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Welcome!
Howler 2021 become available in late July 2020. It's an ongoing development, new builds are coming, some released... You can see the details about each or most of the new and recent builds below.
We now also have a cheaper Artist edition. Don't get me wrong: PD Howler is very affordable, considering all it offers. But there are a few things you might never use, nor want to pay for. If you don't do animation or multi-frame rendering, check PD Artist.
Not sure which one to pick? Compare the two: PD Howler vs. PD Artist - what's the difference?
Reminder:
Project Dogwaffle (PD) is first and foremost a digital painting program. But it also does much more.
Never heard of Project Dogwaffle? or PD Artist or PD Howler, PD Particles??
- PD Howler is a paint program; it comes with many(!) brushes already, and tools to create your own, import more brushes, including particle brushes for foliage. Howler is awesome for nature painting. Some brushes react to pressure when you have a digital pen (such as Wacom tablet). Other brushes react to the volume of music(!). Or to the speed of your hand. The angle of the brush stroke and pen. Some also will react to "behind the scene" alternate images (Swap buffer holds a greyscale gradient image, used to affect the size of the brush). There are tools for 3D content going into the brush too. And animated brushes.
- Howler does animation too. You can work with video. You can paint with video on stills or on video
- There are many Filters, applying on still images and across videos, keyframed, special effects, composing with other images, compositing (blue, green, magenta, magic pink and other screens), etc...
- Realistic 3D landscape rendering
- video and animation post-FX: Motion estimated interpolation, Rotoscoping and chroma keying, compositing and lots more. If you work with video clips, this will be a great tool as a companion to your video editing solution.
- PD Artist, the little sister to Howler, doesn't do animations (except for animbrushes) - but it's equally great for painting.
- PD Howler has a bunch more filters, meant for animation but of course also applicable for single-frame use. You can render the filter into a few frames or many and then pick the best from it, if you still only want a still image.
What's (arguably) not so good? (there's always one or two achilles heels, right?)
- Layers: we do have latyers, but... RGB only. No specific alpha channel per each layer. So, layers do exist but are not auto-opaque except if you set them up with color-keying (chromakeying) such as green screen, blue screen, magenta or magic pink. That part we do very well, mind you. Layers are mostly there to blend images, not to hide them from eachother. But you can still use them also for collage, assembly, layout and for example to design a business card with a layer of black ink over a layer of painted or rendered graphics. Side-by-side non-overlapping? No problem.
- It's a 32-bit program. But we're doing ok, compressing things, and it runs best and super-fast on a 64-bit version of Windows with lots of RAM. We recommend at least(!) 4 GB, preferably 8-16 GB. Some modules may store information in their own address space. So while a single instance of Dogwaffle can only work in a 32-bit address-space, collectively you may work on much bigger. We also use the disk space for temporary storage, undo image stacks, etc...
All in all, Howler is howling fast. Heavily optimized and designed on low end systems, due mostly to starving-artist budget realities, you'll likely find that runs very smoothly on your desktop or laptop Windows PC too. This software does not require high-end gaming systems, though it's nice to have a dream machine:
- Graphics card: If you have a GPU with many Cuda cores or threads, great! We render some 3D on GPU
- Main processor: If you have a CPU with many cores, such as 8, 12, or even 16 CPU cores, plus hyper-threaded to doubling up to 32-64 logical cores on Intel or similarly on AMD threads, you're in heaven. A bunch of our tools are multi-threaded, go for it.
- Disk: if you have an SSD or similarly super-fast hard drive, great. You may not even notice the delay in saving a long animation, between saving to disk vs. saving to memory, almost the same.
More about features here and here: the Dogwaffle Main Features List
Howler vs. Artist - what are the Differences?
