MysticThumbs Version History

Build dates are done in UTC time to the hour, so update checks may be off within 24 hours on build time boundaries. Please keep this in mind when checking for updates.

Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is used to determine build eligibility against license keys.
License keys maintenance is determined by 365 UTC days elapsed from date rounded down to the day of purchase.

Version Build Date (dd/mm/yy)	Changes
2024.6.6 16/12/24	As we begin to close out the year, the focus has been on fixing some performance issues and tidying things up. Performance improvements to property system that was causing long system locking issues. Fixed some issues with postscript based files not reporting correct sizes depending on their file units. Should result in better thumbnails and QuickView imaging. Very significant performance improvements to PDF / Postscript file reading and rendering. Fixed potential crash in Blocked Folders dialog when removing folders. Improved properties fetch and rendering for DSO based file formats (Office Document, Publisher, 3ds Max, Kubotek). Fixed some image formats with files > 8 bit depth such as DICOM Medical Images. QuickView resizing and clamping improved. Updated recommended GhostScipt version to 10.04.0. If you want the latest recommended Ghostscript, uninstall both 32 and 64 bit versions using the Add/Remove programs control panel before updating / installing.
2024.6.5 10/12/24	Fixed crash with thin images such as one pixel high, in both thumbnails and QuickView.
2024.6.4 05/12/24	Fixed .PES Embroidery files that have been not working for some time. Fixed momentarily unresponsive QuickView when background checking for updates. Created a new "Windows Imaging Component" file format so you can add extensions to other WIC components you have installed to control them with MysticThumbs. Updated requirements tooltip information on High Efficiency Image for more detail on possible codec solutions. Improved tooltip for maintenance expired link in control panel.
2024.6.3 27/11/24	This version includes incremental updates from previous beta and release candidates. 2024.6.3 Fixes to how icons are fetched based on if they are UWP apps or not. Default file association icons were a bit mangled in the past few versions. 2024.6.2 Added context menu item 'Restore Depth' when file(s) have a non-default depth buffer state set. Improved energy efficiency of control panel by removing a regular poll not required. Maya IFF files with a depth buffer now refresh correctly when toggling the depth buffer in QuickView. Using the context menu in QuickView could lead to losing keyboard input, requiring switching to and from another application. Refresh open folders sometimes didn't work when applying changes. Adornment button option is always able to be toggled now, even if a file format / extension is disabled. 2024.6.1 Includes changes from previous pulled version 2024.5.0 and previous beta versions. Fixes for Maya IFF files. Fixes and improvements to Amiga images including best correct for hires / lace modes for aspect ratio, better support for HAM and SHAM images. Choose icon dialog changing file may have caused a crash when selecting an icon file after a DLL file. If using choose icon to select an override UWP PNG icon, now detects if there is a 256 size version to use as the override icon to avoid small icons being used. Fixed image of icon overlay and show icon overlay buttons when double clicking to open the choose icon dialog so they show the state of the button before the double click. Where file extensions do not have a perceived type, register as perceived image so folders containing mostly supported files automatically open in thumbnail view by default. When selecting override icon button first time, get only the extension icon path first, then app icon unless an extension icon doesn't exist. Further improvement in override icon overlays working on some file types. Better guards around thumbnails for PNG for Metro/AppStore apps icons. PNG, JPEG and GIF are now enabled by default due to changes in thumbnail and icon interplay. Choose icon dialog better selects files when browsing for a new icon (library) file. Choose icon dialog, now remaps icon id's to the associated icon index. Fixed following of registry to correct current version of applications for extensions for registering thumbnail and icon handlers. Disabled darken animation since for UX performance. Some files with quoted or decorated paths did not open in the choose icon dialog. Further improvements to make icons and thumbnails generate and fetch when required. Changed choose icon dialog size to have 10 icons wide by default for easier counting if looking for a specific index. Fix for trying to set 'Unknown' file type icons, causing icon errors system wide. App store apps could lose icons on taskbar etc. Fix for extremely large text / richtext files causing crash. Fixed not retrieving correct icon for actual .ico file references, causing some issues with icon matching. SVG images was being overlaid onto document icon. regression from 2024.5.0. Improvements to file extension registration -> better handling of file extensions that have changed user choice / Open With application. Context menu was not being registered to open correctly. Regression from 2024.4.1. Double clicking theme dialog transparency button was not opening options for canvas or checkerboard selection.
