Retrobatch 2 is available!

Hey - we released Retrobatch 2 with lots of cool features! Dark mode, larger previews, Super Resolution ML Scaling, Photos Export, Shortcuts support, and more - you should really check it out. It's a paid upgrade so this version won't automatically update to it. But we do have a discounted path for folks who purchased Retrobatch 1.

• Retrobatch 1 now accepts Retrobatch 2 registrations.

• Fixed a problem where the Layer and Page Splitter node could run your workflow by accident when it was trying to perform a preflight.
• Fixed a problem where the extract Portrait, Depth, and Disparity nodes would continue to look like they were processing when the workflow ended.
• Fixed a problem where the $SourceFolderPath$ token wasn't being taken seriously when an output folder was specified.
• Fixed an issue where resizing the window to be smaller could hide some nodes.
• Fixed an issue where Retrobatch would throw up warnings about droplets which had an com.apple.quarantine extended attribute set on it.
• Fixed an issue where some WebP files would be written as JPEG files on MacOS 13.

• New "Photos Export" Node which will read out all of your images from Photos.
• New "Document Enhancer" Node which enhances a document image by removing unwanted shadows, whitening the background, and enhancing contrast. (MacOS 10.15+ only)
• New "Pixelate" Node under the Blur category which will pixelate your image with different scales.
• New QR Code Node which will generate a QR code to put on top of your images.

• Fixed an issue where droplets were not working on MacOS 13 Ventura. To fix this issue, open the droplet in Retrobatch and save it once.
• Retrobatch will now attempt to copy over any existing Finder tags it encounters when writing images from the Write node.

• Fixed a problem where you couldn't scale or use certain nodes with images containing an extended range color space.
• Fixed a problem where the Source Folder Path write token wouldn't work correctly when reading folders with sub-directory reading enabled.
• Fixed a problem where the rules editor could strip out part of a number because of an errant comma.
• Fixed a problem where undo/redo could be a little wonky.
• Fixed a problem where Instant Alpha for 64bit images wasn't as smooth as it could be.
• Fixed a problem where the $FileNumber04$ token wouldn't always work as expected in the write node.
• Fixed a problem where sometimes converting a PNG to a GIF would fail.
• Fixed a problem on MacOS Big Sur where Apple Events via Automator were sometimes sending weirdly formatted URLs to Retrobatch and it was unable to process the event correctly.

• Thumbnails for 16bpc images are now showing again if you're using MacOS Monterey (it's disabled on 10.15 / 11 because of a big memory leak in the system frameworks, which is now fixed in Monterey).
• Added a new "ExifAux" group for the Remove Specific Metadata" node.
• New hidden pref for keeping around the portrait and depth data from HEIC images when you write them out as JPEG or other file types:
  defaults write com.flyingmeat.Retrobatch keepDepthData 1
  Should this be a new node? Or maybe an option in the write node? This is a fun hidden pref to experiment with, but it'll probably change in the future.

• Fixed a problem for MacOS 10.15.7 where the April 26th security update from Apple made Retrobatch unable to render anything via Core Image.

• Double clicking on the workflow name in the toolbar will now zoom the window.
• Folks on MacOS 11 will get an updated icon.
• Fixed an issue where using $IPTCKeywords$ for the Set Finder Tags node would only use the first keyword as a tag. Now it adds all keywords as tags.

• Retrobatch is now a Universal Binary, running natively on the new Apple Silicon Macs.
• The Rotate node has a new "Cumulative" option. This is awesome if you have an image you'd like to duplicate a bunch of times and then rotate by a little bit more each time, and then write it all out.
• Added two new sort options for the Read Folder node: Full input path, ascending / descending.
• Added a new node "Alpha Multiply" which can increase or decrease the values in an image's alpha channel (Pro only).

