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Here is a list of the most important new features added with version 9.0

• There is now a new Side-By-Side comparison option for filters, where appropriate.For example, when using the Gaussian blur filter, enabling side-by-side will prevent the effect on the left half of the image while showing it in effect on thr right half. This allows for side-by-side comparison of the filter's before-and-after effect.
  
• Puppy ray is a new ray tracer with soft shadows, global illumination, high quality antialiasing, and etc. (Update: unfortunately, at the moment, Puppy ray will not run under Windows XP) Good news: we have fixed this problem. 
  
• Puppy ray presently supports rendering height maps.
• The "Allow custom brush transforms" option now has a button on the context strip for easy access.
• faster switching between different media, startup, and various functions.
• Improved international support... use of "," decimal separator support.
• Loading brush images no longer defaults to Targa only.
• The paper panel now has a "more papers..." option.
• The brush keyframer now has a linear interpolation option.
• We have increasingly less usage of .net framework for those who don't want to use it.
• The countdown filter now uses a more standard colorbars and real-time preview.
• There's a new particle gravity filter that can render some interesting spinning glows and flares.
• sizing the layers panel works more smoothly.
• Orbicles can be scaled interactively on its preview pane.
  
• previously telescoping the info panel didn't refresh the info until you moved the pointer over the main image, which was disorienting.
• Copy/paste for rotoscoping.
• Starry night and Animated flares and glows is integrated into one filter, and updated with more speed and real-time preview.
• Some speed improvements to graphics halftone filter.
• You can now load only a portion of an AVI file if desired.
• Loading AVI's no longer continues to load frames if the animation cannot be initialized.
• It is now possible not only to load a dwa animation as a swap image, but now you can load dwa's and avi's into a swap image or the alpha selection.
• It should be much safer to run multiple instances of the program now.  Previously, plugins were not aware of which instance of the program to communicate with.  This was a limitation of COM.  There are now less plugins, and most of them non-critical to daily use.
• Much faster pasting into an existing image.
• fixed bug in the timeline/merge with swap.  Merged with the blue channel duplicated into the green channel.
• Added Oilify Kuwahura/SNN filters to the timeline.
• There are some new color sets for the GUI
• Making an image seamless can now be applied to an animation, provided the 'keep original size' button is checked.
• General, cosmetic and functional updates.
• Use of .net framework is reduced significantly.  .net framework 4 is not supported by Wine on Linux, thus we are further minimizing our use of it.
• Howler 9 now also includes a collection of 3D Toon Sticker Images in PNG format or other, to use as custom stamp brushes. learn more
  

Internalized:  (these used to be external filters, .exe files acting as plugins.)

• Brush keyframer (New linear option)
• non-photo-blue frame cleanup tool and single frame blue cleanup tool.
• store image copy/store brush as image/load to store... internalized and updated.
• Patterns (loads faster)
• Paint on alpha (No window, uses less screen space)
• Raw loader
• Error diffuse
• YUv and YIQ color charts
• RYB color picker
• RYB color ranges
• Palette color picker
• Premultiply correction / selection menu
• Premultiply correction for brushes
• Time Shift RGB
• Hexidecimal color tool
• Dogwaffle color picker
• Graphic Halftone (Faster)
• Woodgrain filter (Realtime preview)
• Countdown filter (more standard colorbars, realtime preview)
• Starry night filter (Faster, realtime preview, enhanced)
• Animated glows and flares (combined into Starry night)
• AviToAnimation (faster/uses less memory/bug fixes)
• Triangles
• Swap_YUV_YIQ
• All clipboard functions.
• Store Alpha
• twain

GPU'd - Filters that are now GPU-accelerated

• Zoom blur
• Mystic vision/dark vision.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a 'chromatic aberration' bug in frame sequence loading.
• Improved support for running under Linux and Mac using Wine.
• cosmetic fix on the browser

Linux/mac/wine

• Miles of fixes and speed improvement.
• Separate fork for the Browser because the timosoft control is not supported.

API - for developers who want to port their apps to Dogwaffle

• Internally speaking, we've added a GDI+ layer for rendering with GDI+ into an image.  This will likely be very useful in the future.  We are currently using it to internalize some of our plugins that made use of GDI+ under the .net framework.
• We've added several additional internal API's that should come in very handy over coming versions...
• An AVI and DWA file handling class
• a Keyframming Class

Please Contact us if you're a programmer. Even if you're just at the beginning level, perhaps a student in computer sciences, and want to learn Lua scripting, VB programming, or Delphi and other development systems. You can create your programs as usual and make them 'talk' to Dogwaffle. Dogwaffle can be a platform for your visual FX development. See the SDK info