Images created (rendered and/or painted) with PD Howler 2021
Need more examples? A mix of painted and rendered creations from many places:
Slideshow - wow! - with music Dogwafflers of the moment - Artists show their stuff
The Martian landscape chronicals - looking for water
Citicolor
Prepare, Prepare2
Fruit
Finish Me
Dolph
Finish Me - 6, 7, 8
Finish Me 10-11
FinishMe 16
Screenshots
Interface - GUI01
myGUI01 - while rendering an animation with PuppyRay GPU
Below are some of the new features coming to PD Howler 2021:
- Also see more of what's new at http://pdhowler.com/WhatsNew.htm
Need more examples? A mix of painted and rendered creations from many places:
Slideshow - wow! - with music Dogwafflers of the moment - Artists show their stuff
What was new in the prior releases?
Howler 2020(v13) | 2019(v12) | v11 | v10 | v9.5 (first release on Steam was v9.6)
Captain's Log - The Latest Developments, the News:
What's New in Howler 2021?
Here are various bits and pieces of interesting developments, new features, improvements, bug fixes,... related to Howler 2021 and related topics. (in reverse-chronological order, i.e. most recent updates first at top of the list)
Note: Many of these also apply to PD Artist 2021, just without things related to animation or otherwise uniquely reserved to the Howler edition.
Artist vs. Howler: What's the difference between PD Artist and PD Howler?
Here we go:
==============
Mar 27th, 2021
build 110
- Build 109 pulled due to a critical bug found. Fixed bug in histogram calculation that would lead to a crash in portrait oriented images. Fixed in build 110
- the threshold tool now takes an initial guess at the threshold level by using the image mean, ie, averaging all the pixel levels, which usually gives a pleasing binary image result
- The Color/Value panel now use some more modern Histogram generation code
- Since histogram outliers are handled automatically now, the ability to select the histogram scale manually is now removed
- The panel is also organized vertically instead of horizontally
- The Color/Levels panel now uses some more modern Histogram generation code
- Initial api support for hamming distance used in image hashing
==============
Mar 24th, 2021
build 109
- The brush stamp tool really needs the natural media brush tool selected in order to function properly, so selecting the stamp tool now also selects the natural media brush tool on the tool panel
==============
Mar 23rd, 2021
build 107
- The brush stamp tool now supports the 4 corner perspective mode - learn about it here: https://youtu.be/sR3iwfnnQ38
==============
Mar 22nd, 2021
build ...
- There's a small change on the brush options fx tab. Shadow size can now go up to 64, and there's a shadow color option
- fixed incorrect reporting of unknown file extension when loading an image if file path contained periods/full stop
==============
Mar 21st, 2021
build 106
- Overhauled the Noise/Bilateral filter
- Bilateral filter is an edge preserving noise removal and cartoonizing filter
- Now on GPU
- Simplification of formerly counter intuitive controls
==============
Mar 20th, 2021
build 105
- Reworked the controls on the Noise/Bilateral filter to be more intuitive...
- Fixed "Map to current gradient" filter when applied to animation so it now works properly.
==============
Mar 18th, 2021
build ...
- Opening the brush timeline crashed if no brush of any kind was defined.
- The foreground pen on the histogram on the sidebar is now a little more muted.
==============
Mar 18th, 2021
build 104
- Added a Luminance channel option to CLAHE (contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization) filter. See it here: https://youtu.be/dgXUoQR6vb4
==============
Mar 17th, 2021
build ...
- Added CLAHE (contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization) filter - learn about here: https://youtu.be/9uCBFa_CCXw
==============
Mar 9th, 2021
build 103
- New Sharpen/High Pass Sharpen filter
==============
Mar 8th, 2021
build 102
- Fixed memory overflow in Convolve/Highpass filter
- Much faster Highpass filter
==============
Mar 5th, 2021
build 101
- Histogram Equalize now has a level parameter, by popular request
==============
Feb 30, 2021 - wait, what?!? there's a 30th day in February?
build 100 (!)
- Added a new Histogram Equalization filter
==============
Feb 25, 2021
build 99
- Red yellow and blue ranges panel had extreamly slow screen refresh, fixed.
