Rastercue 1.0.0-beta.2 — Guided settings and model library — Superseded

Superseded by Rastercue 1.0.0. This prerelease remains available for historical reference; use the stable release for current downloads.

Rastercue 1.0.0-beta.2 — Windows testing update

This update focuses on responsiveness, accessible settings and an installer-ready model library while preserving the original Upscayl native engine and processing contracts.

What changed

• Coalesced visual progress updates, asynchronous job thumbnails and file logging reduce interface stalls. Stop remains accessible; Ctrl+. provides a main-process cancellation shortcut. Cancellation retains files already written, but an interrupted output is not guaranteed complete.
• One large Settings window lists Output, Processing and Application options without arrow pagination.
• First-use welcome and a short five-step guide, with replay available in Support.
• Support includes licensing, provenance, documentation, GitHub links, update controls and access to readable/raw logs.
• Thirteen verified models are available automatically after installation: Standard, Digital Art, Lite, High Fidelity, HFA2k, LSDIR, LSDIRCompactC3, Nomos8kSC, three Anime Video scales, General v3 and General WDN v3.

Model credits and boundaries

Real-ESRGAN models credit Xintao Wang and contributors under BSD-3-Clause. Verified Phhofm/Philip Hofmann models retain CC-BY-4.0 attribution and documented conversion details. Complete model evidence and notices are included in the app and repository.

Eight catalogue models are not bundled because exact provenance or redistribution permission remains unverified: Remacri, Ultramix, Ultrasharp, NMKD Siax, Superscale, LSDIRplusC, uniscale_restore and the unidentified 2.0.1 model. Credit alone is not redistribution permission. Folder-based custom imports remain available; users must check the applicable rights.

Rastercue is based on Upscayl and retains its AGPL-3.0 licensing and upstream attribution. The corresponding source archive for the unchanged native executable is attached.

Verification and testing status

• All 22 regression tests and history persistence tests passed.
• Packaged first-use guide, Settings and Support checks passed.
• Packaged cancellation passed with a simulated process and a heavy progress flood; existing outputs were preserved. This is responsiveness evidence, not proof of every GPU cancellation path.
• Protected native binaries, built-in weights and processing handlers retain their baseline hashes.
• A real packaged Lite-model PNG upscale completed on the local GPU with an explicit test tile size of 32. The resulting colour image was visually inspected without the previously reported monochrome line corruption; product defaults were not changed for this test.

Please test Start/Stop/restart, single/batch/double upscaling and real-image output on your work GPU. Beta.1 was reported working by the owner; this beta.2 still needs that real-world acceptance test.

Downloads and release limitations

Use the Windows x64 EXE installer, or the ZIP for manual deployment. All thirteen cleared models are included; no separate model pack is needed. GitHub beta-channel update metadata and SHA-256 checksums are attached.

This is an unsigned Windows prerelease, not a claim of fully verified production readiness. Windows may show a SmartScreen warning; follow your workplace IT policy. The official Microsoft Visual C++ x64 runtime is an external prerequisite where required. macOS/Linux packaged testing, signing/notarisation and installed-version updater smoke tests remain release gates.

Further major-update development will remain local until the owner approves publication.