• The preview view does a better job at keeping the current image zoom level when cycling between preview images.
• The Image Grid node bumped up the count of images you can have in a row or column from 100 to 1000.
• New behavior for droplets: droplets made with Retrobatch 1.4.3 or later will now wait a second after processing images to quit, just in case a 3rd party workflow or script decides to send it more images to process. Previously, a droplet would ignore any additional images added to it, and instead quit after it's first batch of images were processed. Now it'll stick around and process any more images it has been given before quitting.
• When using Retrobatch from the shell, any input files or folders are now sorted alphabetically before processing.

• Fixed a problem where Retrobatch would have a bad time if there was an empty IPTC Keywords field in the "Set Specific Metadata" node.
• Fixed a problem where Retrobatch wouldn't be able to correctly trim images with a non-RGB color profile.

• New "Truncate JPEG Data" node, which will remove empty data at the end of JPEG files which could be introduced when transferring files off of an iOS device.
• New Premultiply and Unpremultiply nodes for Retrobatch Pro, which multiply (or divide) the image’s RGB values by its alpha.
• Support for reading and writing Google's WebP image format.

• Now clearing the image classification cache when a workflow is closed. This slows things down on the next open and run of it, but uses less memory in the long run.
• Fixed a problem the Adjust Margin nodes would stop all processing from continuing when it was disabled.
• Fixed a problem where the palette for a selected node would not be removed when the node was deleted.
• Fixed a crasher in some cases when undoing a node added to the canvas.
• No longer showing the file proxy for unsaved workflows.
• The file path popup in the toolbar now behaves 14% more like the OS equivalent.
• Added a new JavaScript plugin API for getting an image's bitmap as a typed array. You can read about this in the JSAPI documentation.
• Did a bunch of internal plumbing on the JavaScript interface to get it ready for the new Apple Silicon Macs.
• Tweaks to the Instant Alpha node, so that it works better on ARM Macs. (And we've got Universal builds of Retrobatch available as well. Known issue: the Animate node isn't available).

• Fixed a problem where some JavaScript plugins stopped working.
• Little tweaks to the Prompt for Files node to make sure it gets called before the Write node asks you for a place to save images.

• New Overlay node, which allows you to set a background image to draw all your workflow images above. You can adjust scale, placement, opacity, blend mode, and more.
• New "Run Workflow for Previewing Image" menu item, which will process only the current image you are previewing through your workflow. This is super awesome for complicated workflows that you can't always get an accurate preview for, or for workflows which run scripts in the background.
• JavaScript expressions in Retrobatch Pro. Various nodes which allow you to set the size or length of a value (such as the Crop, Border, Gradient, Adjust Margin nodes) now have an option of running a little snippet of JavaScript code to figure out the value. This is a super powerful feature, which you can read about in our JavaScript Expressions documentation.
• New Oval Matte node, which will place an oval over your image (matching the bounds of your image) and fill the outside with a color of your choosing.
• New Crop to Face node. Does what it says on the tin. Finds one or more faces, and crops your image to the bounds found, with options for adding margins on the sides.
• New Make Square node. This node will make the width and height of your image the same, optionally making it bigger by expanding the margins, or by cropping it.
• New Adjust Margins node. This node will let you add or subtract pixels to the edges of an image, and with an optional border to fill in the pixels if you make your image larger.
• New Mask to Alpha invert colors option. Normally mask to alpha will convert the black areas of your image to transparent, and the white to opaque (with gray somewhere in-between). With the new Invert Colors option, Mask to Alpha will now convert the white areas of your image to transparent, and keep the black opaque. This is great if you are scanning in line drawings from your own artwork, and want to make the backgrounds transparent.
• File numbers with leading zeros in the Write node tokens. We've not yet added a UI for this, but you can add (and it's case sensitive) $FileNumber04$ in the File name: field of the Write node to have the file number of your image written out as part of the name, with a padding of up to 4 zeros. If you'd like to pad that number to 6, you would enter $FileNumber06$, and so on. Negative values won't work! And asking for values over 100 is asking for trouble, since MacOS will be angry with you and not allow it.
• Minor update to new droplets- you can now have a droplet which doesn't take any files. Why is this useful? Well, imagine you have a workflow that reads an image from the clipboard, resizes it to a specific width, and then writes it back to the clipboard. Now you can save your workflow to do just this.

