v6.2.10

QuickView v6.2.10 - High-Performance HDR, Comic Evolution & Watcher System

Release Date: 2026-06-01

QuickView v6.2.10 is a major architectural milestone. This release features a complete overhaul of the rendering pipeline, deep virtualized comic archive support, an automated real-time directory watcher, ICC color-gamut warnings, digital drawing overlay support, and a high-performance Clang compilation matrix.

Note: Press F1 at any time to open the interactive Shortcut & Help overlay to review the latest operations and features.

🔍 Robust Directory Auto-Scanning (#192)

QuickView now automatically refreshes the image list when files are added, deleted, or renamed in the active directory.

• Background Directory Watcher: Implemented a dedicated background monitoring thread utilizing native FindFirstChangeNotificationW to listen to directory activities in real-time.
• 300ms Event Debouncer: Employs a robust debouncer that groups rapid file-system notifications to prevent UI stuttering and thread contention during event storms.
• Safe Index Reconciliation: Changes are dispatched safely back to the main thread via standard Windows messages, guaranteeing thread-safe, 0-lock list synchronization and immediate visual hot-reloads.

📚 Zero-Overhead Comic & Archive VFS (#186)

You can now scan and browse image archives with zero overhead.

• DOD Virtual File System: Features a high-performance Data-Oriented Design (DOD) VFS that extracts and reads .zip, .rar, .cbz, and .cbr archives directly in memory with 0-disk writing.
• Comic Dual Page Mode: Smart adjacent page stitching with dynamic scale adjustments for a seamless double-spread comic book viewing experience.
• High-Performance Unrar: Integrates a single-threaded custom unrar-mini engine for lightning-fast archive traversal.

🌈 Next-Gen HDR Pipeline (#131)

HDR handling has been reworked around standard luminance semantics for PQ/HLG, scRGB, scene-linear images, and gain-map content.

• HLG inverse OETF & CPU system gamma 1.2: Corrected HLG inverse OETF decoding math and added CPU-side OOTF system gamma scaling (1.2) for perfect accuracy with untagged and HLG-native sources.
• Branchless GPU HLG Math: Ported fully vectorized, branchless lerp-step shaders to accelerate HLG-to-linear conversion directly on the GPU.
• Microsoft Advanced Color scRGB Exposure Routing: Fully aligned tone-mapping parameters with Microsoft scRGB standard guidelines (absolute HDR at gain 1.0, SDR/relative elements scaled correctly by SdrWhite / 80.0).
• Smart Spline Tone-Map Passthrough: Added automated spline bypass detection. When an HDR image's peak fits completely within the screen's luminance boundaries, the spline shader is dynamically bypassed in favor of a zero-overhead colorimetric clip, saving precious GPU cycles.
• 64bpp FP16 and PQ Splines: Switched the entire composition pipeline to high-precision 64bpp FP16 linear color space. Integrates scientific-grade libplacebo-style Spline tone-mapping in PQ space.
• BT.2408 Exposure Gain & Highlight Desaturation: Reduces washed-out tones and color clipping with standard-aware exposure gain routing and high-dynamic color space desaturation.
• Reinhard Extended Perceptual Mapping: Includes customizable Reinhard perceptual scaling parameters with user-friendly sliders in the Settings panel.
• Highway SIMD Acceleration: SIMD-accelerated HDR peak luminance estimation for FP16 and U16 imagery.
• AVIF & JXL HDR Polish: JXL half-float output and AVIF EOTF handling improve HDR color and luminance consistency.

🎨 Gamut Warning & Soft-Proof Comparison

Color management is now fully professional.

• 65x65x65 3D LUT Gamut Warning: Real-time identification of out-of-gamut pixels in soft-proofing mode using high-precision LUT analysis.
• Soft-Proof Compare Integration: When soft-proofing is enabled and you enter Compare Mode (C Key), QuickView now automatically triggers a side-by-side comparison of the original image versus the soft-proofed image (with target ICC rendering profile applied).
• 1s Debounce Buffer: Optimized the gamut warnings with a debouncer to guarantee 0-latency scrolling.