- some tweaks on the red yellow and blue wheel and range panels
- further internal maintainance to remove drfilter.dll
- There may be some performance deltas, but mostly on obscure functions
==============
Feb 22, 2021
build ...
- Retired some assembler code and continued to migrate functions from the depracated drfilter.dll
==============
Feb 19th, 2021
build 97
- Found a nice last-minute optimize for the new median filter, which may now be as much as 60% faster than the last build, in theory.
==============
Feb 14th, 2021
build 96
- Fixed a memory corruption in Sharpen/Art Sharpen filter
- Fixed a memory curruption in Artistic/Oilify (symmetrical nearest neighbor)
==============
Feb 13th, 2021
build 95
- Reimplemented Filter/Convolve/Minimum and Maximum filters.
==============
Feb 13th, 2021
build ...
- Settled on a sliding window histotram median method on the CPU instead of the more brute force GPU approach.
==============
Feb 12th, 2021
build ... 94
- Todays build has a brand new Filters/Convolve/Adjustable Median... filter
- The implementation requires a lot of thread local memory, which can get pushed into main memory from the GPU, so the question is...
- if it runs better on the GPU or on the CPU?
==============
Feb 9th, 2021
build ... 93
- Stylize/Make Normal Map has been overhaulded to allow input smoothing. The result is you can extract more, or less, relief at the cost of some detail.
- Displace by swap has been overhauled again to allow input smoothing and bilinear interpolation of the input channel for much better quality results for certain types of images.
==============
Jan 29th, 2021
build ... 92
- Jitter displace now has a border handling parameter and runs faster.
==============
Jan 28th, 2021
build 91
- Normal displace has a border handling parameter and runs faster.
- fixed broken file loading if temp folder path had any spaces in it.
==============
Jan 26th, 2021
build 90
- Pool displace now has border handling dropdown with clamp, tile, and mirror options.
- The Bokeh Blur filter now has a parameter to rotate the iris.
- fixed a slight darkening around the edges in the bokeh filter.
- Color twirl displacement filter is quite a bit faster
==============
Jan 23th, 2021
build ...
- Working toward a long term goal of removing/retiring drfilter.dll (in favor of drfilter2.dd) due to drfilter.dll not compiling in modern compilers like every other dll we maintain. Probably due to inline assembler, and also because the C modulus (%) operator changed in how it handles negative numbers, and we need to handle this on a per function basis.
- May result in better performance due to newer compiler technology, for the functions in question, and that old compiler didn't support threading or auto-vectorizing.
==============
Jan 22th, 2021
build ...
- Having an internal discussion on the baseline hardware requirements for future versions.
- It is maybe time to move to sse4 (there's a nice dot_product intrinsic, and also sse blend)
- Time to require a modern GPU. Removing CPU fallbacks would free up a lot of resources, and I am no longer developing fallbacks. I am developing direct to GPU when it makes sense to do so.
- Windows 10 only. Windows 10 has a nice compression facility. Plus, I can't really support Windows 7 or 8 anymore, practically.
- 1080p as the very minimum display size
==============
Jan 18th, 2021
build ...
- Reimplemented a convolution function used a lot internally. It effects convolve/gray and color emboss, edge detect, sharpen, simple blur, unsharp mask, deinterlace, reduce flicker, force fields, and the timeline, among other things. Fixes some edge conditions with the function and improves threading.
- Vignette blur did not correctly support alpha channel
- Retired some old MMX code from the color adjustment filter
==============
Jan 17th, 2021
build 87
- File loading was exhibiting some problems where you could load 2-3 images, and then program would stop allowing files to load. We are looking into this, and the changes in this build need further examination.
============== This build #85 is also referred to as release 2021.3
Jan 17th, 2021
build 85
- Added new Vignette Blur filter under the blur menu
- Reversed the "multiply original" setting in the lighting tool, because it seemed more intuitive.
