Helicon Focus – History of changes (Mac)

What is new in the latest version

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.2.14 (08.03.2024) (191 Mb)

• OpenCL support for Apple Silicon systems running macOS 14.4

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.2.13 (30.01.2024)

• OpenCL support for M3

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.2.12 (23.01.2024)

• OpenCL support for Apple Silicon systems running macOS 14.3

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.2.11 (12.12.2023)

• OpenCL support for Apple Silicon systems running macOS 14.2

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.2.10 (28.10.2023)

• OpenCL support for Apple Silicon systems running macOS 14.1

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.2.9 (03.10.2023)

• 'Split by time' fixed (regression in 8.2.8)

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.2.8 (29.09.2023)

• OpenCL support for Apple Silicon systems running macOS 14.0
• minimum OS requirements changed to macOS 12.0

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.2.7 (26.07.2023)

• OpenCL support for M1 systems running macOS 13.5

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.2.6 (11.07.2023)

• Poor retouching performance fixed

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.2.5 (21.05.2023)

• OpenCL support for M1 systems running macOS 13.4

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.2.4 (17.04.2023)

• OpenCL support for M1 with macOS 13.3

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.2.3 (30.01.2023)

• OpenCL support for M1 with macOS 13.2

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.2.2 (21.12.2022)

• OpenCL support for M1 with macOS 13.1

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.2.1 (28.10.2022)

• OpenCL support for M1 with macOS 13

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.2.0 (19.09.2022)

• OpenCL support for M1 with macOS 12.6

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.1.2 (08.02.2022)

• OpenCL support for M1 with macOS 12.5

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.1.1 (18.05.2022)

• OpenCL support for M1 with macOS 12.4

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.1.0 (04.04.2022)

• OpenCL support for M1 with macOS 12.3
• Capture One plugin updated - support for the latest versions of C1
• 3D Viewer: exporting OBJ + MTL fixed - the model will be textured properly after importing into 3D editing software like Blender, C4D etc.
• Command line options "--zoom" and "--relief-amplifier" added to the 3D Viewer, so these parameters can be specified when opening the viewer from a script
• Helicon Focus: various bugs fixed

Helicon Focus (Lite, Pro, Premium) 8.0.4 (10.02.2022) 

• Fixed crashing on using Paint with pattern brush

• Fixed crashing with OpenCL error during rendering (e.g. when your graphics card does not have enough video memory to complete rendering)

• Render preview - explore various combinations of rendering methods and parameters in real-time mode
• OpenCl hardware acceleration supported on M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max. macOS 12.2 required for OpenCL to work on M1 systems.
• Overlapping option added for substacks
• Layer export speed-up
• Multiple improvements and bug fixes

• A plugin error when exporting from Lightroom fixed (only occurred on a small number of systems)
• DNG format support added to the Capture One plugin on Mac

• Lightroom plugin improved to allow multiple parallel export tasks
• Lightroom plugin: preset added for exporting raw to Helicon Focus in DNG format
• OpenCL crash fixed that occurred when source images had significantly different sizes
• OpenCL crash fixed that occurred when manual focus detection area was enabled

• A suggestion to install Adobe DNG Converter no longer shown when working with JPEG or TIFF images
• Publishing of the resulting image to Facebook failure fixed

• Various rendering bugs when using OpenCL fixed for all supported GPUs
• "Open with" menu in Finder will now contain Helicon Focus for supported formats (images, videos, project files), and Helicon 3D Viewer for .h3d model files

• Automatic brightness bug in OpenCL mode fixed
• Method A OpenCL implementation fixed
• Lightroom integration fixed for batch mode
• Nvidia 9xx GPUs support fixed

• OpenCL acceleration: all recent AMD graphics card supported (Radeon VII and other Vega variants, including workstation and mobile GPUs; Radeon 6900[XT], 6800[XT], 6700[XT])
• Various bugs fixed
• 'Add current sources' option in batch mode loads all files from the current source image list to batch mode. Now it's possible to split stacks exported from Lightroom

• CR3 raw format supported (but only when saving the results to DNG; saving to TIFF/JPG doesn't transfer the metadata)
• Options to hide the tool bar and the status bar added in menu - View (useful for smaller screens)
• Erroneous message "Cannot save project when another output was used as source" fixed
• Color tint when exporting layers fixed
• Numerous smaller bug fixes

• Reliability improvements - a number of issues causing Helicon Focus to crash fixed

• Multiple reliability improvements, bug fixes
• User interface improvements: options to "Show grid" and "Hide source file name" are added under the View menu for retouching; missing keyboard shortcuts added (Save all, Open stack), previously existing shortcuts made visible in the menu
  (Zoom in/out, Folder monitor). Tab order in the "Preferences" dialog fixed
• Batch processing: "Split stack" and "Apply parameters to other stacks" performance improved significantly
• Projects can now be loaded in command line mode
• Multiple "Save all" bugs fixed
• AMD RX 5000 series graphics cards supported for OpenCL acceleration