• Fixed a problem where the Clipboard IO node could cause a crash in certain circumstances.
• Fixed a problem where the file count for the Read Folder node wouldn't update on the canvas when the "Include images in subfolders" option was toggled.
• The Image Grid node now takes out images from the preprocess stage which would otherwise be combined with other images in the grid. This means the canvas file count previews are now more accurate.
• Fixed a problem where changing values in the Image Grid node would sometimes not stick if you were quickly tabbing between the fields.

• False Color: False color is often used to process astronomical and other scientific data, such as ultraviolet and x-ray images.
• X-Ray: Applies an X-Ray style to an image.

• Fixed an issue where animated PNGs and GIFs were not being properly created.
• Fixed an issue where the Prompt for Files node wasn't processing images in ascending order.

• You can set the FPS per image frame using the following code snippet in a JavaScript node. The JavaScript node should be placed before the Animation node.

  function processAsset(document, jsnode, asset) {
      // Set the FPS of this frame to something between 0-60
      asset.setUserValue_forKey(Math.random() * 60, "animationFramesPerSecond");
      return true;
  }

• New options in the Trim to Edges node: Trim by transparency, selected color, or the edge color of an image.
• New "Page Number" token for the Write node, which can be used as a path token (or for the name) when writing the image. The value of this token is incremented when a multi-page image or an animated image is passed through the "Layer and Page Splitter" node.
• New "Source Folder Path" token for the Write node, can be used to write an image back to the same folder it was read from. The the token "Source Folder" has been renamed to "Source Folder Name".
• The Add Border node now lets you set the width of the border as pixels, percentage of width, height, short side, or long side.
• You can now set a target megapixel value for the scale node. So if you want all your images to be 12MP, even they all have different aspect ratios, you're now set.
• New Remove Specific Metadata node for Retrobatch Pro.
• New Linear and Radial Gradient nodes.
• New Vignette node.
• New option in the Write Node which asks for an output folder on every execution, meaning you don't need to have it set before running.
• New "Duplicate" node, which takes a single image, copies it, and sends it on to the next node(s) for each copy. You can combine this with the Tile node to repeat an image multiple times into a bigger image.
• The image info popover now shows a page number, which is helpful for figuring out which frame or page an image came from when split from a PDF or animated image.

• Set Specific Metadata node: You can now set multiple keywords using the IPTC:Keywords field by separating keywords with commas.
• Shell Script node improvements: If the output from your script contains a line that starts with outputImagePath: followed by a path to a valid image, that image will be used for the rest of the workflow.
• More Shell Script improvements: You can return image data from a shell script if the output of your script is 'imageData:' followed by a newline, and then valid image data to read in.
• Made some improvements to the PDF maker node, so that if you are splitting pages from a PDF and then stitching the back together, the original PDF data is used. This means if there's vector data, it's not rasterized to a bitmap. This will only happen as long as no nodes have modified the page data in-between it being split and and stitched back together.

• Fixed color drift via the color picker when certain ICC Color Profiles where selected.
• Fixed a problem where tiling images that had been processed with the grayscale node wouldn't work properly.
• Fixed a problem rendering PDFs with special transforms in there (like the Special Counsel report!).
• Fixed a problem when writing a depth map extracted from an image as a PNG.
• Minor fixes with the Image Grid node.
• Added a description to the Animated Image node.
• Minor 10.15 Catalina fixes.

