Testing release workflow

What's changed

This release focuses on refinements to the UI and improvements to metadata extraction and display.

• XMP parsing (via the TinyXML2 library)
  • In addition to displaying the raw XMP text, the parsed XMP data is now displayed in a tree structure much like EXIF data
• Since the amount of metadata that HDRView extracts from images has increased, the Info panel now has a dropdown for which metadata to look at (General, Header, EXIF, XMP, Raw XMP data)
• HDRView now extracts metadata and colorspace/ICC profile information for PSD images
• Fixed an issue where PNG EXIF and XMP metadata wasn't being extracted properly
• XMP metadata is now extracted from TIFF files
• Minor layout/sizing tweaks to Help/About dialog

Precompiled binaries for macOS, Windows, and Linux available below.

Full Changelog: v2.7.1...v2.8.0

What's changed

This release focuses on refinements to the UI and improvements to metadata extraction and display.

• XMP parsing (via the TinyXML2 library)
  • In addition to displaying the raw XMP text, the parsed XMP data is now displayed in a tree structure much like EXIF data
• Since the amount of metadata that HDRView extracts from images has increased, the Info panel now has a dropdown for which metadata to look at (General, Header, EXIF, XMP, Raw XMP data)
• HDRView now extracts metadata and colorspace/ICC profile information for PSD images
• Fixed an issue where PNG EXIF and XMP metadata wasn't being extracted properly
• XMP metadata is now extracted from TIFF files
• Minor layout/sizing tweaks to Help/About dialog

Full Changelog: v2.7.1...v2.8.0-beta.02

Testing next release

What's changed

This is the same as v2.7.0, but now with precompiled binaries not only for Windows and macOS, but also Linux AppImage binaries!

Release notes for v2.7.0 follow:

New image loading and saving features

• Support for loading and saving TIFF and WebP images, including LogLuv HDR TIFFs, and animated WebP images
• Support for loading all frames of heif image sequences (though libheif can only decode "Intra" frames properly)
• Support for loading RAW files from various cameras (via LibRaw) as well as DNG files.
• Image saving now brings up a dialog with format-specific options. You can export a composited reference/background image, select the transfer function, and set many format-specific options (like 16-bit and interlacing for PNG, UltraHDR gainmaps, pixel type, compression, tiling and channel selection for EXR files, etc.)
• Added an "Image loading options" dialog (accessible from the File menu and command palette) which allows enabling/disabling/reordering the image loaders, setting color profile options, and specifying a channel selector to load only the channels matching a filter
• You can now control how HDRView handles colors on load (via the "Image loading options" dialog)
  • You can manually override the file's color profile with one of your choosing
  • You can also choose whether HDRView converts the file's pixel values to the Rec709 working color space, or tries to keep the values in the file's color profile (and only convert to Rec709 on display)
• Added finer-grained encoder/decoder support for libheif with separate configure options for HEIC, AVIF, AVCI, and HTJ2K. HEIC and AVCI support is now disabled for the binary releases due to patent restrictions. If you understand the licensing terms of these formats you can build HDRView yourself and enable them using the appropriate -DHDRVIEW_ENABLE_XXXX=ON option during cmake configure.
• Saving to JPG now falls back to the stb library when libjpeg is disabled

UI improvements

• Fixed background checkerboard rendering in the image viewport when exposure offset is non-zero
• Compute and display the standard deviation in the Channel statistics window (computed using Welford's numerically stable one-pass algorithm)
• Fixed toolbar overlapping with panel headers at smaller font sizes
• We now extract much more metadata on load and display it in a cleaner way in the Info window (including raw XMP, more descriptive EXIF field names, and longer tooltip descriptions for many fields)
• Filenames now smoothly right-align when resizing the Image window
• Performance improvement: Use a clipper to iterate only over visible images in file window, improving drawing performance when many images are loaded.
• Several command palette enhancements:
  • Improved auto-sizing
  • The most-recently-used commands are now listed at the top of the palette
  • Commands in the palette can now have multiple names/aliases to aid in discovery/filtering.
  • The commands can prompt directly for free-form text or even display widgets (e.g. the Set background color command)
• Fixed #147