📐 Draggable EXIF Info Panel & Tracing Overlay Mode

• Draggable EXIF Overlay (#179): EXIF Info Panel is now fully draggable across the screen, with automatic screen bounds confinement and layout memory persistence across sessions.
• Overlay (Tracing) Mode: Semi-transparent background mode powered by DirectComposition node transparency.
  • Mouse Click-Through: Toggleable mouse passthrough (WM_EX_TRANSPARENT) allows digital artists to overlay reference drawings directly over their favorite drawing canvases.
  • Shortcuts: Press Ctrl + Shift + O to toggle Tracing Mode, Alt + Up/Down Arrow to adjust opacity, and Shift + Esc to exit click-through.

🛠️ Clang-cl & CMake Build Overhaul (#177)

QuickView has completely abandoned legacy MSVC solutions for a modern, cross-platform build system.

• CMake & Ninja Matrix: Built using CMake and the ultra-fast Ninja compiler backend.
• Clang-cl and LTO: Optimized with clang-cl.exe utilizing Full Link-Time Optimization (LTO) and zero-exception (-fno-exceptions) flags, leading to massive standalone executable footprint compression and improved execution speeds.
• Static Single Binary: Packaged with a custom x64-windows-static-clang triplet to ensure zero runtime dependencies.

⚡ Underlying Performance & Instructions

• GeekGlass Context Menu Tuning: Skipped D2D effect initialization inside DWM acrylic-blurred context menus, avoiding massive runtime WARP JIT memory allocations and rendering spikes.
• stb_image.h to v2.30: Synchronized stb image libraries to the latest stable v2.30 and eliminated CodeQL integer overflow warnings in core image loading routines.
• Modern CPU Acceleration: Extended Highway SIMD implementations to take full advantage of modern AVX-512 (AVX3) and emerging AVX10.2 vector lanes.
• Memory Engine Arena: Specialized memory arenas and VFS block pools to eliminate heap fragmentation during prefetch and caching.
• Fluid UI Animations: Switched thumbnail animations to use a dedicated asynchronous PostMessage loop to maintain 60fps responsiveness.
• Fast-Lane Boot (#172): Streamlined window creation and thread startup for an instantaneous boot cycle.

🤝 Acknowledgments

A special thank you to all the community developers and contributors who reported issues, shared complex HDR samples, and assisted in testing archive parsing.

Full Changelog: v5.3.0...v6.2.10

QuickView v5.3.0

QuickView v5.3.0 - Vector UI & Interaction Update

Release Date: 2026-04-24

QuickView v5.3.0 focuses on improving UI consistency, refining user interaction, and ensuring a clean system footprint.

🎨 Vectorized UI Icons

We have migrated the remaining UI icons to the GeekIcon vector engine.

• Improved Consistency: Icons are now rendered using Direct2D paths, ensuring they look the same across different Windows versions and DPI settings.
• Font Dependency Removed: The application no longer relies on specific icon fonts for its core interface.

🛠 Windows Integration & Cleanup

• Deep Uninstallation: Added a new --uninstall flag for comprehensive registry (HKCU) and application data cleanup.
• Improved Installer: The Inno Setup installer now automatically purges legacy .old files and the AppData folder upon removal, ensuring a zero-footprint uninstallation.
• WinGet Automation: Optimized the submission pipeline to use standard installers, resolving previous validation issues and improving accessibility via winget install QuickView.
• Default Photo Viewer: Enhanced support for Windows 11 "Default Apps" settings via full Capability registration.

🎥 Interaction & Animation

• Frame Counter (#167): Added a basic frame index display to the animation progress bar for GIF and WebP files.
• Hand Cursor Panning (#160): Added a hand cursor when dragging images that are larger than the window.
• Thumb Wheel Support (#156): Added support for vertical/horizontal mouse thumb wheels.
• Zoom Cycle: Refined the zoom hotkey/double-click behavior to cycle through common scaling modes.