2024.5.0 19/09/24	This version has been removed due to a bug affecting some users with icons disappearing / not correct. It has now been integrated into version 2024.6.1. This major version includes an overhaul to the help system (user guide) and documentation and a new 'Tip of the day' control panel option. Pressing F1 on a control now accurately takes you to the correct place in the help for a faster reference. Local help is now opened in your default browser application. New help system using a local web server instead compiled help. Local help is now the default option. Context menu might not have opened when in collapsed mode. Regression from 2024.4.1. Web based files now render to a filepage icon in thumbnail mode for consistency with other document type files such as text. Improved the behaviour of restarting Explorer. Added new feature 'Tip of the day' that will show a random tutorial tip when opening the control panel. Improved show/hide on some controls when starting / stopping tutorial mode. Updated tutorial text for global context menu option to reflect recent changes. Updated control panel local/online help to better reflect current version. Updated credits / hints. Prevent control panel modifier keys when a dialog / drop list is open. Control panel logo animation stops after a few minutes to save energy. Updated some translations that didn't fit on controls in all languages. Removed unneeded timer from QuickView to help save energy.
2024.4.2 19/08/24	Note, an early release of this version would have shown an error 'a newer version is installed' when updating. This has been corrected. Minor update to correct some rendering issues with small icons. Small icons for Text and RichText were not rendered correctly on a page icon. Small icons for Web and Web Aggregate formats updated to render on a page icon.
2024.4.1 17/08/24	Added RichText file format (.rtf). The new RichText renderer is now used for the Text format to achieve a more consistent overall image and better performance. This may introduce some unexpected visual changes from prior releases. Global context menu option changed so there is no disable option. Instead use the 'requires shift key' option (changed by double clicking the button). Some improvements to the credits screen. Various other bug fixes and tweaks.
2024.4.0 03/08/24	Added requirements information icon ⚠ to file formats that may require specific installed system applications or WIC image plugins, as well as tooltip information that details the requirements. Added credits window ability to pause (with P) and scroll with mouse wheel or up/down arrows to read credits/info/license texts. Credits window now has pages and web hyperlinks to navigate information and external links. Credits window now has inertia scrolling when paused and using the mouse wheel / up / down arrow keys (hold [Ctrl] to accelerate). Updated the credits help key ([Ctrl], [Alt], [Shift]) graphics for better clarity. Updated credits license informations. Changes and additions to RAW metadata / EXIF handling. Improved performance of property system to help display File Explorer thumbnails faster when in details mode.
2024.3.2 26/06/24	Regression in 2024.3.1 that caused a crash with files not correctly registered. Made heif format require an external WIC plugin. See the app store or elsewhere if you require one.
2024.3.1 21/06/24	Build removed due to crashing bug. Fixed in 2024.3.2. Some file overrides using full thumbnail and transparency modes were not working correctly. Draw color on dynamic images such as ABR when in transparent mode, drawing on checkerboard / full thumbnail canvas colors choosing between dark and light pens. Fixed refreshing QuickView when changing canvas or checkerboard colors on transparent images. Restoring all settings from .mtsettings file didn't update the control panel state properly.