==============
Jan 17th, 2021
build 85
- Substantially improved the quality of the smoothing setting in the lighting tool
- The smoothing setting is now realtime, on a good GPU.
==============
Jan 16th, 2021
build 84
- Added bias to Blur by alpha filter
- Reworked bokeh blur filter's settings to be more intuitive. Removed some of the more esoteric features, and reworked the code on the GPU. Performance is realtime now, on a goodly GPU.
==============
Jan 14th, 2021
build ...
- Colors can now be set for visible grid and artist guides
==============
Jan 13th, 2021
build 82
- Reimplemented selection/alpha blur to keep it consistent with filters/blur/alpha blur
- it has the same cpu/gpu utilization and threading improvements and GUI changes
==============
Jan 12th, 2021
build 81
- Reimplemented the Gaussian blur filter approximate mode to use the newer threading model in Howler since around version 11. There is one less memcpy (memory copy operation), so it's potentially faster.
- Re-implemented the precise mode on the GPU. The implementation is more precise than before, and takes place in full floating point.
- The approximate mode works in constant time, whereas the precise mode works in linear time with scaling, therefore the approximate mode is still the preferred mode for interactivity. It's one of those occasional cases where the CPU wins over the GPU in performance, but it's a different algorithm, so there's no direct comparison.
- Decided to get rid of the hybrid mode because it was kind of superfluos. It did a fast preview, and precise final result, which is what the precise mode now does exactly.
- Reworked selection/Gaussian blur a bit as well.
==============
Jan 11th, 2021
build ...
- Added a new filter to Gaussian blur the image using the alpha channel to control the size of the Gaussian kernel. This creates better results than if you use the alpha mask like a selection just to control the level per each pixel of the regular Gaussian blur filter.
==============
Jan 10th, 2021
build ...
- The halftone filter now defaults to color halftone mode
==============
Dec 31st, 2020
build 78-80
- Adds 2 new modes to Mystic Vision filter
- Water drops filter gets another big speed boost
- Re-implemented motion blur for better use of texture hardware
- Motion blur filter value goes a little higher
- Re-implemented value noise filter for better quality noise
- value noise caused the image to become statistically somewhat brighter than it should
==============
Dec 29th, 2020
- Reimplemented Mystic Vision filter to take advantage of texture hardware
==============
Dec 24th, 2020
Build 76
==============
- Reimplemented the raytracing part of the water drops filter on the GPU
Dec 21th, 2020
Build 75
- Reimplemented radial blur on the GPU to take advantage of texture hardware
- Reimplemented Zoom blur to take advantage of texture hardware
==============
Dec 8th, 2020
Build ..
- Undo decoding is about 3x (!) faster. This is not a huge benefit from the user point of view because it was already pretty fast, but it is a forward looking change for compression in general.
==============
Nov 25th, 2020
Build 72
- The sound API now supports volume and pan, and reading samples directly from memory, and retrieving the number of samples in a wave. This will be handy for upcoming new features with sound, we think. Stay tuned for more.
__________________ Public Service Announcement:
If you think this is beyond awesome, why are you keeping it the best kept secret?
Tell your friends - Tweet, Blog, Post, Snap, TikTok about it!
__________________ (end of PSA)
==============
Nov 20th, 2020
Build 71
- Added ability to clear all sound effects
- Sound now stops when stopping animation playback
- Selection/glow effect now has a higher max value
- Fixed background colorp parameters not functioning correctly in filter/render/sparks and filter/render/lorenz
==============
Nov 15th, 2020
Build 69-70
- Added ability to add sounds to an animation on a per frame basis. The kicker: Frames can have more than a single sound on any one frame.
- final optimizations for Sparks and Lorenz attractor filters.
==============
Nov 12th, 2020
Build 68
- new filter to invert the value of independent color channels. Combine this for new effects
Watch the video on our youtube channel
- new Lorenz Attractor render filter
Watch the video on our youtube channel
==============
Nov 11th, 2020
Build 67
- Added Filters/Render/Sparks...
