Changelog

The photo engine changes above reach LightBites on iPhone, iPad and Mac as they are. The front-end items describe the LightCraft desktop and web interface; the LightBites screens that match them (launch library choice, View Options, Favorites presets, drop cards) are brought over one by one.

The browser tab names the open photo and shows when there are unsaved changes, a finished save repaints, the file picker only lists formats the engine can import, and a dropped file that cannot be imported says why.

Help > Debug > Frame Rate shows a frame-rate readout for watching drags and zooms.

Print adds Japanese photo and postcard paper sizes (including hagaki), and paper names match past punctuation and aliases.

The desktop interface adds Finnish, Swedish, Indonesian and Vietnamese, German now speaks to you with du and has hundreds of strings translated that were missing, French had a native-speaker review, and Settings lists languages alphabetically by their own name.

Tab leaves the name field of New Album and similar dialogs, a click outside can close a dialog if you choose, Settings keeps one size on every tab and nothing runs off the side, and download, scan, denoise and activity progress share one bar with a quiet placeholder for thumbnails still being made. Slider wheel edits disarm when the pointer leaves the row, and a middle-button drag pans the photo whatever tool is active.

The culling dialog has sliders for the burst gap and similarity that read back what they show, the Info panel labels the active photo while culling, and stack badges expand and collapse a stack from the filmstrip.

Starred presets collect in a Favorites section on top of the Presets panel and the preset applied to a photo stays marked when you come back. The Keyword List marks a keyword that has an applied keyword inside it. The stars in the bottom bar, Info panel and filter bar are one shared control with arrow-key support.

The five tonal zones of the histogram name their value on hover and adjust the Basic tones when dragged, double-click resets one. In the parametric Tone Curve the graph draws the renderer’s own curve and the line can be dragged to change Highlights, Lights, Darks or Shadows.

F8 shows or hides the right panel, backslash shows or hides the Filter Bar in the grids and Show Original in the full-screen preview, Cmd+L switches the filter off and on (Hide a photo moved to Cmd+Alt+L), Lock Aspect Ratio has its own key in the crop tool, and X swaps the aspect once. Photo > Show in Folders reveals the right-clicked photo.

View Options (Cmd+J) picks the lines the loupe shows as Info 1 and Info 2. The info overlay clears the macOS window buttons and shows rating and flag, the Before label stays in view when zoomed, and menu switches are named for what they show (Detail View, Edit Panel, Before/After Side by Side) so no two commands share a name.

Importing a Lightroom catalog first asks whether to merge it into the open library or make a new one named after the catalog. A setting remembers the answer if you prefer not to be asked.

Settings > General > At launch: open the last library, or ask. Asking shows your recent libraries, each checked in the background so a network share that is offline never makes the window wait. Open Recent Library can forget one entry.

While files are dragged over the desktop window it dims and a card says what the drop will do: import photos, import presets or open the face model. Dropped photos open the import review first; Settings > Import > Import dropped files without review brings back importing at once. A drop never replaces an open dialog, and the web version says so when a dropped file cannot be read.

File decoders bound what a hostile file can ask them to allocate, the command-line tools check paths and only download over HTTPS, redirects resolve safely, URL schemes match in any case, keyword export refuses library originals and missing folders, malformed ids, ratings and mask indexes are errors instead of silently falling back to the selection, idle control connections expire, and the library lock does not write through a link at its note’s name.

Importing a Lightroom catalog can merge into the open library or create a new one, import destination albums keep their folder hierarchy, and date templates understand month names (January, Jan).

The culling analysis accepts any burst gap and similarity, a photo listed twice is analysed once, and culling goes on from a photo rated out of the view.

Synchronize Folder reports that it is listing the folder, stops when cancelled, says when a folder is up to date, and takes removed photos out of their stacks. Locating a moved folder uses catalog queries and streamed hashing, a folder located below itself keeps its records, and Find Missing Photos matches Windows library paths by file name on macOS and Linux.

Smart albums with an equal f-number or focal length now match, each album is counted once per pass instead of once per album that tests it, file path rules compare in place, and rules that say “in the last” refresh when the clock moves to a new minute.

Searching for a named person finds their photos, and quotes keep a name together, for example person:“Jane Doe”. Find Similar with no matches shows an empty view instead of the whole library.

Other applications’ XMP properties survive a save even when they reuse a prefix, Lightroom’s own profile bookkeeping is no longer reported as unimported XMP, placeholder GPS blocks read as no location, GPS coordinates with the hemisphere letter first or a Unicode minus parse correctly, and GPX files with impossible elevations are cleaned.

Fast shutter speeds are written as an exact 1/N exposure time, Width & Height limits each edge to its own number, graphic watermarks and HDR JPEG size limits are right, and GPS minutes that round up carry into the degrees.

Photoshop files import with their EXIF and XMP, so capture dates, GPS and descriptions show in All Metadata. Malformed metadata in a PSD is refused instead of guessed, and an original export that must remove location is refused when the PSD embeds GPS.

Auto straighten turns a photo by at most 10 degrees and only when at least three lines agree, and says so when it finds nothing. A moved or resized crop slides along a straightened photo’s tilted edges. A crop smaller than the crop tool allows is refused instead of exporting a sliver. Guided Upright guides can be selected, dragged and deleted one by one.

Soft proofing, clipping warnings and the diagnostic overlays render in zoomed windows on the GPU, and a lost graphics device is no longer polled again, so a driver reset falls back to the CPU instead of hanging.

Highlights and Shadows run about twice as fast on the CPU with identical results, the neutral display tone map is exactly the identity up to white, and the GPU denoise gives the right result on DirectX 12 with older Nvidia cards.

