Changelog

Version 26.0.6 beta current

3 September 2026 · build 7 · delta update from 26.0.5

• Color grading wheels. The four-wheel Dark / Mid / Light / Global panel — hue disc, saturation arc, and a range arc that sets the tonal band each wheel works on (near-black, midrange, highlights) — as a live parametric control right after Contrast, with its own bypass switch. Ported intact from Photo Editor Pro, applied on the GPU, saved in the sidecar, carried by presets, copy/paste and thumbnails.
• HSL curves. Six curve modes — Hue vs Hue, Hue vs Sat, Hue vs Lum, Lum vs Sat, Sat vs Sat, Sat vs Lum — with the hue-ramp background and quick-select color dots, also live, also bypassable, also everywhere the develop goes.
• Third-party OpenFX plugins actually work now. The host keeps a live instance per plugin and speaks the full InstanceChanged protocol, so plugins that build their option lists at runtime — Dehancer's Vendor / Camera / Film Profile popups — populate and render their complete pipeline, in preview, thumbnails and exports. Choices are stored by name, so saved looks survive.
• And they no longer freeze the Mac: plugin renders run at background priority leaving cores to the interface, drag gestures bake at draft resolution with the full-resolution frame on release, and the scaled source is cached instead of being rebuilt from the full RAW on every tick.
• Preset live preview. Hover a preset — in the editor's menu or the menu-bar Presets menu — and the image shows it in real time; leave, and the original look returns untouched. Presets sort newest first.
• Edit history. Every editing session that changed something records a version (with thumbnail) when the editor closes; right-click ▸ History lists them, and reverting asks first — and never discards the only copy of the current grade.
• Aliases — virtual copies. ⌘D creates a reference to the original (a few bytes, shown amber as “alias di …”): same negative, its own independent develop. Rate, grade and export each alias separately.
• Desat white reworked. It now anchors to the image's own maximum luminance and runs after the tone curve, so it grips real highlights even on frames that never reach pure white — verified numerically on real CR2s.
• Fixes. The editor honours EXIF orientation on TIF/JPEG (portrait files no longer open sideways); clicking near a curve point grabs it instead of planting a twin; catalog-filtered views show stars and edit badges; entering a folder develops the first four tiles in parallel so the grid is never empty; tool buttons joined the editor header.

Version 26.0.5 beta

2 September 2026 · build 6 · delta update from 26.0.4

• The app no longer fights your Mac. Thumbnail and cache generation moved to a single slow, thermal-aware background lane: visible tiles still load first and fast, but the bulk pre-generation now trickles in small blocks, pauses while you interact, backs off when the machine warms up, and stops entirely under serious thermal pressure. Browsing stays fluid even while a big RAW folder is being indexed.
• Instant sidebar. Favorite-folder mosaics and photo counts persist on disk and appear the moment the app opens, instead of being rebuilt from scratch each launch.
• No more jolt when you come back. Switching back to the app no longer refreshes the grid (and loses your place) unless the folder actually changed on disk.
• Edit badges, finished. One small chip per edit family — develop controls, tone curve, film simulation, print simulation, LUT, OpenFX, crop/straighten — drawn on the tile; tiny thumbnails collapse them to a colored type dot plus an amber edited dot. Catalog-filtered views now show badges, stars and labels too (their fast index never read the sidecars).
• Paste Special (⌥⇧⌘V): choose which families of settings to paste — curve only, LUT only, everything but the crop, any mix.
• Editor refinements. The header now shows the current preset with a menu of your presets (each with its thumbnail and family icons); curve endpoints drag freely on both axes; a Tools palette (pan, zoom, crop, straighten); dragging outside the crop rect rotates the image with a live angle readout; the LUT menu leads with None.
• Fixes. Pasting after selecting a single image no longer hits the previous multi-selection; the browser window no longer stays glued above other apps after the fullscreen preview; the fullscreen top gradient is gone and Reset Transformations works (both from your feedback reports — thank you, keep them coming).

Version 26.0.4 beta

2 September 2026 · build 5 · delta update from 26.0.3

• Crop tool. Press C in the editor: the full straightened frame with a draggable rect — thirds grid, eight handles, Return applies, Esc cancels, ⌘Z undoes. Non-destructive, stored in the standard Adobe crop fields, composed with the straighten tool with a single resample; exports, grid thumbnails and presets follow.
• One badge strip under the thumbnail. The rating stars sit left, on the same line as the edited dot and the file-type pill — and the edited dot now lights only for real develop edits, not for a rating-only sidecar.
• Edit button in the fullscreen preview (bottom right) opens the editor on the viewed image; an unmissable “+ Add Folder…” button tops the sidebar.
• Check for Updates… restored — now right under Settings, and it survives the system rewriting the menu bar (the reason it could vanish).

