Limner v0.7.7: Smarter fills, cleaner blending, built-in video export

Limner v0.7.7: Smarter fills, cleaner blending, built-in video export

This release closes out the top beta reports: the fill bucket now behaves like a proper flatting tool straight out of the box, blend brushes no longer leave white streaks, and Smart Shapes only snap when you mean it. Under the hood, video export is now built into Limner itself, so the download is smaller and exports work the same on any graphics card. Everything else works exactly as before, and your existing files open normally.

New

• Built-in video export. Timelapse and Animation videos are now encoded inside Limner itself, with no bundled helper program. The download is smaller, MP4 export works identically on any graphics card, and upgrading cleans up the old helper automatically.
• Zoom and rotation controls under the canvas. The status bar now centres a view cluster below your artwork: minus and plus zoom steppers around a zoom slider, plus the rotation readout, so the view is always one click away.
• Smart Shape on/off toggle. A Smart Shape checkbox on the Brush options bar turns draw-and-hold shape snapping on or off, and the choice is remembered between sessions.

Improved

• The fill bucket fills like a flatting tool. Out of the box it now matches against the whole visible drawing (so line art on its own layer just works), tucks flats a couple of pixels under anti-aliased lines with To darkest, closes small gaps in line art, and treats the canvas edge as a line when closing gaps, so a region that opens onto the border still fills as enclosed and the paint reaches flush to the edge and corners. Every part of this is adjustable on the options bar.
• Smart Shape waits for a deliberate hold. The hold-to-snap gesture now measures stillness on screen, so it feels the same at any zoom and slow careful drawing no longer snaps mid-line. Small hatching and detail strokes stay freehand, and the selection box around a snapped shape now wraps the whole stroke, wide brushes included.
• Blur stays on your layer. Like Smudge in the last release, the Blur blender now softens only the layer you are working on, so edges fade into real transparency instead of picking up white from the paper or colour from the layers below.

Fixed

• Blend and smudge brushes no longer paint white streaks when a stroke starts on empty canvas and sweeps into paint.
• The Erase toggle now wins for every brush: erasing with a Blend brush erases instead of smearing, and an erase stroke can no longer turn into a painted shape through Smart Shape.
• Fill clicks right next to line art or the canvas edge keep gap closing active instead of silently leaking, and clicking inside a tiny enclosed pocket fills the pocket rather than the area around it.
• A pen leaving the window mid-stroke no longer leaves a ghost of an unfinished blend smear or shape preview on the canvas.
• Pressing undo during a live stroke now cancels the stroke cleanly instead of pulling history out from under it, and redo is no longer lost after cancelling a transform.
• A shape being re-edited no longer commits to a different layer if you switch layers before confirming, and mid-stroke layer commands (duplicate, paste, add layer) no longer send the stroke to the wrong layer.
• The timelapse recorder no longer crashes when the canvas is resized mid-recording.
• A Limner Plus key no longer lapses to Free when automatic update checks are turned off, and re-entering a valid key while offline activates immediately.
• Animation and Vector documents opened without a Plus key now follow the same access rules as creating them.
• Menus and buttons grey out properly when they cannot act, such as the Layer menu without an open document and the undo, redo, and Paste buttons.
• Damaged or maliciously crafted project and video files are now rejected safely instead of being able to crash the app.

Notes

• Square timelapse recordings now cap at 2160 x 2160 (the built-in encoder's limit); wide and tall canvases keep their existing caps.
• Very old timelapse recordings made by early versions still export as raw video, but new recording cannot continue onto them; Limner explains this if you open one.
• Illustration, Vector, Animation, and Book are otherwise unchanged, and older files open normally.
• Windows, signed installer. Update from the in-app prompt or under the Help menu.