• 30% speed up on CPU
• Optimizations for AVX-512 capable processors
• Apple notarization
• 'Save All' feature added
• Minor bug fixes

• Incorrect trial version limitations bug fixed
• Open recent option added

• Translation and help update
• DNG converter update
• Saving activation code for automatic registration
• EXIF and XMP handling fixes
• Watermark on saved images in registered Lite version bug fixed
• Minor fixes

• Colors in navigator window fixed for DNG stacks
• Brush size per brush type preserve fix
• Lauch without OpenCL if previous launch with OpenCL failed.
  --disable-opencl command line option added

• Fix DPI in output images
• Fix saving 32bit float images to JPEG
• Fix default JPEG quality setting
• Wider GPU support

• OpenCL hardware acceleration (Pro license required)

Compatibility list:
NVidia 9xx, 10xx, 20xx series
AMD Radeon 4xx, 5xx series
Intel HD Graphics 5xx, 6xx series
At least 2Gb of VRAM is required

• Raw codecs updated
• Various ui improvements and bug fixes

• Poor retouching performance on Mac fixed
• Turning off "Adjust brightness" no longer produces artifacts
• Fixed image thumbnails not being interpolated
• Proper detection of missing source files when loading a project
• Better logging of some issues so that bug reports are more helpful

• New feature: Folder Monitor
• New feature: Manual focus detection area adjustment (can be enabled in Preferences -> Autoadjustments): shows a blue rectangle of selection area and allows you to adjust the area of alignment of frames in the stack
• New feature: Crop result image automatically (Preferences -> Autoadjustments): lets you auto-crop all images in the stack, e. g. when there are artifacts on the edge of the image, or when there's an are that lacks focus data. Cropping the image properly helps avoid focus stacking artifacts induced by such useless areas
• User interface somewhat reworked, the list of rendering results moved to the bottom of the window. The minimum allowed height of the main window has been reduced, it can now fit the screen on some laptops where previously the window was too large for the screen
• Method B reworked, it now produces good image in some of the difficult cases that previously resulted in artifacts
• Performance improved, especially on multi-core systems
• Memory consumption optimized, it is now bound to a certain fraction of system's total memory (configurable in Preferences -> Performance). Within that limit, Helicon Focus will use as much memory as possible to avoid re-computing things, and, ultimately, to speed up rendering
• Disk cache optimized to avoid situations when all the free space is used up by Helicon Focus
• Numerous bug fixes and stability improvements

• Updated Adobe DNG converter
• Minor performance improvements

• Lightroom integration: Helicon Focus no longer exits automatically upon saving the rendering result
• Batch processing, command line mode: TIFFs are now saved with LZW compression by default
• Some other minor improvements

• Adobe DNG converter made the default raw decoder
• Fixed the image loading error when Adobe DNG converter is used and importing a raw images takes longer than 30 seconds
• Fixed the retouching brush not updating after loading a different source image until the cursor is moved
• Support for TIFF files with non-integer number of bytes per channel added (e. g. 12 bits)
• 3D model now correctly gets the retouched depth map
• IIQ raw format support added
• Batch processing: the list of source stacks can now be sorted by various columns
• Some more minor bugs fixed

• Minor performance improvements
• Idle CPU load reduced on OS X
• Fixed "phantom" brush strokes that were sometimes applied when switching source images

• 3D Viewer video export error on OS X fixed
• Fixed saving results as DNG in batch processing mode
• Drag and drop support implemented for the batch processing dialog
• Fixed splitting stacks by shooting time
• Fixed a couple errors in managing stacks in the batch processing dialog
• Silent compilation: fixed the message about missing DNG converter
• Color profile is now properly applied in silent compilation mode
• Fixed rendering grayscale (single-channel) and 4-channel (alpha) images (all processing modes)
• Output image DPI is always set to the value specified in Helicon Focus settings now
• Rendering performance improved on multi-core CPUs

• Fixed the program freezing on startup on some machines where it has never been run before
• EXIF metadata is now properly transferred to the resulting images in batch processing mode
• Fixed a crash or lockup when cancelling render in progress
• Fixed integration with Helicon Remote on Mac OS X
• Error handling improved in some cases

• Fixed a critical problem that occurred if the cache folder was not accessible
• Fixed the digital signature to get rid of the error "The developer's identity cannot be verified"

• New feature: video import (opens video files, automatically extracts frames and loads them as source images for further focus stacking)
• Fixed an issue with the "Split stacks by time" function in the batch processing dialog: the wrong EXIF time tag was taken into account so the results were incorrect sometimes. Additionally, the time resolution is now improved from 1 minute to 1 second

• Fixed an error that could cause black pixels to appear on the edge of the final image
• Fixed a minor error in the Publish to Web tool

• Fixed an occasional crash during stack rendering
• Fixed the saved/unsaved status indicator (asterisk) in the results list - now it correctly marks the stacks that have not been saved yet, or have been edited after saving