🌈 HDR & Color (Experimental)

• Luminance Handling (#131): We have adjusted how peak luminance is detected on HDR monitors by prioritizing system-level reports. Note: This is an initial attempt to address "washed out" colors, and we are still evaluating its effectiveness across different hardware.

🤝 Acknowledgments

A special thank you to the users who helped test this release:

• @bananakid, @PYCHBI, @lrbin50, @1kari-s, @Battler624, and @toxieainc for their bug reports, technical insights, and for sharing HDR testing resources.

We appreciate your continued support in helping us refine QuickView.

Full Changelog: v5.2.3...v5.3.0

QuickView v5.2.3

QuickView v5.2.3 - Emergency Stability Fix

Release Date: 2026-04-17

QuickView v5.2.3 is an emergency maintenance release focusing on performance reliability, security software compatibility, and Titan engine stability.

🛡️ Security & Compatibility (#149)

We have completely refactored our self-registration and update-checking mechanism to eliminate false positives in Microsoft Defender and other AV software.

• Idempotent Registration: QuickView now uses an O(1) INI-based check to verify registration status at startup, bypassing redundant registry operations.
• Idle Maintenance: Heavy registry updates are now deferred to a background task that only triggers when the system is truly idle.

⚡ Performance Optimization (#145)

• Animation Fast-Scan: Restored high-performance static viewing for PNG, GIF, and JXL by implementing a "magic-byte" pre-scanner that identifies static files before they enter the animation engine, avoiding unnecessary CPU overhead.
• Unified Decoding Pipeline: Consolidated various decoding paths into a robust LoadBufferUnified model, improving memory management for massive images.

🚀 Titan Engine Stability

• Context Menu Fix: Resolved a regression where the context menu could appear empty when prefetching massive images in Titan mode.
• MMF Animation Probe: Fixed an issue where large animated WebP files (MMF-based) would occasionally fail to play correctly.
• Idle-Based Prefetch Trigger: Replaced fixed startup timers with a robust 500ms continuous idle detection system, ensuring prefetch tasks don't compete with the initial image load.

🛠 Other Fixes

• Startup Resilience: Fixed a rare race condition and deadlock when opening massive files as the very first action after installation.
• HDR Accuracy: Improved peak luminance detection and tone mapping for monitors with incomplete WinRT Advanced Color reporting.

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v5.2.1

QuickView v5.2.1 - The Animation & Personalization Update

Release Date: 2026-04-15

QuickView v5.2.1 focus on modern motion formats and deep visual personalization, delivering our most refined "Geek Glass" experience yet.

🎬 Full Animation Support

QuickView now provides a high-performance viewing experience for modern and classic animation formats.

• Universal Formats: Full hardware-accelerated support for .gif, .webp, .apng, and .avifs.
• Frame Inspector: Pause animations and use Alt + Arrow Keys to step through frames with precision.

🎨 Deep Personalization

We've overhauled the theme engine to give you absolute control over your environment.

• Theme Modes: Choose between Dark, Light, or Automatic (system-synced) UI modes.
• Accent Customization: Pick custom accent colors and text colors to match your workflow.
• Ambient Dimmer: A configurable overlay that dims the background when interacting with menus or galleries to focus the eye.

🛡️ Professional Animation Debugger

Designed for artists and performance enthusiasts.

• Dirty Rect Indicator: Toggle a dedicated debug button in animation mode to visualize the exact pixel regions currently being updated on the GPU. Enable in Settings > Visuals > Professional Tools.

🛠 Reliability & UX Enhancements

• HDR Color Fix (#131): Optimized the linear rendering path to ensure HDR images no longer appear "washed out" on HDR-enabled displays.
• JXL Stability (#137): Resolved a regression in the JPEG XL decoder causing memory leakage during rapid page-turning.
• Sharp Initial Scaling (#127): Fixed a bug where 1080p images could appear slightly blurry on native 1080p monitors.
• Right-Click Drag Zoom (#132, #129): Introduced professional vertical drag zooming by holding the Right Mouse Button.
• Natural Metadata: Improved EXIF parsing performance and accuracy for modern camera brands.

