Gigapixel AI Release Notes

Beginning with v 4.5.0 released April 16, 2020, our product release notes are posted to our community forums, where you can discuss them and give feedback on any changes we've made.

See our current Current Release Notes

Previous Release Notes

v 4.5.0

April 10th, 2020

Major Features:

• Update whole user interface to match DeNoise / Sharpen batch workflow
• Add ability to specify different processing settings per item in the batch

v 4.4.5

December 18, 2019

Fix:

• General bug fixes
• Add measure to help prevent Gigapixel AI from crashing in certain circumstances

v 4.4.4

October 22, 2019

Fix:

• Fixed an issue that caused Gigapixel AI to crash with face detection turned on.
• Fixed an issue that caused Gigapixel AI to crash if more than 508 images were processed in batch.
• Fixed an issue that caused Gigapixel AI to crash if the file name or path contained non-Latin characters.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the in-app updater to run.
• Fixed an issue that caused Gigapixel AI to ignore the file's orientation metadata.

v 4.4.3

September 27, 2019

Fix:

• Fixed Error 99 when checking for software updates.

v 4.4.2

September 23, 2019

Fix:

• Fixed metadata issue causing jpeg and tiff to display with wrong PPI.
• Fixed issue causing Gigapixel to not launch for some Mac users

v 4.4.1

September 12, 2019

Change:

• Refined the advanced preference information

Fix:

• Fixed the launching failure issue. Now Gigapixel AI can launch correctly on computers with CPUs before Intel 6th generation.
• Refined crashes due to Intel Optimization (OpenVino). Now whenever Gigapixel AI crashes due to Intel Optimization, it will remember it and disable the Intel Optimization setting in advanced preference. Users can enable it manually by clicking the "Reset" button.
• Fixed the "hddlapi.dll" missing issue.

v 4.4.0

September 3, 2019

New:

• Intel devices optimization: Now a new option “Intel optimization” is in advanced preferences. If you choose “Yes”, it will optimize 6th-10th generation Intel CPUs and Intel iGPUs for Gigapixel. Typically, it will make Gigapixel run *3-5 times faster*than the previous “CPU” mode. But we cannot guarantee if it can work for CPUs from other vendors (e.g., AMD) or any Intel CPUs before 5th generation. If you still have very high performance desktop GPUs (e.g., NVIDIA 1080), “Enable dedicated GPU” (Yes) option will be the best choice. However, if you have relatively better Intel CPUs or Intel iGPUs than low performance GPU, you will see faster performance on Intel optimization (Yes) option.
• Automatic detection for the best devices choice: Now you do not have to choose between GPU/CPU or enable/disable Intel optimization manually. Gigapixel will automatically run a benchmark and choose the best advanced preferences settings for you to achieve the highest speed on your computer. The benchmark will only be triggered once when you process the first image. Thus, the first image will take longer time than usual.

Change:

• Refined the preview navigation panel
• changed output file name extension to -gigapixel

Fix:

• 8/16 Bit crash

v 4.3.1

August 15, 2019

New:

• Toggle in right panel to enable and disable Face Refinement
• Face Refinement will detect small faces (16x16px - 64x64px) and apply targeted improved upsampling

v 4.2.2

August 2, 2019

Fix:

• Fix crash on export with TIFF files caused by metadata issue

v 4.2.1

July 19, 2019

New Feature:

• Auto Setting mode

Change:

• Updated model for slightly more natural looking output

v 4.1.2

June 14, 2019

Change:

• Improved processing models

Fix:

• Fixed issue that would only allow batch processing up to 508 images

v 4.1.1

May 24, 2019

Change:

• Improved Metadata Support

v 4.1.0

May 22, 2019

New Features:

• When a file type is not supported, a message is displayed to the user
• When processing files, the number of files being processed will be displayed in the wait message
• When processing files, the number of files being processed will be displayed on the title bar so that progress can be tracked even when the application is minimized
• When processing files, the current percentage of completion is displayed on the right side of the output item box
• An overlay with an icon is displayed over the input thumbnail to indicate that it can be clicked to view the original file outside of the application

Changes:

• Revised application user interface
• The application version and the number of days remaining in a trial (if the application is in trial mode) are now displayed in the top toolbar instead of the application title bar
• The icon to display the preview of the input or output file has been replaced with a hyperlink that displays the path and name of the file.
• When the progress bar reaches completion for a file, it will no longer be displayed continuously
• The “Scaling”, “Output”, and “File Format” sections in the right panel can now be collapsed
• The “Original” and “Preview” labels in the preview panel will disappear if the mouse cursor is placed over them allowing those parts of the image to be displayed
• Improved processing models