2024.3.0 20/04/24	Added .dotx to Open Office formats. Added a new custom installer/uninstaller/updater procedure that asks the user to close any applications that have MysticThumbs core files open to try to prevent auto-closing / losing any work. This should help prevent unintentional loss of work if you happen to have an app open that is using MysticThumbs in open/save dialogs when installing updates or uninstalling for example. Core performance optimizations. 'QuickView' renamed to 'Quick View' for translation purposes in texts / messages. Changed the way the installer works to prevent spawning tray app / Quick View elevated on installation / update. Tweaked and added information to the about window / hints page for expert users to learn from. Clear thumbnail cache from the tray icon context menu now doesn't need to spawn the control panel to perform the task. Therefore it's now much faster. Language in context menus sometimes changed after control panel Apply incorrectly. Some work on displaying a wait cursor more appropriately when doing work in the control panel. Some icons were not displaying correctly in tooltips. Regression 2024.1.1. An optimization to make the control panel search extensions dialog appear slightly faster causing internal state corruption with the file formats and many potential resulting bad bugs including control panel crash. Reverted change. You can now use [Ctrl]+F to search for a file extension in the control panel. Explorer crash when selecting folders with a period '.' in their name. This bug may have also malfunctioned a number of other things. Regression introduced in 2024.1.1 - Interim fix for some users applications reporting false read-only files, preventing the user to save files. Reverted property handler back to 2024.1.1 whilst we investigate the issue. Wait cursor showing more appropriately with open modal dialog boxes. Exporting file extension settings was showing a failure when it succeeded. About window F1 to toggle hints wasn't working. Crash when encountering .ico and possibly other files handled partially by system codecs. Regression from build 2024.1.1. Full size thumbnails were not aligning properly. When applying changes in the control panel, sometimes open QuickView windows didn't update accordingly. Regression - sample and scale mode options were not working in the context menus. Under some circumstances the chosen dark mode was not applied to the running tasks dialog. Fixed running tasks dialog sometimes staying open for a time after all tasks were complete. Possible race condition crash when shell tried to clean up our shell extension with the running tasks dialog open. Fixed bad "current version is newer than chosen version" error showing when installing a final after beta. Fixed potential hang / crash when loaded from Explorer shell DLL and unloaded. Removed QuickView maximum resizing limit that caused aspect clamping issues. QuickView window resizing scaling / aspect ratios improved. Postscript QuickView scaling improved. Reworked some property store cleanup code to prevent a potential hung thread. Added some extra hints for PDF ghostscript decoding in an attempt to increase performance for some files. Improved property store calls with a short duration cache to try improve multiple fetches to slow ping images. * Edit File Extensions Enhancement * Beta - You can now edit file extensions for file types by opening the file extension box and selecting the '...' ellipsis item at the bottom of the extension list. - This allows you to add or remove extensions for file formats and can be useful to add support for extensions that aren't listed by default under a certain file format. - For example, you could add extra text based file extensions to the 'Text' file format such as programming language source files, or XML based file extensions that you would like visualized to the XML file format. - Use with caution. This feature is currently considered BETA but performs as expected in tests so far. Use knowing this, and only use if you are certain of what you are doing as there could be unintended side effects if a file extension was connected to another shell extension. - Be careful adding extensions for file formats that it may not properly support. It's possible you may experience a crash. If that happens, simply remove the extension again and if you believe it should work, contact support with a sample file so we can investigate.
2024.1.1 22/02/24	Fixes a bug with 2024.1.0 that caused control panel to crash when starting up on some systems. This version replaces that version. Some support for JPEG PDF's added for things like document scans. Added hotkey/button [Shift]+[F10] to take a capture of the control panel window. Added a snapshot the control panel to cilpboard button. [Shift]+[F10] or [Shift]+press the revealed snapshot button. Maya file type renamed to Maya (Swatches) for clarity since a .mayaSwatches folder is required to thumbnail them. Improved general rendering performance and memory usage of control panel. Some translations with dynamic text didn't add in whitespace. This has been improved. Improved QuickView gamma slider performance for much faster feedback. Massively improved refreshing open QuickView windows when modifying the control panel settings. Improved scaling and refreshing of QuickView. Improved QuickView redraw of some vector based formats after scaling. Improved copy to clipboard functionality. Added copy to clipboard formats in the advanced settings dialog, found in the Convert to format context menu settings. Improved some language/localization formatting. Improved maximum file size checks to prevent thumbnailing files too large when set. Changed all file formats with default transparency mode checkerboard to default transparent as it's probably more useful to the average user. Existing settings will not be affected. Fixed nag reminder to register whilst in evaluation mode less often. After clearing the thumbnail/icon cache, open Explorer windows are now automatically refreshed. Control panel crash when starting up on some systems. Some potential issues with non-English languages. Potential crash when closing control panel. Scale up / Full size button revert function wasn't quite right in all file formats mode. Saving the control panel capture for a support request was not working. Regression when holding [Ctrl] key to restore to defaults, the default state was shown instead of the current state. Choose icon dialog, fixed copy/paste icon so the correct icon file and icon are highlighted in the dialog after a paste. QuickView copy to clipboard bug fixed. Convert to format settings dialog text and translations. Context menu sometimes didn't populate MysticThumbs items from desktop. Some Chinese and Japanese texts were not displaying correctly.