Watch the video on our youtube channel
==============
Nov 6st, 2020
Build 66
- Added Filters/Render/Non overlapping shapes filter. This includes filled boxes (squares) and filled circles. They use the color of the current image. You can adjust the min/max size and now many shapes you want to squeeze into the space. Options allow for a border too. This can be useful in numerous artist effects and also to create heighmaps such as for cityscapes.
- Example: Pizza Circles
==============
Nov 1st, 2020
Build 65
- The Filmstrip now has a proper proportional scrollbar
- You can now scroll the filmstrip by clicking and moving to the leftmost or rightmost parts of the filmstrip
- Refined layout of the filmstrip
==============
Oct 30th, 2020
Build 63
- Refinement of build 62
==============
Oct 28th, 2020
Build 62
- Experimental test build to make room for new features on the animation controls panel filmstrip
==============
Oct 26th, 2020
Build 61
- Fixes the non-modal error box which incorrectly showed a double titlebar.
==============
Oct 15th, 2020
Build 60
- Create a new layer from a stored image
- Multiple selection is now supported when opening a file. Multiple files are added to the dock of stored images. Let's say you have several images you want to open and work with, select the images with File > Open...., and they'll all appear in stored form, ready for action.
==============
Oct 1st, 2020
Build 56
- Continuing the latest sweep of optimizations related to painting on 4k and beyond. Removed the wait pointer on what was formerly known as Post FX, because it is not needed anymore. Yep - it's gotten that much faster :-)
==============
Sep 26th, 2020
Build 54
- Further changes to canvass size panel
- it's now possible to set the default resolution from this panel
==============
Sep 25th, 2020
Build 53
- Adds a swatch of paper color presets to the canvass size panel
==============
Sep 24th, 2020
Build 52
- Added "Invert transparency" option for brushes that works on all frames of animbrushes too
- Fixed some issues with saving and loading animbrush sequences
==============
Sep 24th, 2020
Build 51
- initial optimizations for painting with post-fx on larger images, particularly with emboss mode, for now.
- fixed targa loading for brush image sequences
- also now uses internal bmp loading instead of GDI+ for brush image sequences loading
==============
Sep 16th, 2020
Build 50
- Final tweaks to PuppyRay
- Global illumination now goes up to 2.5
- Tweaked the granularity of camera and world transformations on the z axis
- removed screen refreshes when saving settings in PuppyRay. They could be fairly prolonged, depending on settings.
==============
Sep 14th, 2020
Build 49
- Fixed dpi scaling issue in importing animbrush frames
==============
Sep 10th, 2020
Build 48 - a milestone reached
- Open Simplex noise rendering appears to have been broken. Fixed.
- Adjusted the default bit quality of animation/export media...
==============
Sep 9th, 2020
Build 47
- One click feature removal is no longer experimental
- performance of the feature has been improved
- now uses poisson blending
==============
Sep 7th, 2020
Build 46
- You can now store images directly from the visual most recently used file list.
==============
Sep 6th, 2020
Build 45
- The Brush/Animbrush/load sequence command now operates more like the regular load sequence command by allowing selections, and also supports more file types than before. Use it for example to load images or stencils in PNG from a multi-image Adobe brush collection.
- fixed status panel not closing after creating an animtion, which as been a bug in the last few builds.
==============
As featured in Newsletter #171 - Fruit of the Labor Day
Sep 5th , 2020
Build 44
- Turkey baster, aka eyedropper tool can now select onscreen colors in addition to the colors on the current layer
- The box2 color picker did not allow the full gammut of colors to be picked. Fixed.
==============
Sep 5th, 2020
Build 43
- Fixed warning about not creating an animation in Motion Prediction Module, when it actually did.
- In addition to loading and saving settings, Puppy Ray now supports loading and saving keyframes, so an entire project can be saved.