Fixes:

• Windows - For displays that use a high scale (to increase the size of text on high resolution displays), the product tour may become impossible to close
• The Application may fail to install or run when folder or file names contain non-latin characters
• DPI metadata tag is being set to 72 when the application was set to resize by scale or by width/height using pixels
• MacOS: Saving output file to root folder could crash the application
• Faces, Street scenes appear much more natural

v 4.0.3

April 11, 2019

New Feature:

• A new option to disable anonymous data collection has been added to the preference window

Changes:

• The login window has been revised
• The title bar will not indicate "0 days remaining" for users who have not begun their 30-day trials

Fix:

• Application authorization bug fixes

v 4.0.2

April 1, 2019

Change:

• Improved JPEG Output Metadata

New Feature:

• "Connection to server could not be established" error fixed

v 4.0.1

March 29, 2019

New Feature:

• A confirmation prompt will appear if the application is processing and the user requests to quit the application

Changes:

• The icon next to the zoom control has been revised
• If the input image is a RAW file, and it is being converted to the PNG file type, the default color profile will be ProPhoto RGB. All other input image types will still utilize the sRGB color profile when converting to PNG
• The ‘Start’ button cannot be clicked if a valid path to save output files has not been specified
• Minor visual tweaks
• If the application is unable to connect to Topaz Labs servers to authenticate ownership, a response code will be displayed on the login window

Fixes:

• Files that are converted to PNG may have issues with the colorspace applied
• Files that have non-latin characters in their filename may crash the application when processing
• When processing files to the TIF/TIFF file type, the output colors could be incorrect
• Processing DNG file to TIF/TIFF may crash the application

v 4.0.0

March 25, 2019

New Features:

• If there are enough files to necessitate scrolling, while the application is processing, you can now scroll through the list
• Added a product tour that explains various features and settings. This will appear on the first run of the application and can be accessed from the 'Help' menu as well
• A 'Buy Now' button has been added to the upper toolbar when the application is running in a trial period
• When the size requested for a file would meet or exceed the maximum size, a warning appears for that file in the processing list
• Added a new Expand/Collapse Preview Navigation button. This will allow you to see more in the preview window when you want to.
• New 'Use maximum quality AI models' control to switch between highest possible quality output, or slightly faster processing. This can be accessed in the 'Preferences' window
• New 'Allowed graphics memory consumption' control to set the allowed amount of graphics memory that the application can consume while processing images. This may help users that experience crashing while processing images. This setting is only applicable when the processing mode is ëGPUí. This can be accessed in the 'Preferences' window
• New explanation panel at the bottom of the 'Preferences' window. This panel can be displayed by clicking on any of the question mark buttons that appear next to a setting label. This panel will display a message explaining the corresponding setting in more depth.
• If your system does not have enough memory to succesfully process images, a warning is now displayed
• A message explaining revised system configuration recommendations will be displayed on the first run of this version of the application

Changes:

• Application name has been changed from 'Topaz A.I. Gigapixel' to 'Topaz Gigapixel AI'. A few places or folders may still show the old name due to installation needs.
• Revised application icons
• Revised application splash screen
• Improved processing models
• Moved the 'Preview' button from the bottom of the application to be next to the 'Clear All' and 'Open' buttons above the file list
• Alignment of the 'Input' and 'Output' labels has been adjusted
• The 'Noise and Blur Reduction' control has been split into 2 controls: 'Suppress Noise' and 'Remove Blur'. Each of these controls now has 5 level settings
• Revised 'About' dialog window
• Revised 'Graphics Information' dialog window
• When PNG is the output file type, color profile will automatically be set to sRGB
• The 'Preferences' window has been reorganized with groups for Application and Processing
• The 'Stop' button should be more responsive when pressed. Additionally, the 'Processing' message will display 'Stopping' to inform the user
• TIF/TIFF files will only support a maximum output resolution of 22000 x 22000 at 16-bits of color depth. This is needed to prevent the file size from exceeding 4 GBs. This is the maximum allowed size for TIF/TIFF files
• Revised logic that affects how JPG/JPEG and TIF/TIFF files are saved to disk and how metadata is transferred from the source file to the output file
• Revised message box dialogs throughout the application. This unifies the look and feel across platforms
• Revised language on the File Logging popup window
• When on the 'Resize By Scale' tab, when scaling to a custom value, the label now reads: "Custom Scale (0.20 to 6.00)"
• The 'Keep Metadata' control has been removed due to performance issues identified. Metadata for JPG/JPEG and TIF/TIFF files will be preserved. Metadata support for PNG files is planned in the future.

