Version 1.9.4

RawCull Changelog — v1.8.5 → 1.9.4

Updated on Apple App Store.

v1.9.1 → v1.9.4

🎯 Sharpness scoring now has intent presets and precision modes

Sharpness scoring is now much more configurable and better tuned for different kinds of photography.

• Added photo-type presets: Auto, Birds/Wildlife, Portrait, Landscape, and Action.
• Added quality modes: Fast, Balanced, and High Precision. Balanced and High Precision decode larger previews and blend more fine detail for better small-subject ranking.
• Added a scoring source picker: Embedded Preview for normal culling speed, or RAW Demosaic for slow, final-precision checks.
• These scoring choices are now persisted in settings and restored when a catalog is reopened.

🔍 Focus mask evolved into focus evidence

The focus mask is now much closer to an explanation overlay for the sharpness score, instead of a generic edge mask.

• Focus evidence now chooses between AF center, AF neighborhood, saliency/subject region, or global detail, depending on which region best supports the score.
• Sharp images can now relax the visual threshold when needed, so the overlay stays visible when RawCull says the image is sharp.
• Aperture-aware blur gating and revised high-ISO handling make wildlife, portrait, and deep-DoF scenes behave more consistently.
• The system now records richer diagnostics such as winning region, rendered region, overlay style, patch rankings, AF distance, spatial alignment, and confidence reason.

📊 Better burst ranking and comparison evidence

Burst ranking is now more nuanced when multiple images in a burst are very close.

• Burst ranking now blends absolute sharpness with burst-relative sharpness when there is a meaningful spread inside the group.
• Very small sharpness spreads no longer create artificial separation between near-identical frames.
• High-confidence Keep Best decisions still require strong absolute sharpness evidence.
• Comparison view now surfaces subject-sharpness rank and subject/global deltas against the burst winner.
• Candidate Inspector now shows burst-relative sharpness alongside subject, global, and AF-detail breakdowns.

🛠️ Stability and persistence improvements

• Burst analysis cache now invalidates when scoring intent, quality, source, thumbnail size, or related scoring parameters change.
• Settings loading/saving was tightened so persisted scoring settings are not overwritten during initial load.
• Shared memory cache diagnostics and counters were improved and covered by new tests.
• Version metadata advanced to 1.9.4 / build 94.

🧪 Tests

• SharpnessScoringTests expanded heavily around RAW demosaic selection, focus-evidence region choice, visibility relaxation, patch ranking heuristics, focus-failure classification, aperture hints, ISO ramps, and concurrent scoring.
• BurstAnalysisTests added coverage for burst-relative sharpness and comparison summaries.
• New concurrency tests cover cache counters and settings persistence.

v1.9.0 → v1.9.1

🏷️ Burst grid label legend

A legend panel now appears above the grouped burst grid so the burst badges are explained in-place.

• The legend currently documents: Best frame found, Compare first, Needs manual review, Manual, Applied, Suggested best, and Check frame.
• The legend is only shown while burst groups are visible in Similarity Grid, so it does not clutter the normal grid.

✅ Batch selection and rating by visible badge

The standard culling grid can now batch-select visible thumbnails by their current badge labels.

• Badge buttons show the visible count for each currently present burst/subject badge.
• Clicking a badge button selects all matching thumbnails; holding ⌘ Command adds or removes them from the current selection.
• A compact rating picker plus Apply button lets you rate the whole selection in one action.
• These controls are hidden while burst groups are displayed.

🔄 Burst mode now survives view changes

Burst analysis and burst mode are no longer discarded when moving between the main view modes.

• Burst state is preserved when switching between Loupe, Grid, and Similarity Grid.
• Burst-group rendering is now gated by showsBurstGroups, so grouped bursts are only shown where they belong: Similarity Grid.
• This prevents grouped-burst UI from leaking into unrelated views while still preserving the active burst-analysis state.

🧹 Cleanup

• Marketing version updated to 1.9.1.
• Burst display logic was centralized through showsBurstGroups.
• Stale internal markdown documents were removed from documents/.

🧪 Tests

• BurstAnalysisTests now verify the legend label set and ensure grouped-burst visibility survives view switching correctly.

v1.8.5 → v1.9.0

✋ Manual burst winner override

You can now override the algorithm’s automatic burst winner and pick the keeper yourself.

• Set Manual Winner appears in burst comparison.
• Manual winners are clearly labeled in both comparison and grid views.
• Manual overrides are persisted in savedfiles.json, survive reloads, and are reattached when bursts regroup.
• Keep Best respects the manual winner when one is active.

🧠 Safer burst culling decisions

Burst culling is now more conservative about when automatic actions are allowed.

• Keep Best and Keep Top 2 are only available when the burst is safe for one-click culling and sharpness scores are present.
• Medium-confidence bursts now push you toward comparing finalists first.
• Low-confidence bursts ask for manual review instead of presenting an unsafe automatic choice.
• Burst keyboard shortcuts now respect the same safety rules.

🔎 Better burst comparison workflow

Burst comparison gained a much richer inspection flow.

• Added a Candidate Inspector side panel with ranking evidence, EXIF summary, candidate reasons/cautions, and rank tables.
• Comparison view can focus on finalists, return to the active burst group, and clearly shows when a manual winner is active.
• Comparison navigation and image-loading behavior were refined to make burst review smoother.

🧾 Clearer burst presentation in the grid

Burst headers and recommendation copy were rewritten to be easier to understand at a glance.

• Burst headers now use clearer decision text such as Best frame found, Compare before deleting, Needs manual review, and Manual winner: frame X.
• Human-readable explanations replace raw internal reasoning.
• Thumbnail badges more clearly distinguish suggested frames, manual winners, and applied actions.

🔄 Burst reanalysis

A new Reanalyze Bursts action lets you throw away stale cached analysis and recompute from scratch for the current catalog.

• The action deletes the saved burst-analysis cache for the catalog before rerunning analysis.
• It is disabled while grouping or analysis is already in progress.

🎭 Focus mask on demand

Focus mask generation is now done only when you actually ask for it.

• Focus masks are generated when the overlay is toggled on, instead of being precomputed for every image.
• In-flight mask work is cancelled if you toggle the overlay off.
• Mask state resets cleanly when switching images.

🔍 Zoom and inspection improvements

• Zoom now preserves scale while navigating between images and recenters the pan offset.
• RAW diagnostics presentation is now driven through RawCullViewModel.presentRawDiagnostics().
• The main window now starts in detail-only mode.

🐛 Fixes & internal improvements

• Version metadata advanced through 1.8.6, 1.8.7, 1.8.8, 1.8.9, and 1.9.0, with build 90 at v1.9.0.
• BurstAnalysisCache gained explicit deletion support for reanalysis.
• Burst review states were expanded to track manual overrides and applied actions.
• Logger identifiers were corrected in RequestThumbnail.
• Burst presentation helpers were cleaned up for Swift 6.

🧪 Tests

• BurstAnalysisTests expanded for grouping, confidence handling, manual winners, reanalysis, and safe one-click culling.
• New ComparisonCandidateInspectorTests cover ranking evidence and EXIF presentation.
• CullingModelTests cover manual-winner persistence and pruning.
• ComparisonGridNavigationTests, SharpnessScoringTests, and ZoomOverlayKeyActionTests gained regression coverage.

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