Misc

• Added commands (to the command palette) for creating dither and gradient images
• Lots of behind-the-scenes rework of the color space handling and conversion code
• Converting the build process and CI workflows to use CMake presets.
• Updated to latest versions of various dependencies
• Updated icon to macOS 26 Tahoe guidelines

Full Changelog: v2.6.0...v2.7.1

testing linux appimage

What's changed

New image loading and saving features

• Support for loading and saving TIFF and WebP images, including LogLuv HDR TIFFs, and animated WebP images
• Support for loading all frames of heif image sequences (though libheif can only decode "Intra" frames properly)
• Support for loading RAW files from various cameras (via LibRaw) as well as DNG files.
• Image saving now brings up a dialog with format-specific options. You can export a composited reference/background image, select the transfer function, and set many format-specific options (like 16-bit and interlacing for PNG, UltraHDR gainmaps, pixel type, compression, tiling and channel selection for EXR files, etc.)
• Added an "Image loading options" dialog (accessible from the File menu and command palette) which allows enabling/disabling/reordering the image loaders, setting color profile options, and specifying a channel selector to load only the channels matching a filter
• You can now control how HDRView handles colors on load (via the "Image loading options" dialog)
  • You can manually override the file's color profile with one of your choosing
  • You can also choose whether HDRView converts the file's pixel values to the Rec709 working color space, or tries to keep the values in the file's color profile (and only convert to Rec709 on display)
• Added finer-grained encoder/decoder support for libheif with separate configure options for HEIC, AVIF, AVCI, and HTJ2K. HEIC and AVCI support is now disabled for the binary releases due to patent restrictions. If you understand the licensing terms of these formats you can build HDRView yourself and enable them using the appropriate -DHDRVIEW_ENABLE_XXXX=ON option during cmake configure.
• Saving to JPG now falls back to the stb library when libjpeg is disabled

UI improvements

• Fixed background checkerboard rendering in the image viewport when exposure offset is non-zero
• Compute and display the standard deviation in the Channel statistics window (computed using Welford's numerically stable one-pass algorithm)
• Fixed toolbar overlapping with panel headers at smaller font sizes
• We now extract much more metadata on load and display it in a cleaner way in the Info window (including raw XMP, more descriptive EXIF field names, and longer tooltip descriptions for many fields)
• Filenames now smoothly right-align when resizing the Image window
• Performance improvement: Use a clipper to iterate only over visible images in file window, improving drawing performance when many images are loaded.
• Several command palette enhancements:
  • Improved auto-sizing
  • The most-recently-used commands are now listed at the top of the palette
  • Commands in the palette can now have multiple names/aliases to aid in discovery/filtering.
  • The commands can prompt directly for free-form text or even display widgets (e.g. the Set background color command)
• Fixed #147

Misc

• Added commands (to the command palette) for creating dither and gradient images
• Lots of behind-the-scenes rework of the color space handling and conversion code
• Converting the build process and CI workflows to use CMake presets.
• Updated to latest versions of various dependencies
• Updated icon to macOS 26 Tahoe guidelines

Full Changelog: v2.6.0...v2.7.0

What's Changed

Image I/O & metadata

• ZIP archive support: HDRView can now open all images within a ZIP archive
• Extracting PNG text chunk metadata, including embedded ASCII‑hex EXIF
  • Bug fix: Fixed incorrect libpng png_get_text usage that led to a crash
• If EXIF orientation is found, the appropriate rotation/flipping is applied to the pixel data on load
• Improved EXR header extraction and general metadata improvements.
• Display original encoded/numerical metadata values on hover
• More info about the image loading libraries is listed in the Build info tab of the About/Help window

Image display & UI

• Added a Relative subtract (signed) to complement the Relative difference (unsigned) error visualization mode
• Added a "Watched Folders" window to add, remove, and list currently watched folders.
• Added command to watch a folder for future changes, without loading existing images
• Added a right-click context menu for each image in File window, including ability to "Reveal in Finder"
• Bug fix: Fixed shader edge sampling that caused a flickering image border.