Fixes:

• Application authorization bug fixes
• Attempting to login to the application can result in a "Cannot connect to server" error
• Empty output image or application crashing when converting a TIF/TIFF image to PNG format
• Windows: Dashes and underscores in the 'Prefix' or 'Suffix' textfields may not appear even if they are entered by the user
• MacOS: The application may not be able to establish connection to authenticate ownership
• When an image with a Wide-gamut color profile is processed, the output would be over-saturated
• When a file is processed to the TIF/TIFF format, opening the file in Adobe Photoshop may result in a warning that the file is damaged
• Settings for Image Quality (and others) could be incorrectly applied when 'Convert File Format' is set to 'Yes', selecting settings, processing an image, then processing again with the control set to 'No'
• MacOS: Users of 10.14 Mojave may have missing or unreadable buttons on the Trial Expired or Start Trial dialog message boxes.
• A scale value beyond 6.00 could be displayed on the 'Resize By Scale' tab when coming from the 'Resize By Width' or 'Resize By Height' tabs
• The scale value and the highlighted scale button could fall out of sync on the 'Resize By Scale'

v 3.1.1

February 4, 2019

New Features:

• A new preferences window for the application has been added. Depending on platform, it can be accessed through the ‘File’ or [Application Name] menu.
• The preview panel will open by default after adding the first image. This can be disabled in the new preferences window
• Options for JPEG and TIF have been added to the ‘Convert Files To’ list box.
• In the file processing list, the color profile is detected and displayed next to the resolution for the input side. As you change options in the right panel, the output color profile will be updated. By default, RAW images will be processed as JPG images, maximum quality, ProPhoto RGB color profile.

Changes:

• The ‘Convert Files For - Only RAW Files’ option has been removed and replaced by a simpler ‘Convert File Format - Yes or No’ control. If changes to the file type or color profile of the output image are desired, choose Yes. The relevant options will be shown depending on the choices made.
• The ‘Keep Metadata’ control has been moved into the Output group box.
• In the file process list, the progress bar has been moved to the bottom of each box and made wider.
• When typing in the ‘Output Filename Prefix’ or ‘Suffix’ textfields, the changes are reflected as you type each character
• The ‘Use dedicated graphics processing’ option in the help menu has been moved to the new preferences window. It is labeled as ‘Processing Mode - GPU/CPU’
• The ‘Background Processing’ option in the help menu has been moved to the new preferences window. It is labeled as ‘Process images as a background task - Yes/No’
• The ‘Enable File Logging/Disable File Logging’ option in the help menu has been reworded to ‘File Logging: On/Off’

Fixes:

• The selection of color profile (or desire to keep the color profile) was not being consistently applied to images.
• The selection for Image quality for JPEG images may not have been applied consistently to images.
• The selection for Compression for PNG images may not have been applied consistently to images.
• When resizing images by width or height and using centimeters as the unit of measurement, output image size was larger than expected size.

v 3.0.5

January 29, 2019

New Feature:

• We have added macOS 10.14+ Dark Mode support!

Changes:

• When the Custom Folder option is selected for the Save to control, the folder selection window is automatically displayed.
• In the processing list, the preview icon, file name, and resolution are now vertically centered
• When the Only RAW Files option is selected for the Convert Format For control, the Keep Color
• Profile control will be set to No and disabled. This behavior is consistent with previous versions of the application

Fixes:

• When the Only RAW Files option is selected for the Convert Format For control, the Convert Profile To control was disabled. This prevented the user from selecting a color profile when it was mandatory
• When starting a 30 day trial, the message dialog confirming the action was missing a space character
• We fixed a problem that caused the wrong colorspace to be assigned to images upon output, resulting in color changes

v 3.0.4

January 24, 2019

Fix:

• We fixed a problem that caused crashes for Mac users in CPU processing mode

v 3.0.3 

January 23, 2019

Major Interface Update!

