload paths.
- Fixed single-file RAW input, multi-photo review delivery, lens-correction status reporting, reproducible denoised-file metadata and standalone face-mask startup.
- Kept final exports deterministic and subject to accepted-state checks. AI choices may vary between fresh runs, and uncertain or contradictory reviews retain a safe fallback.
- Beta limitations: M9 chromatic-aberration correction and M13 composition advice remain beta features; composition advice does not apply a crop automatically. Accepted selective face-lighting masks and settings are kept in Focalume’s edit record and are not fully reproducible from an XMP sidecar alone.
Restored milestone editing with reproducible tone, safer denoise, active seasonal colour and stronger visual safeguards.
- Made M1 tone recovery reproducible for identical photographic evidence and independent of Creative freedom.
- Removed the repeated example tone curve and bound cached decisions to the RAW, sensor evidence, renderer and accepted pixels.
- Restored denoise after cached tone decisions and added a safe 85% RawNIND endpoint for difficult high-ISO colour noise.
- Kept real texture, edges, object colour, tone and artifact checks mandatory for every denoise candidate.
- Reconnected Creative freedom to supported seasonal colour and local contrast while keeping technical and skin protections fixed.
- Added a measurable creative path for cool looks and retained the last safe colour candidate if replanning fails.
- Prevented foliage, sky and water controls when those regions are not actually visible.
- Protected naturally dark cave framing from false interior light.
- Added full-frame face and skin review for genuinely underlit people.
- Kept chromatic-aberration handling and crop advice in beta; crop advice remains non-destructive.
A more flexible workflow, a roomier interface and finer control over how expressive an edit may be.
- Open either a RAW folder or one individual RAW photograph.
- Learn from a folder of finished photographs or one finished photograph.
- A smaller profile-learning area that adds to the selected profile by default, with new-profile creation kept separate.
- A larger workspace and preview, plus taskbar-safe maximising.
- Creative freedom control from a restrained, near-original finish to a more expressive edit.
- Creative limits expand gradually while technical image protections remain fixed.
- A redesigned Creative slider that matches the Focalume interface.
- Full-resolution exports with the old 6000 px limit removed.
A safer and more reliable in-app update flow for installed copies of Focalume.
- Fixed update verification in the packaged Windows application.
- Every downloaded update is checked against its SHA-256 checksum before installation.
- Added regression coverage for the installed-app update path.
Prepared Focalume for a branded purchase flow and validated updating from an older installation.
- Added the permanent Focalume purchase address.
- Added a branded website purchase page.
- Kept live payments unavailable until explicit production activation.
- Completed an end-to-end update test from the previous release.
Cleaner exports, stronger learning safeguards and a visible update status in the app.
- Finished JPEGs are kept in a dated destination folder; internal working files remain in private app storage.
- Improved learning reliability, duplicate detection, counts and recovery from stale local AI services.
- Replaced Windows message boxes with dialogs styled to match Focalume.
- Moved update status to the top bar and added clear checking, available, downloading and up-to-date states.
- Updates use a stable Cloudflare manifest, checksum verification and preserve personal data.
- Improved licence-email branding and retry behaviour.
Introduced the production-ready installer, licensing controls and automatic hardware selection.
- Added licence controls and recovery from stale local activations.
- Added a versioned online installer and Cloudflare delivery workflow.
- Automatically selects NVIDIA CUDA, AMD acceleration or CPU processing for the computer.