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QuickView v5.0.0

QuickView v5.0.0 - The Advanced Color & Architecture Update

Release Date: 2026-04-05

Welcome to the most significant update in QuickView's history. Version 5.0.0 introduces a modernized core architecture and professional-grade color tools, moving Beyond SDR.

🚀 Google Highway & ARM64 Support

We've re-engineered our SIMD acceleration using Google Highway.

• Broader Hardware Support: Optimized performance for all CPUs (SSE4, AVX2, AVX-512, NEON).
• Native ARM64: QuickView now runs natively on Windows on ARM with full hardware acceleration.

🌈 Professional HDR Pipeline

QuickView now features a full 32-bit float scRGB linear rendering pipeline.

• Ultra HDR (Gain Map): Native GPU-accelerated composition for Google Ultra HDR and Samsung Gain Maps.
• Tone Mapping: Professional HDR-to-SDR roll-off mapping ensures stunning results even on standard displays.
• HDR Pro Panel: Real-time peak luminance estimation and detailed structural metadata for JXL, AVIF, EXR, and HEIC.

🎨 GPU-Driven CMS & Soft Proofing

Accurate color reproduction is now at the heart of QuickView.

• Modern CMS: Hardware-accelerated ICC profile extraction and application via Direct2D dual-node pipeline.
• Soft Proofing: Professional simulation of output profiles (e.g., CMYK, Printer profiles) directly in the viewport.
• V4 Support: Full compatibility with the latest ICC v4 and Compact ICC profiles.

🧭 Advanced Navigation (#118)

• Natural Sorting: Browsing order now matches Windows Explorer perfectly.
• Circular Loops: Enhanced cross-folder navigation with independent toggle controls.
• Interactive Tooltips: Complex settings now feature detailed descriptions on hover.

🛠 Reliability Improvements

• Resolved HeavyLanePool deadlock during rapid navigation (#85).
• Fixed window resizing and info panel constraints (#88, #89).
• Fixed AVIF HDR gain map decoding crash (#124).
• Fixed manual rotation coordinate drift on zoomed images (#91).

🤝 Acknowledgments

Special thanks to @Dimmitrius for optimization of the Russian translation, and our community for continuous feedback.

QuickView v4.2.5 - Comparison & Precision Master

QuickView v4.2.5 - Comparison & Precision Master
Release Date: 2026-03-22

This update introduces our highly anticipated Compare Mode, significant UI refinements, and specialized Pixel Art support. We've focused on making QuickView the most precise tool for image inspection.

🔍 Compare Mode (Visual Benchmarking)
Side-by-Side Analysis: Compare two images with synchronized zoom/pan and rotation.
Precision HUD: Real-time RGB envelope histograms, dual-curve analysis, and quality metrics (Entropy/Sharpness).
Interactive UI: Smart divider with transparency and a dedicated 'C' shortcut to toggle Comparison modes.
🎨 Rendering & Visuals
Smart Interpolation: New automated interpolation modes with specialized Pixel Art compatibility for crisp scaling.
Zoom Integrity: Added visual edge indicators for better viewport orientation and refined scaling anchors.
SIMD JXL: Faster JPEG-XL decoding leveraging SIMD-optimized pixel swizzling paths.
⚙️ Window & Interaction
Advanced Window Locking: Highly customizable window lock behaviors with dedicated settings for different workflows.
Workflow Shortcuts: Native support for Home/End (Jump to First/Last) and PgUp/PgDn (Page Prev/Next).
Gallery Context: Right-click any gallery thumbnail to instantly enter Compare Mode or open in a new window.
🤝 Acknowledgments
@hortiSquash for providing critical testing assistance and bug reports throughout the development of this major update.