New Features:

• User Interface
  
  • Output name and resolution are available before you click process
  • New toolbar button for open images
  • Added ‘Community’ menu
  • Added ‘Reset Settings to Default’ option to reset application settings
  • Added ‘Product Info’ option
  • Added ‘Changelog’ option
  • Added ‘Graphics Info’ option
  • Added ‘Get Support’ option
  • Image processing list:
  • New bottom tool bar with preview panel show/hide button and Start and Stop buttons
  • Application Menu:

Changes:

• User Interface
  
  • Revised controls and labels
  • Controls are broken up into 3 major categories: Scaling, Output, and File Format
  • When resizing by scale:
  • Options are now listed by multiplication factor instead of percentage
  • When resizing by width or height
  • The maximum width or height can be entered
  • Removed the ability to enter both width and height together
  • Processing mode (GPU or CPU) has been moved to the application help menu
  • Start and Stop buttons moved to new bottom tool bar
  • Removed Pause button. If user stops the application, it will resume from last completed image when they click start again.
  • Default file suffix is now ‘-edit’
  • The list items are organized into 2 sections: Input and Output
  • Default preview zoom level is 100%
  • Moved below the image processing list
  • Modified labels for original and preview sides
  • Improved preview target navigation
  • Zoom controls reorganized
  • Clear All button has moved to the image processing list toolbar
  • ‘Show Raw Image Thumbs’ option has been merged into ‘Show Thumbnails In List’ option
  • ‘Switch Users’ option has moved to the new ‘Community’ menu
  • Removed ‘Delete’ and ‘Save metadata’ options (These were only shortcuts, the ability to perform these actions remains in the application)
  • ‘Clear All’ option has moved to the ‘File’ menu
  • Removed the ‘Edit’ menu
  • Right side control panel:
  • Image processing list:
  • Preview Panel:
  • Application Menu:

Fixes:

• Various UI bugs that could cause crashing or unexpected output in files
• Application menu items that were enabled/disabled at the wrong times
• All files would be cleared out of processing list if the cancel button was pressed during processing
• If a file name contained a dot, the name would be truncated

v 2.1.1

December 4, 2018

Fixes:

• We fixed a problem related to banding in output images
• We fixed a problem where PPI was sometimes saved incorrectly

v 2.1.0 

November 20, 2018

New Feature:

• We added the new Preview feature! You can now see the what your results will look like before you start processing! You can open the Preview from the top menu or by clicking the Open Preview button.

Change:

• We added 50%, 100%, 200%, and 400% zoom options for the Preview feature.

Fix:

• We fixed a problem that caused issues with the image output size for both scale and size modes.

v 2.0.0 

September 27, 2018

New Feature:

• We have optimized the GPU processing mode, which will result in a 50% to 80% decrease in processing time. The larger your input image, the greater the relative process time savings you'll see.

Change:

• We have changed the way the "Cancel" option works. Now, it is a TRUE cancel, so selecting this button will interrupt processing on the current image, clear the image list, and end the operation.

v 1.1.2

September 18, 2018

New Features:

• We've changed the check for updates process to run on application startup instead of shutdown
• We updated the A.I. models with more training to improve the output image quality slightly

Change:

• We have disabled the "Match Input" color profile option for RAW files, because it does not apply. Output will always be sRGB in these cases

Fixes:

• We changed the way "Match Input" color profile works, so that unknown or unsupported color profiles are correctly preserved. This will fix the "color shift" problem that was reported to us by many users.
• We fixed a display problem where the "Processing Mode" text overlapped if "Save to Input File
• Location" is not checked
• We fixed a problem where the border of the image option region would disappear when the window was resized
• We fixed a problem where a thin border is added to the output file
• We fixed a problem with the application title area trial notice was not removed when customer purchased
• We fixed a problem with first launch where the trial appeared to be already started, and showed negative days in some cases

v 1.1.1

September 6, 2018

New Feature:

• We have replaced existing models with improved versions, effectively introducing 6 new models

Fixes:

• We have fixed a problem related to starting a trial for the very first time
• We have fixed a problem related to the auto-update system

v 1.1.0 

September 5, 2018

New Features:

• We have added CPU-only processing to expand compatibility. WARNING - CPU processing will be much slower than GPU processing.
• We have added new controls for the Enhance feature, now known as "Reduce Noise and Blur"  Learn more →

v 1.0.2

August 21, 2018

Fixes:

• We fixed a problem with custom ratios, which should now work correctly
• We fixed a problem where the installer would stall after user accepted terms & agreements
• We fixed a problem where Gigapixel AI saved images at 72ppi with no regard to the input ppi value
• We fixed a problem that was contributing to underexposure in some images

v 1.0.1

August 17, 2018

• We fixed a problem that prevented users from logging into the application

v 1.0.0 

August 14, 2018
First Public Release of Topaz Gigapixel AI