• New Animated Image node, which will allow you to make animated GIF or PNGs.
• Droplet support! Use the File ▸ Save As Droplet… menu item to write out your workflow as an application, which you can then drag and drop folders and images on to run your workflow. To re-edit a workflow contained in a droplet, you can either hold down the Option key when opening the droplet, or drag and drop the droplet onto the Retrobatch app icon.
• New Set Finder Tags node, which can assign one or more tags to images in the Finder (Pro only). This will work on the image that was most recently written- so you don't need to write out a copy of an image to set it. You can instead have a Read node, and then a Set Finder Tags right after it and Retrobatch will then set the tags on the original files.
• The Clipboard node got some improvements:
  • It will now notice when a new image shows up on the clipboard, and update the preview accordingly.
  • If you copy a file in the Finder, it'll now use that file on disk to process through any following nodes.
• New preferences for sending out a notification when a workflow ends, as well as playing a sound.
• The Watermark node now has a "File Number" token, which is the image number being processed.
• The Shell Script node has a new field where you can enter arguments to the selected script. Arguments are separated by spaces.
• New "Round Corners" node.
• New "Limit" node which will limit the number of images or PDFs allowed to pass through (Pro only).
• New "Image Grid" node.
• New option for the Write Images node, which enables to you write your processed images back to the original image it came from.
• New template "Classify and Set Keywords" which uses Machine Learning to figure out what's in the image, and sets the metadata keyword based on what it found.
• New "Page Number" rule in the Rules Node. You can use this rule to say "only let the first page of a PDF through", or "all pages of an animated GIF except the first", or even limit images 5 though 16.

• You can now write and distribute custom nodes in JavaScript using a new Plug-In API. This feature is currently in beta, and we're hoping to finalize it in a future release. But it's already incredibly useful today. If you have questions or ideas, head on over to the forums to ask about them and don't forget to read a short introduction on how to create one.
• In addition, the CocoaScript bridge has been replaced with FMJS. No changes to current scripts should be needed.

• Fixed some problems previewing images created from the clipboard.
• Fixed a problem when changing the DPI of PNG images when no new image bits were written (just metadata changes).
• Fixed a problem where using Automator to run a workflow wouldn't always process images through all the connected nodes.
• You can now rename RAW files without having to re-encode them with the write node, as long as there are no changes to the pixels made in the image.
• Fixed a problem where you couldn't select PDF files along with images from a couple of Open panels.

• Squircle instead of circles for the node shapes on the canvas.
• Retrobatch is now notarized from Apple. We're not sure what this does for you, but your Mac would eventually complain if we hadn't. Hurray!

• Create indexed PNG files with the a new "Indexed PNG" node. This node builds on top of pngquant, which is a handy tool for reducing the number of colors in a PNG file resulting in smaller images.
• New node for Retrobatch Pro: Mask to Alpha, which converts grayscale images with blacks to transparent and keeps the white areas opaque.
• MacOS 10.13+: A new "Extract Disparity Image" node which will pull out a disparity map images which contain it (iPhone X(s), iPhone 8+, etc.)
• MacOS 10.14+: A new "Extract Portrait Matte" node which will pull out the portrait matte on images taken iPhones which support it (iPhone X(s), iPhone 8+, etc.)

• Fixed a problem where the DPI of a PNG would be lost when using the Crush option in the write node.
• Fixed a problem where Retrobatch could crash if a text watermark font previously used went missing.
• Fixed a problem where the Page Splitter node wasn't remembering the right DPI for TIFF files.
• Fixed a problem with the HEIC to JPEG template.
• Fixed a problem where Retrobatch wouldn't run via the command line tool correctly.
• Fixed a problem where Retrobatch could hang when running via Folder Actions.

• The scale node now takes decimal values for the scale as percentage field.
• Removed the "ImageAlpha" node, in favor of the "Indexed PNG" node.