Build, packaging & CI

• DMG creation in CI workflow now retries up to 3 times before failing (workaround for flaky create-dmg).

Full Changelog: v2.5.3...v2.6.0-beta.1

Released Files

• Pre-built binary archive (.zip) for Microsoft Windows (extract in your desired location, and run HDRView.exe)
• Pre-built dmg installer for Apple Silicon (HDRView-arm64.dmg) or Intel (HDRView-x86_64.dmg) Macs. Make sure to download the appropriate one for your architecture!
  • The binaries are not signed, so you will get an error "'HDRView' Not Opened. Apple could not verify “HDRView 2” is free of malware that may harm your Mac or compromise your privacy." Click "Done" then go to System Settings > Privacy & Security, scroll to the bottom, and click "Open Anyway" next to "HDRView was blocked to protect your Mac."

Highlights

Image I/O & metadata

• ZIP archive support: HDRView can now open all images within a ZIP archive
• Extracting PNG text chunk metadata, including embedded ASCII‑hex EXIF
  • Bug fix: Fixed incorrect libpng png_get_text usage that led to a crash
• If EXIF orientation is found, the appropriate rotation/flipping is applied to the pixel data on load
• Improved EXR header extraction and general metadata improvements.
• Display original encoded/numerical metadata values on hover
• More info about the image loading libraries is listed in the Build info tab of the About/Help window

Image display & UI

• Added a Relative subtract (signed) to complement the Relative difference (unsigned) error visualization mode
• Added a "Watched Folders" window to add, remove, and list currently watched folders.
• Added command to watch a folder for future changes, without loading existing images
• Added a right-click context menu for each image in File window, including ability to "Reveal in Finder"
• Bug fix: Fixed shader edge sampling that caused a flickering image border.

Build, packaging & CI

• DMG creation in CI workflow now retries up to 3 times before failing (workaround for flaky create-dmg).

Full Changelog: v2.5.3...v2.6.0-beta.1

What's Changed

(This is identical to 2.5.2, but fixes a minor uv-boundary artifact in Metal)

1. DDS image support — New decoder for DDS files, including support for ASTC and BC compressed textures.
2. Animated GIFs — Animated GIF support added to the stb-based image loader.
3. JPEG/JXL/PPM/PNM loader improvements — CMYK support for JPEG and JXL images. Fixed endian bug in stb_image for 16-bit PPM/PNM.
4. More metadata — The loaders now save more metadata about the files and the Info panel shows this in the UI. Clicking
5. New blackpoint offset control
6. Histogram allows dragging the black and white points, which automatically set the exposure and offset
7. Controls to playback the loaded images as an animation with user-controllable speed
8. Clip warnings (zebra striping) controls in the menu and histogram
9. The Info and other windows now use the nvgui Property editor
10. Colorspace info is now in its own window
11. New colormap options: reverse-colormap toggle and an AbsGreys colormap.
12. Can specify a channel selector when loading images from the command line
13. Replaced "bit depth" with more general “pixel format” terminology in the Info panel
14. The Files table automatically scrolls to keep the current image/channel group in view when navigating with the keyboard

Full Changelog: v2.4.0...v2.5.1

Released Files

• Pre-built binary archive (.zip) for Microsoft Windows (extract in your desired location, and run HDRView.exe)
• Pre-built dmg installer for Apple Silicon (HDRView-arm64.dmg) or Intel (HDRView-x86_64.dmg) Macs. Make sure to download the appropriate one for your architecture!