QuickView v4.0.5 - Precision & RAW Stability Fix

QuickView v4.0.5 - Precision & RAW Stability Fix

Release Date: 2026-03-13

This maintenance release addresses several deep-seated issues in the Titan Engine's caching system and significantly improves RAW file support stability and correctness.

🚀 Key Fixes

• Titan Cache Precision (Aspect Ratio Fix):
  We fixed a regression where ultra-large images (decoded via the Titan Engine) would display incorrect aspect ratios when re-opening them from the memory cache. The engine now explicitly tracks and preserves the original image's resolution (srcWidth/srcHeight) separately from the scaled preview tiles.

• Persistent RAW Orientation:
  RAW files now retain their correct orientation even when hitting the pre-decode cache. We re-engineered the orientation propagation logic to ensure EXIF metadata is preserved across all worker threads and deep-copy operations.

• RAW Decoder Stability:
  Fixed a critical "Double Free" crash that could occur with certain RAW files when the embedded JPEG preview extraction failed. Fix #22

✨ UX & Interaction

• Smart RAW Toggle (Session-Only):
  The "RAW" button in the toolbar is now a temporary session override. Clicking it allows you to quickly toggle between "Embedded Preview" and "Full RAW Decode" for the current image without altering your global system defaults. Your permanent choice in the Settings menu remains untouched.

• Flicker-Free Transitions:
  Refined the bitmap promotion logic to ensure that upgrading from a lower-LOD preview to a high-quality full-resolution image is completely seamless with zero visual flicker. Fix #27

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QuickView v4.0.2 - Performance & Stability Fixes

QuickView v4.0.2 - Performance & Stability Fixes

Release Date: 2026-03-10

This update focuses on refining the Titan Engine performance, optimizing UX interaction, and fixing several critical bugs discovered after the v4.0.0 milestone.

UX & Interaction

• Smart 3-State Zoom: Re-engineered the zoom toggle logic. Clicking now cycles through Initial -> Fit Screen -> 100%, providing much smoother control over image sizing.
• No-Stutter Exit: Solved the annoying window stutter/lag that occurred when closing the application via the Esc key.

Titan Engine Refinements

• Wait Cursor Fix: Corrected logic where the OS wait cursor would incorrectly flicker during background prefetching.
• Tile Triggering: Optimized Titan tile activation by removing threshold quantization, ensuring seamless LOD transitions even for ultra-narrow images.
• Progress UI: Enhanced the Titan loading progress bar for better visual performance and accuracy.

Stability & Fixes

• SVG Scaling: Fixed a bug where SVGs would randomly disappear when scaling at certain factors.
• Window Snap: Resolved an issue where the window would creep downwards on systems with top-aligned taskbars.
• Gallery Sync: Fixed HUD Gallery thumbnail desync when deleting images while the gallery is open.

QuickView v4.0.0 - The Titan Engine Update

QuickView v4.0.0 - The Titan Engine Update

Release Date: 2026-03-06

This is a massive milestone release focusing on the introduction of the Titan Architecture, full JPEG XL integration, and Gigapixel Image Handling.

🚀 Architecture: "Titan System"

• Gigapixel Tiling: The new Titan Pipeline dynamically slices massive image datasets into manageable LOD (Level of Detail) tiles, enabling smooth 60fps panning over images that previously caused OOM (Out of Memory) crashes.
• Smart Pull & Prefetch: Memory is now intelligently streamed. QuickView only decodes and uploads the tiles currently visible on your monitor, predicting panning direction to prefetch adjacent chunks.
• Direct-to-MMF Decode: Zero-copy Memory-Mapped File strategy to pipeline gigantic source images directly to the render composition engine.

✨ Format Enhancements

• Native JPEG XL (JXL): Full, hyper-optimized support for the next-generation JXL format, backed by our parallel HeavyLane workers.
• Pro Design Formats: We now support Photoshop's massive document format (PSB) and can instantly extract embedded previews from both PSDs and PSBs.
• Shell-Accelerated Gallery: The T Gallery now taps directly into the Windows Explorer Thumbnail Cache, making initial indexing of massive folders completely instantaneous.