• Automator support. You can now create an Automator action which runs a workflow, passing in image paths to the workflow to run. You can even make a droplet from your Automator action.
• New Instant Alpha node which removes pixels from your image based on a sampling location like the corners or center of your image.
• New Auto Enhance node, which does some black magic to make your photos look better.
• New preference for manual connections (control-drag to make connections between nodes).
• New JavaScript node (Pro only) where you can sort out images, print out information on images, or apply Core Image filters. Visit the JavaScript documentation for more information.
• New Dither node with Atkinson, Classic Mac, Floyd Steinberg, Gaussian Blue, and Ordered Reproducible algorithms.
• New "Only scale smaller" option for the Scale node, which will only resize your images to a smaller dimension if the option is enabled.
• The "Set Specific Metadata" node now allows you to use tokens for setting various values. For instance if you wanted to have the copyright notice set to the current year, you would add "Copyright (:date token here:)". Or if you wanted to pipe the image through a classification node before the metadata node, you could add the "Top Classification" node to the keywords field.
• New "PDF Image Extractor" node (Pro only). This doesn't turn PDF pages into bitmaps, rather it pulls out bitmaps from PDF files and writes them out either as JEPG or PNG files. A PDF page can have multiple images in it, each at different resolutions. This node grabs the raw data for it, and pulls it out.
• You can now call Retrobatch from the command line, with arguments for a workflow, output folder, and images / folder to process:

  Retrobatch.app/Contents/MacOS/Retrobatch --workflow path/to/workflow.retrobatch --output ~/Desktop/foo/ /path/to/files.jpeg /or/folders/

• Added GIF as a writable format in the write node.
• The Raw Import node now has an option to adjust the tint of your image.
• Added a Color Posterize node.
• Added a new Pixel Depth token for the file name.

• The shell script node now shows the output from the scripts in a new little console window. The new JavaScript node also uses this.
• Did a bunch of background work which will make Retrobatch run more efficiently when preprocessing.
• Minor fixes to the Raw Import node.
• Minor optimizations.
• Fixed a crasher when running non-executable shell scripts.
• Fixed a crasher when using trim to edges on images with a gray color profile.
• Fixed a problem where you couldn't paste into token fields (such as the File name: field in the write node).
• Fixed a crasher with the Shell Script node.
• Fixed a crasher when using certain classification models.
• Fixed a problem where you could choose a file from the Write node as an output directory. That's not going to work in practice and probably cause a crash.
• Fixed a problem with certain PDFs, when creating an image out of the first page.
• Tweaking of the Scripting Dictionary, so you can call "execute" with a path to a workflow.
• If you run a PDF through a Color Profile node before passing it to a Layer & Page Splitter node, the page bitmaps created from it will now pick up on the previously set profile. This way you can have all pages written out as CMYK if you'd like, without an expensive and lossy conversion after the split.

• Fixed some bad juju between the PSD Maker and the Write Node when the Convert To was set to PSD.
• Retrobatch's AppleScript node now recognizes compiled OSA ".scpt" files in addition to .applescript files.
• Fixed a problem where "Reveal in Finder" wouldn't work on an image after it had passed through the ImageAlpha node.
• When the read folder is set to be recursive, it will now make sure the images are written out in the original folder structure that they were read as. If you were using the "Source Folder" token in the write node, you might need to remove it for things to work as they did previously.
• Retrobatch will now try and recreate write folders if they've been deleted while Retrobatch wasn't running (this will require a re-save of your Retrobatch documents with version 1.0.2).
• Fixed an issue with Pro upgrade registrations not working correctly.
• Added a warning when the tokens used in the File name field for the write node come up empty (for instance, if you had a Capture Date token in the file name, but there was no date for the image, so the filename would be blank).
• Throttling the thumbnail loading background thread a bit, since it turns out some of you have folders full of 100 megapixel images and that tends to kill your computer if you try and load thumbnails for 16 of those images at once.
• Added new Edit ▸ Select Next Node & Select Previous Node menu items, which helps with Accessibility as well as everyone in general.
• Added support for Voice Over.
• Fixed a problem where older macs without Metal support might not see the image preview.
• Fixed a problem where images with indexed color profiles couldn't be resized.

• Fixed a couple of memory leaks.
• Fixed a problem where empty file name tokens in the write node could cause Retrobatch to crash.
• Retrobatch now accepts upgrade registration numbers from regular to Pro.

• Hello world.