- There are several new shortcut icons to alpha tools on the alpha context strip
==============
Sep 4th, 2020
Build 42
- Puppy Ray now supports loading and saving settings
==============
August 27th, 2020
Build 38
- Reducing the amount of complexity in Puppyray GUI
- Using the new DR_Slider control
- Probably not the final layout
- Simplifed various things
- Global Illumination is now on by default
- Tweaked quality pressets
Streamlined worflow - https://youtu.be/Jp1DoFgvcuU
==============
August 26th, 2020
Build 38
- Integrating the new DR_Slider control into Howler, and specifically Puppy Ray
- The idea to isolate code from GUI and prepare for new features
- Simplifing the controls in Puppyray
- Continue to arrange the layout of Puppyray
- DR_Slider had some features that were not implemented
Note: if you haven't seen Dogwaffle's landscape modeling or rendering,
check Puppy Ray and 3D-Designer
Also: Learn more in the PlayLists on our YouTube Channel
August 23rd, 2020
Build 37
- Trying a new layout for Puppyray
- Fixed caption on animation creation panel
- Fixed broken GUI for Lua scripting (?)
==============
July 28, 2020
Build 35
- First build on new system
- The selection style is now fully implemented in the hprop control, as evidenced in the Filter > Render > Shape Bombing filter
July 21, 2020
Build 34
- The button control now has an option to adjust the transparency of the gradient in the button control. We may utilize this sometime in the future.
- Move initialization of GDI+ into a global area instead of for individual instances in the button control.
- Identified some issues with panning on a un-zoomed window and fixed some issues surrounding it, but not the issue itself yet.
==============
July 21st, 2020
Build 32
- There are only a few remaining issues, but again, this build is aimed primarily at stability
- Reimplemented parts of the button control for efficiency
- Puppyray CPU is now deprecated and now lives under the View/other menu
- Puppyray CPU global illumination is removed because of stability
- Fixed the transform menu that was broken in the last build
==============
July 20, 2020
Build 30
Build 31
- removes the browser's reliance on ImageMagik Convert.
- This version is aimed at stability
- Rewrote parts of the hprop, numeric hprop, and dropslider controls in reguards to scrollwheel support
- Puppyray CPU is now depricated in favor of Puppyray GPU
==============
July 19, 2020
Build 28
- Fixed a recursive out of memory error when manipulating the size button with the scroll wheel under certain conditions
- The aapen (AA Pen - Anti-aliased pen) is now multithreaded(!). It was originally intended to be "just a pen" but it seems to be taking on additional responsibilities lately and thus needs a little help for larger workloads. Large brushes with the AApen should be faster as a result.
- Zoom blur filter and Mystic Vision filter panels are now larger and allow a bit more input area
- Fixed the crosshair position offset problem on those panels
==============
July 18, 2020
Build 27
- Made the vscroll bar on the sidebar/media panel a little wider
- Added the new style Vscroll bars to several components that didnt' use them yet.
- Made several tangible memory optimizations
- Added error trapping to one of our scaling routines that allocates memory
==============
July 16, 2020
Build 26
- Refresh build to update the version string
- Mostly testing and tutorializing today
==============
July 15, 2020
Build 25
- Scroll wheel was reversed
- Continuing to battle with the hprop control
Build 24
- As we get closer to final release, we are making some fine-tue adjustments
- The default color theme is now the Orange on Dark theme
- When creating a new custom brush or airbrush shape, the default step mode is now "relative"
- This helps insure that there is always a "safe" value for step by way of performance. It would be unfortunate to create a brush that brings your system to a halt.
- Several filter panels that use a preview now have a larger preview area
- The Dropslider control now owns it's own unique instance of the "drop" part of the control, instead of sharing with other instances.
==============
July 14, 2020
Build 22
- Added buttons on the context strip to flip and rotate the brush
- pressing x,y,z on the keyboard to flip and rotate the brush now show the preview instantly, assuming brush preview is turned on
==============
July 13, 2020
Build 21
- Pulled build 20 due to a last minute crashing bug.