Version 26.0.3 beta

2 September 2026 · build 4 · delta update from 26.0.2

• Presets in the menu bar. The Favorites menu is now Presets: your develop presets, each with the thumbnail of the image it was created from — pick one to apply it to every selected image in the grid. Favorite folders live in the sidebar (⌘D / ⇧⌘D still add and remove the current folder).
• Right-click a favorite folder for Show in Finder and Remove from Favorites.

Version 26.0.2 beta

2 September 2026 · build 3 · delta update from 26.0.1

• Favorites, grown up. A Favorites menu in the menu bar (⌘D adds the current folder, ⇧⌘D removes it); each favourite shows a four-photo mosaic of its most recent images and a photo count in the sidebar.
• Bridge-style grid. Hairline separators between cells, and the selected image carries a clickable star-rating row (⊘ + five stars, keyboard 0–5) that writes real xmp:Rating — visible to Lightroom and Bridge.
• OpenFX plugin presets. The parameter palette gains a Presets menu per plugin: save the current parameters under a name with a thumbnail captured at that moment, re-apply in one click.
• Vectors and PDFs open in their apps. SVG, AI and EPS files open in Vector Designer, PDFs in Pdf Editor Pro (system default when not installed); PDF/AI/EPS now list in the grid with real content thumbnails.
• LUT on/off switch beside the LUT picker, matching the OpenFX one — bypass without losing the choice, honoured by exports and grid thumbnails.
• Develop presets in the editor panel, with thumbnails, storing the complete develop state.
• The window opens maximized at launch; the Z zoom tool shows the magnifier immediately and steps instantly while held; heavy OpenFX plugins no longer stall editing (draft-resolution previews while dragging, and grid thumbnails wait until the editor closes).

Version 26.0.1 beta

2 September 2026 · build 2 · delta update from 26.0

• English interface throughout. Every label, menu, palette, status and error message is now in English (205 strings). Sidecars and presets written by 26.0 still load unchanged.
• The app file is now Golden Gate.app. The 26.0 disk image installed a file still named after the internal project; from this release the bundle carries the product name.
• Installed copies of 26.0 receive this update automatically (a ~4 MB delta).

Version 26.0 beta

The first public release, and a beta: a signed and notarised DMG with built-in updates, published so people outside the workshop can finally use it. Everything below is in this build; the app is young, so treat your originals as originals and send us what breaks.

Feature list

• The grid — an entire folder of shots drawn by Skia on Metal, with mipmapped GPU thumbnails, realtime pinch and ⌘-scroll zoom, folder navigation and history, drag and drop, multi-selection and keyboard navigation
• Two RAW engines — the in-house engine (rawler, linear half-float) on ⌘E, and Apple's CIRAWFilter on ⌥⌘E: the same negative, two demosaics, one keystroke apart
• Raw formats — CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, DNG, ORF, RW2, PEF and SRW, alongside TIFF, JPEG, PNG and HEIF
• Develop — exposure, white balance by temperature and tint, contrast, shadows and highlights, and the whole saturation family including vibrance, applied to the linear raw data on the GPU
• Free-form tone curve — a real curve editor drawn with NanoVG: points anywhere, dragged live
• Vectorscope — a live scope beside the picture while you grade
• Preserve-highlights fusion — an HDR pass that rebuilds blown highlights from the raw headroom instead of clipping them
• Twenty film LUTs — Portra 160, 400 and 800 (with push), Gold 200, UltraMax 400, Ektar 100, Ektachrome 100, Kodachrome 64, Verita 200D, the Vision3 50D, 200T, 250D and 500T print stocks, Velvia 100, Provia 100F, Pro 400H, C200 and X-Tra 400 — plus film grain
• OpenFX plugin host — third-party plugins rendered on Metal, with parameter palettes ported from Photo Editor Pro; Dehancer, Filmbox and the openfx-misc suite load as they are
• Print and CMYK simulation — see what the paper will do before the paper does it
• Physical straighten — levelling a horizon rotates the pixels, in one undo step, instead of leaving an orientation flag for another app to misread
• XMP sidecars — develop settings and star ratings written next to the file in Adobe's crs namespace, so Camera Raw and Lightroom read what you did
• Copy and paste develop settings — from one frame to a whole selection
• Export — 16-bit TIFF and HEIC in HDR PQ
• Feedback built in — Help ▸ Send Feedback… (⇧⌘F) and a floating feedback chat (⌥⌘F), both with the log attached
• Updates built in — Check for Updates… in the Golden Gate menu; the DMG is signed by RainbowFactory LTD, notarised by Apple, and every update is verified against the app's own EdDSA key before it is opened

Known limits of this beta

• No catalogue and no database: the folder on disk is the library
• Apple silicon only, macOS 12 or later
• The app is named Golden Gate everywhere it speaks, but the bundle in the DMG is still called imagebrowser.app — its working name, kept for this release so installed copies and their settings survive the rename
• Rough edges are expected: this is a first public build, and feedback is what turns it into a second one