The haze estimate is bounded by each pixel’s own darkest channel, so a photo that is dark all over keeps its shadows instead of rendering black.

HDR and panorama merges align the frames at full size with a local refinement, and warp them with Lanczos-3 instead of bilinear, which keeps fine detail. You can also click the merge preview to zoom in and drag to pan.

A smart preview now keeps the facts about the original that edits need (lens data and decoder details), so edits made without the original on disk look the same as with it.

Thumbnails of DNGs that Lightroom made with its HDR or panorama merge are developed from the reduced copies inside the file instead of the full image. Exports still use the full image.

The Sony A7CR’s built-in distortion data is applied, Fujifilm’s nine-knot lens tables are read correctly, and Nikon DSLR lenses are found by their lens specification. A DNG that carries lens corrections keeps them when its tone is fitted.

A raw whose camera preview gives no look to copy now starts from its camera’s typical colour and a neutral tone, and the tone fit works for near-black and low-contrast scenes. Sony A33, A500, A580 and Samsung NX previews padded after their end marker are used again.

White balance in Kelvin now reads Canon CR2 colour data and the Nikon Z5 II’s built-in presets, so the temperature slider shows real numbers for those cameras.

The list of cameras whose raw files were checked against real samples grew to 551 models, including more Sony, Nikon, Canon, Pentax and Samsung bodies.

Nikon small raws (sRAW), Coolpix NRW files stored as 16-bit words, and NEFs with packed 12 or 14-bit data now decode. Panasonic high resolution RW2 files of the DC-S1RM2 (tiled) open as well. A broken or cut-short raw strip is refused with a message instead of producing a bad picture.

Raw files from Minolta cameras (MRW) now import and develop, with their own starting look fitted to the camera’s preview. Sony SR2 and SRF files in folders are found too.

JPEG XL now has a Quality setting when Lossless is off. WebP no longer shows one, because it is always written lossless and the setting did nothing.

The Export Photos action in Shortcuts can now write JPEG XL and WebP, and has an HDR switch. A photo edited in HDR comes out as a JPEG with an HDR gain map, or as an HDR AVIF, PNG or JPEG XL.

Choosing Highlight, Color or Paint for the vignette style no longer shows an error, and the style you pick now applies and shows as selected.

ProRAW and other raw photos with a gain map no longer render too dark, and DNG tone curves keep their colour.

The tool bar no longer stays grey after you come back to a photo.

Tapping Search no longer crashes, and Search is the round button at the right end of the bar again.

Saving an edited video and saving to Photos no longer crash, and the photo screen releases the memory it used once you leave it.

A 48 MP photo reads only the part you zoom into, so 1:1 is sharp on the phone and uses far less memory.

Describe and Words searches now show that they are running.

Remove has a High quality mode and an Ultra mode that paints with a diffusion model. Lens Blur has a clearer panel and says when it is rendering.

Dragging a slider gives sharper pictures sooner and settles quicker on release. The Mac grid scrolls at 120 Hz.

Zoom out to 25 %, move a photo freely while a tool is open, swipe down to close, and the masking brush has its own page. Arrow keys slide between photos at once.

Catalan joins the app’s languages. A dark Masoc design (Settings > Interface > Design) with a black canvas and a coral accent is new, and so is a six-page welcome.

Tap an object to remove it. The tool answers at once, follows your finger and shows a live preview of the object.

Drag albums and folders to reorder them or move them into a folder. Select several to move them together. Add to Album is also in the grid’s long-press menu.

Show a photo alone on an external display or over AirPlay, zoomed the way your loupe is.

A Hidden album behind a lock, and a model that spots sensitive photos and blurs them. You can mark any photo sensitive yourself, and it blurs at once.

Export HDR as a JPEG with a gain map, or as AVIF using the PQ or HLG curve.

Settings > Camera & Lens Profiles keeps profiles up to date with a daily check, and the Optics panel has switches for each correction.

Lock the whole app behind Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode.

LightBites Pro is a one-time purchase with a free 7-day trial, and 7 more days when you share the app. The Mac download is sold with a licence key.

An offline album shows how far its download has got, each photo shows that it is kept offline, and one photo can leave offline use without removing the whole album.

The search, text, face and sensitive-content models now run on your iPhone or iPad, so search by description and People work without a server.

Keep photos in iCloud Drive and sync your presets, settings and edits to Photos-library photos through iCloud, with no server to run. Analysis results sync through iCloud too.

Keep several libraries and switch between them without restarting. A library can be local, on a drive or a network share, or synced with a server. iPhone and iPad remember recent libraries and can open folders outside the library.

Ask Siri, build Shortcuts, find photos from Spotlight and carry on editing on another device with Handoff.

LightBites is now an editing extension for Photos: open a photo there, edit it with LightBites and save it back. Live Photos are supported.

Put your photos on the Home Screen and Lock Screen, and open LightBites from a Control Center control.

A tvOS app: sign in to your server, browse your library on the big screen, rate photos, make light edits and run a slideshow.

Browse presets other people made, download them, favourite them, report bad ones and share your own. Sign in with Apple to take part. It is under the Presets panel and in Settings.

LightBites + brings 17 film looks that ship with the app: slide films, negatives, cinema and black and white, in the style of classic Fuji stocks. They are free for everyone and work as presets, so you can adjust them afterwards.

Video clips now live in your library. They import like photos, show their length on the grid, play in the loupe and can be edited: trim them, pick the poster frame, see a preview of your edits and export the result. A clip from Photos plays straight from Photos and only fetches the original when you edit it.