Build 20
- Fixed hprop control scrollwheel interfearing with other controls with focus.
- Rewrote the tab rendering code for clearity. Now supports rounded tabs.
- fixed a tab rendering bug introduced in the last build
- Made code changes to the hprop, numeric hprop, and dropslider controls
- The Dropslider no longer raises "change" events in place of scroll events
- Code changes in Howler in accordance
- the 3 controls now support the new non-linear style where values over 100% increase more rapidly up to 1000%
- Fixed a minor visual glitch on the legacy brush panel
==============
July 12, 2020
Build 18
Build 19
- Added a few new GUI color themes and tweaked a few existing themes
- Fixed a color pen bug that arose a few builds ago
- Fixed a few old plugins that were broken in recent builds
- Added a non-linear option to the Hprop control
==============
July 11, 2020
Build 17
- The info panel is reorganized to be more readable
- The airbrush creation tool now follows the GUI pen colors
==============
July 10, 2020
Build 16
Build 15
- The airbrush building tool now goes to 1000 pixels
- Added some visual separater lines on the context strips
- Fixed a bug on the brush shape panel that caused the scrollbar to scroll to an empty area under cirtain situations.
Introduction to big brushes - https://youtu.be/PRo7qds1NZA
==============
July 9, 2020
Build 14
- This build primarily addresses issues with multiple monitor systems.
- Primary window now opens on the last used monitor
- Compact mode now works correctly with multiple monitors
- Toggling compact mode no longer switches to the primary monitor
- Experimented with intuos tablet "pan and scroll" associated with the primary stylus button and found it unsolvable to filter out the unwanted behavoir. Recomend changing the tablet settings to "erase" via the primary stylus button.
- The splash screen remains on the primary monitor
- Made some panel size adjustments
==============
July 7, 2020
Build 9
Build 10
- addressed issue. box color picker does not update when picking a color on other pickers
- Brush manager was broken due to new scrollbar
- Made some layout and costmetic changes to dropdown panels
July 6, 2020
Build 8
- fixed a dramatic pause when using the rectangle tool for the first time due to dlls being loaded into memory.
- The eyedropper (aka turkey baster or color picker) now shows a swatch of the color under the pointer, so you know better which exact pixel's color it's grabbing.
- Last saved backup is showing more details
July 5, 2020
Build 7
- Overhauled the eyedropper/color picker (aka turkey baster) tool so it no longer distracts you from the tool you were working with. for example if you're in the paint tool with a brush, quickly pick the color and then keep painting.
- Keyboard shortcut: Using the "n" key to set the center of focus in a picture no longer does anything if the area under the pointer is outside of the main image. The main reason for this change was that it was easy to have the image fly off into infinity if the n key was pressed by accident.
July 4
build 6
- Due to popular request, the size and opacity sliders have numeric entry re-enabled.
- (Fixed) the layer mode panel would not open on machines with multiple monitors configured on top of each other.
- Numeric entry on the numeric hprop now explicity excludes non numeric characters to avoid possible conficts with accelerator keys.
- The numeric hprop did not properly allow custom mouse pointers
- Smoother scrolling of the sidebar with fewer artifacts.
- The scrollbar on the stored image dock was not properly recalculated if the main window was resized.
build 5
- The size and opacity sliders are now much larger and tablet friendly
- Updated and new controls in Howler 2021's GUIDropslider
hprop
numeric hprop
minislider
scrollbar
dr_button
- We now have much finer control over text/picture alignment, rendering and GUI pens
- Dropslider, prop bars Controls now support mouse scroll wheel
- Fixed significant bug where dropslider could use the wrong settings and crash the program over time
- Fixed crash if automatic adjustment filter was applied to image with single color
- fixed a bug where the brush preview rendered incorrectly when using a tablet
- Added multicolor gradient stops to the drawing API, and a new vbscript example of doing so
- Did some additional cleaning and organizing of the media/favorites category
So... What else is New in Howler 2021?
new scrollbars
Several places with scrollbars: even color gradient in the scrollbar for Adjust color filter!
the Free Demo / Trial of PD Howler 2021 (v14)
Ready to try it for free? download and install this free demo version:
Checksum info:Approved by Software Informer!
