DepthView 1.2.1
What's new in 1.2.1 — a correction
This release exists because 1.2.0 said two things that were not true, and both were caught
on the LightBurn forum by Finn65. No new features; the point is that the wording now
matches what actually happens on the metal.
Passes are no longer called "wasted". A slicer masks each pass by a threshold. When two
consecutive thresholds fall in a gap where no pixel value exists, the second pass fires on
the same mask as the first — it still cuts, it still removes material. What it does not do
is add a distinguishable step. Calling that a wasted pass implies an idle laser, and the
laser is not idle.
Worse, one figure was hiding two unrelated things. The report now splits the job three ways,
and the three always sum to your pass count:
passes depths uniform relief empty stretched band spread
256 88 90 87 79 255 87..88 x1.01
uniform — every engraved pixel is in the mask. Real cutting, but it deepens the whole
design equally, so what it leaves is a flat recess under the design rather than any part of
the picture. relief — masks shrinking; the only passes carrying shape. empty —
nothing in the map is dark enough to be in the mask at all.
Stretching a narrow range is no longer described as a repair. This is the more important
correction. That sample resolves 88 depths into 87 passes of relief — 1.01 levels per pass
of relief depth, which is the theoretical maximum. Nothing was being wasted. Stretching
makes the relief about three times deeper and gets more levels because it is deeper;
levels per unit of depth are unchanged. If the narrow range was deliberate, stretching
overrides that intent threefold, and nothing in the file says which it was. So DepthView now
reports and does not prescribe — the warning that fired merely because stretching would add
depths is gone, because that was the tool calling a design decision a defect.
A large uniform count still gets flagged, but as a question rather than a verdict: your
design sits in a pocket, and it is worth knowing whether you asked for one.
The underlying measurements never changed and did not need to. --depth-mm has always
changed no pixels, the calibration coupon exists precisely because a file cannot describe
how your material ablates, and the rim ramp still defaults to none rather than to a figure
nobody has measured. It was the language that overreached, and it has been swept out of the
report, the tuning window, the README and the sample docs.
Everything from 1.2.0 is still here
The Tune… window — two level points dragged against the histogram, an untouched rim for
a coin blank measured in millimetres, artwork fitted inside that rim by growing the canvas
rather than resampling it, optional slicing and dithering. Plus the band spread column
(thanks to Nathaniel Klumb), the --outline alignment circle for framing against a round
blank, and the --calibrate coupon.
Nothing in any of it writes over your original file. Every path produces a new one.
Which file do I want?
| You are on | Download |
|---|---|
| Windows 10/11, ordinary PC | DepthView-*-win-x64.exe |
| Windows on ARM (Surface Pro X, Snapdragon) | DepthView-*-win-arm64.exe |
| Windows, 32-bit | DepthView-*-win-x86.exe |
| Mac with Apple silicon (M1 and later) | DepthView-*-osx-arm64 |
| Mac with an Intel processor | DepthView-*-osx-x64 |
| Linux, ordinary PC | DepthView-*-linux-x64 |
| Linux on ARM (Raspberry Pi 4/5, ARM server) | DepthView-*-linux-arm64 |
There is nothing to install. Each file is the whole program with the .NET runtime
inside it. No installer, no dependencies, no runtime to add first. Delete the file and
DepthView is gone.
Running it
Windows — double-click it.
macOS and Linux — mark it executable first:
chmod +x DepthView-*-osx-arm64
./DepthView-*-osx-arm64
These binaries are not code-signed
DepthView is a free tool and there is no certificate behind it, so your operating system
will treat it as software from an unidentified developer. That is expected, and it is worth
knowing exactly what you will see rather than being surprised by it.
Windows shows a blue "Windows protected your PC" SmartScreen dialog. Click
More info, then Run anyway.
macOS is stricter. A downloaded unsigned binary is quarantined, and the error message
("cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified", or on newer versions a claim
that the file is damaged) does not tell you that quarantine is the cause. Clear it:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine DepthView-*-osx-arm64
Linux does not object.
If that trade is not one you want to make, build from source instead — it is two commands
and the repository explains them.
Checking what you downloaded
Because these are unsigned, the checksums are the only way to confirm a download is the
file this release actually built. SHA256SUMS.txt is attached.
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS.txt --ignore-missing # macOS and Linux
certutil -hashfile DepthView-*-win-x64.exe SHA256 # Windows, compare by eye
Start here
Download DepthView-samples.zip as well. It holds eight depth maps that are the same
picture encoded eight different ways — genuine 16-bit, two byte-widening fakes, a quantised
ladder, grey stored as RGB, honest 8-bit, wasted headroom, and colour contamination.
Drop them on DepthView in order. The image never changes and the verdict does, which is the
fastest way to understand what the program is for. The included README.md explains what
each one demonstrates.
Full Changelog: v1.2.0...v1.2.1