• Fixed a rare render issue

• New feature: the resulting image can be shared on Facebook
• A few minor user interface improvements

• Retouching: fixed a crash when trying to use another output as source
• Retouching: fixed an error that was preventing you from retouching pixels that are entirely on the source image
• Panorama stitching crash fixed
• Focus stacking progress indicator fixed
• Another rare crash fixed
• Added support for dropping folders (including arbitrary number of subfolders) the same ways you drop files
• Auto update issues fixed

• Fixed the memory consumption issue that appeared in 6.3.6
• Fixed the image loading error when changing the RAW codec while an image preview was loading

• Many minor stability fixes

• Many minor stability fixes

• Improved export layers functionality
• Added Texture only option for retouching brushes
• Fixed RAW-in-DNG-out mode
• Many minor stability fixes

• RAW-in-DNG-out mode, which allows to process RAW files in native color space and save result as DNG file
• Many stability and performance fixes

• Bug with saving TIFFs is fixed
• New method of autosplitting panorama and HDR stacks

• New Enqueue stacks window for processing of multiple folders
• Splitting stacks by number, time interval and exposure
• RAW development with native Mac OS X codecs
• Retouching using other output images

• Fixed bug with saving TIFF files
• Fixed DPI info in output bug
• Fixed Lightroom plugin bug

• Raw development settings
• Command line mode fixed

• Better performance and scalability
• Simpler and faster interface
• Asynchronous stacking
• Ability to save projects and continue retouching later
• Better RAW handling

• Added plug-in installation for exporting images from Lightroom
• Added new render method "C"
• Updated Helicon Focus engine
• Improved performance for application processes
• Fixed some UI bugs

• Full Mac OS X Lion compatibility
• Improved performance for application processes

• Improved stability while processing a lot of images

• Fixed an issue with retouching on Mac OS X 10.5.x
• Fixed a few translation issues

• A bug with alignment of images fixed

• Fixed processing some Nikon RAW files

• Added Photoshop-like dragging in retouching mode
• Improved overall stability
• Fixed a batch of UI issues
• Introduced Apple's Grand Central Dispatch technology for image processing

• Improved stability of Helicon 3D Viewer
• Improved stability of 32-bit version
• Improved support of 16-bit images in panorama and 3D-models export
• Fixed a few issues with exporting web-animation
• Fixed a bug in panorama module

• Fixed random crash on processing big number of stacks
• Improved error handling
• German localization is improved
• Fixed issue when 3D-models were flipped after export from Helicon Focus
• Improved export from Helicon 3D Viewer

• Added 3d-viewer
• Added German localization
• Implemented saving result as web-animation
• Optimized for Snow Leopard

• Introduced possibility to specify directory for temporary files
• Introduced opportunity to change output image DPI
• Improved performance
• Improved image processing
• Fixed a batch of UI issues

• Starting from 4.1 we dropped support of the Mac OS X 10.4.11 (Tiger). Tiger users can download Helicon Focus Mac 4.0.5 with Multiprocessor support feature enabled for all types of licenses (Lite, Pro, Pro X64)
• Multiprocessor license is replaced with Pro X64 license for all users and becomes unavailable running on Mac OS X 10.4.11
• Added possibility to run in 64 bit mode for users with Pro X64 license
• Introduced Helicon Focus Help Book
• Improved performance
• Fixed a batch of UI issues

• Starting from Helicon Focus 4.0.5 multiprocessor support is available in all licenses (Lite, Pro, Pro X64)
• Introduced Helicon Focus Help Book
• Improved performance
• Fixed a batch of UI issues

• Significantly improved performance and memory usage
• Introduced depth map visualization while using copy source retouching tool
• Added control over depth map feathering to achieve better sharpness
• Corrected saving of 48-bit images to PSD format
• Introduced possibility to save results in number of additional image formats
• Improved overall stability

• New interpolation methods
• Improved performance on PowerPC machines
• Improved stability in Panorama and Saving modes
• More Photoshop-like keyboard shortcuts
• More actions in pop-up menu of the source images table view
• Many user interface issues fixed
• Advanced interpolation methods added (Laczos, Sinc256)

• Retouching brushes added (available in Pro and MP versions). Now you can clone areas from the source images to fix artifacts like halos or moving objects
• Enhanced Lanczos resampling added which preserves more details during image alignment process
• Interface completely redesigned

• New stacking method added
• Memory and speed optimization performed especially for multiprocessor computers
• Panorama function added (available in Pro and MP versions)
• Online registration with short activation code is now available

Focus Mac (Lite, Pro, Multiprocessor) 3.61 (13.12.2007)

• Problem with 16-bit images on Intel platform solved

• Support for Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) added
• Version is compiled as Universal Binary and can be run natively on Power PC and Intel platforms
• Better support for large files (up to 85Mp)

• Multiprocessor support (v.3.50+)
• Improved performance (v.3.50+)
• Better support for high resolution (30+Mp) images
  (v.3.51+)

Version for Mac OS 10.3+