Name: Howler_2021_Demo_0033.exe
Size: 128027670 bytes (122 MiB)
CRC32: 4EEF8AFF
CRC64: 6AB03620F37D703B
SHA256: 5B8A18B56350DF212B5BAD9E1897D80A84B04E0AE9E037C816239F3365CB2E60
SHA1: B9F157B435045E5989B9659A987399F6DC0E7E42
BLAKE2sp: 82BD77471522DA27B9A1022E3B8CA31AC4DFE0D41CE7263B262725EC68DAE72E
Latest versions - Checksums
Got it? downloaded it? Verify that your download is authentic and complete. Make sure it's legit and hasn't been tampered with.
- for PD Howler 2021:
Simply Right-click the icon of the program installer file, and find CRC SHA information to compare with these:
Below you see the expected checksums. If you see a different value on your copy of the file, your copy is corrupted or may have been tampered with. (perhaps containing a virus)
Build 110 (aka 2021.4)
Name: Howler_2021_0110.exe
Size: 128030178 bytes (122 MiB)
CRC32: 2240D660
CRC64: 0F18192C51D529FF
SHA256: 0DCB6B71AB3F151C3F2B989ADFF77BA951B260CE5A81DED10EFBD7D335E9110F
SHA1: 66E910CE223A79449917219CF3B43A6D08322812
BLAKE2sp: A42814946281DFE3C55F0A824251E79C72CDC1C6D0C000D0116306E693CE53BB
prior release:
Build 85 (aka Howler 2021.3)
Name: Howler_2021_0085.exe
Size: 128002889 bytes (122 MiB)
CRC32: D3D4D891
CRC64: 6E3D3395E3BBA5C9
SHA256: 103B1205B9F2EC423B560C0700AF5121F9A9D474502429BC77FFD79C453A2C83
SHA1: 768F55866167C23B0576C2B4823D46185F23EE7A
BLAKE2sp: 995DFE421D4ACA546563B798660C90CD57F27047ED7A9CBA3BB7263F299CC8E0
---------------------------------------------------------
- for PD Artist 2021:
Build 110 (aka Artist 2021.4)
Name: Artist_2021_0110.exe
Size: 128030589 bytes (122 MiB)
CRC32: 762F5F09
CRC64: 956C65999E3D642D
SHA256: CECDA76DE4AE44C1188794867C117E80A4456BFD3424A086984F8E5E36799CF5
SHA1: B651CB47A5E8623324DC6A0CC62430263C082E66
BLAKE2sp: 19441A3742726384604F72196C350AF9C1D0529CA8FA31E6D36B1DFB582B453E
prior release:
Name: Artist_2021_0071.exe
Size: 128050916 bytes (122 MiB)
CRC32: 209450D2
CRC64: 6C29780E7E0D73A3
SHA256: DB5DA3D36CCE90EDB073666F4878C38FCB2FA6CBC7428FC11E61A31BDDC1A7C5
SHA1: 7316ABDEA9587E3F7985C92CD7D5184B94D5971D
BLAKE2sp: 5C6ED8F0062D6C8D2E812FF89B51E774827247B83DD02F0138E622B703C2D8CE
---------------------------------------------------------
(Note: PD Artist gets released less frequently and has fewer features. If you want the best of the best (of the best(!)), then get PD Howler.
Howler vs. Artist - what is the Difference?
Testimonials
Dartanbeck
Here's a site that's dedicated to DAZ's Carrara and other tools including a heavy dose of Howler:
https://www.dartanbeck.com/the-software/pd-howler
Newsletters - the coverage of Howler 2021 in our Newsletters