💎 UX & Scaling

• True PerMonitorV2 High-DPI: The interface has been untethered from Windows' legacy scaling. We now support explicit native UI scaling with granular manual overrides (100%-250%).
• Always Fullscreen: A much-requested feature—you can now command QuickView to automatically launch images in exclusive Fullscreen mode (Off, Large Only, All).
• Wheel Action Customization: Unified and centralized logic for mouse-wheel actions with a new WheelActionMode for absolute control.

🛠 Visual Precision

• AVX-512 SIMD Resizing: Critical bilinear scaling paths have been unrolled using the latest AVX2/AVX-512 instruction sets for blazing-fast zooming.
• Center-to-Center Topology: Our internal rendering coordinate system was mathematically refactored, permanently eliminating "edge smearing" and pixel gaps between Titan tiles.
• Focus Robustness: Implemented low-level AttachThreadInput logic to guarantee new QuickView windows forcefully seize focus when you open new files from Explorer.

QuickView v3.2.5 - Precision & Expansion Update

QuickView v3.2.5 - Precision & Expansion Update

Release Date: 2026-01-26

This is a massive update focusing on Precision UI, Multi-Monitor Capabilities, and Core robust-ness.

✨ New Features

• Span Displays (Video Wall): New "Span Across Monitors" feature (Ctrl+F11) allows the window to instantly stretch across all available displays, perfect for video walls or ultra-wide viewing.
• Modern D2D Rename Dialog: Replaced the legacy Windows GDI rename dialog with a fully hardware-accelerated Direct2D version that matches the application's dark theme.
• Help Overlay: Added a built-in keyboard shortcut guide (F1).
• Window Rounded Corners: New toggle in Settings -> View to enable/disable Windows 11-style rounded window corners.
• AVX2 Detection: Added start-up check for AVX2 instruction set support to ensure compatibility with optimized decoders.

💎 Precision UI & Typography

• Binary Search Text Truncation: Completely rewrote the text shortening engine. Using a binary search algorithm, filenames in dialogs and the Info Panel now use every available pixel, eliminating wasted space and "..." artifacts for long filenames (especially CJK).
• Pixel-Perfect 100% Zoom: Fixed scaling logic to ensure images of ALL sizes (from 16px icons to 50MP RAWs) render crisp and accurate at 100% zoom.(#6 )
• Smart Double-Click: Double-clicking now rationally adapts to context:
  • Fullscreen: Exits Fullscreen.
  • Windowed: Toggles between "Fit to Window" and "100% View".(#9)
• Info Panel Zoom: The Info Panel now displays the current Zoom percentage.(#6 )
• Zoom Snap Damping: Added configurable damping mechanics for "Magnetic Zoom", making it feel more organic.
• Robust Auto-Hide: Optimized toolbars and navigation arrows to hide reliably (100% success rate) even when the mouse exits the window rapidly.

🛠 Core Architecture

• Unified Window Controls: Moved all window control rendering (Minimize/Maximize/Close) into the UIRenderer pipeline for consistent styling and correct behavior in Fullscreen/Maximized modes.
• Unified Zoom Logic: Decoupled zoom logic from window resizing, fixing "fighting" issues between user input and auto-fit logic.
• Portable Mode Polish: Improved logic for switching between Portable and Install modes, ensuring cleaner registry handling.(#6)

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Scaling Anomalies: Fixed visual glitches when high-DPI scaling was active.
• Gallery Tooltips: Fixed issue where image dimensions would show as 0x0 in gallery tooltips.
• RAW Toggle: Fixed state persistence issue where the "Force RAW Decode" setting wasn't saving correctly.
• Cursor Visibility: Fixed Navigation Arrows remaining visible even when the cursor was set to hidden.
• Settings UI: Fixed layout displacement of the "Back" arrow in the General settings tab.
• Icon Display:Fix Missing Icon Fonts(#6 )