2024.0.3 21/01/24	Major Update, 2024 version Packed full of Quality of Life improvements, new features, optimisations and bug fixes that have been in development for four months and are aimed to please. Please read through the change list so you know what to expect if you are updating, especially with major functional changes. Added .psdt - Photoshop template files - to Photoshop file extensions. Added VinylMaster .vDoc file format. 'All file formats' mode states are now remembered. Added light/dark mode theme button to the theme editor so you can see icons in the respective mode. When using the context menu on a Windows Explorer item to modify states or refresh, or using the control panel 'Refresh Open Explorer Windows' global mode and applying changes, there is now a progress dialog that will show after a second to allow you to monitor the changes taking place and optionally cancel the operation(s) if desired. This can be especially useful if applying changes recursively. Checkerboard dialog is now resizable. Improved checkerboard dialog buttons images and states to better reflect the overall state. When changing languages, theme and blocked dialogs are updated. Improved theme dialog icon tooltips. Registration, plugin, proxy, update, download dialogs are centered again on the control panel main window when opened. Improved control panel novice/expert button. Some tooltips updated for better clarity. Choose color dialog now only responds to a double click on appropriate controls. Reset icon and cursor file types to default to cubic sampling to keep consistency in 'All file formats' mode. Improved display of control panel type (novice expert) button to show when debug logging is enabled, in case the user forgets. Performance and Gamma buttons rendering. Theme editor now supports canvas color viewing mode. It also supports changing the canvas and checkerboard colors. When using [Ctrl]+Apply to refresh open folders, the current 'Apply to Mode' is respected so that you can choose to refresh only a specific file format, or a specific file extension, or everything. Improved checkerboard select dialog outlines on the preset list for dark and light modes. Changed the way multiple states are shown in novice mode on buttons when in apply to all or format mode. Now the state of the underlying extension or all format mode is shown and an asterisk * is added to show multiple states. This brings a little more clarity to state setting in multi-modes. Improved postscript based QuickView rendering. Performance, when using the context menu to modify files/folders, a better check is now in place to skip files not supporting modification of unsupported functions such as transparency & full thumbnail etc. Refreshed many icons for a bit better clarity. Apply to open folders can now also apply to desktop icons, however desktop folders will not be recursed if the recurse folders option is enabled unless they are open in an Explorer window. Various performance optimization and tweaks. Changed Krita to default checkerboard transparency. Changed PDF default non-premultiplied alpha. Selecting 'Clear thumbnail cache' from the control panel or quickview jumplist now opens the (now standardized throughout) clear thumbnail cache dialog box. File types that don't support transparency had the transparency button disabled. The button is now enabled if the file type supports full thumbnail mode so you can choose canvas and checkerboard colors. These file types will only toggle between canvas and checkerboard for the purpose of being able to choose those colors. When changing dark mode, open dialogs are updated to the new mode. There was a problem saving some dialogs positions / sizes correctly. Theme dialog icon path was not visible. Choosing a custom icon was not displaying correctly for file extensions. Selecting file extension from the search loupe did not correctly save the currently selected file extension for the file format. Icon overlay buttons were not showing the correct state text or overlay icons for multi-states. Disabling Show association icon did not work unless a custom icon was enabled. Rendering control panel buttons with text was not drawing the text in beta 4 due to an optimization. Toggling debug logging when having skip dialog without [Shift] pressed didn't work correctly. Toggling small icons may not have updated the button icon properly. Some control panel memory leaks. Entering an old license key into new versions of the control panel would ignore the key entry and do nothing. Control panel state buttons may have been in an incorrect state after restoring defaults button. Fix potential crash on control panel cleanup. Setting adornment for some file types wasn't taking effect. Buttons did not show the correct 'modified from default state' icon in apply to file format mode. When a file extension has small icons enabled, the control panel icon was appearing as a generic blank sheet of paper icon instead of either the associated application icon or the override icon if applicable. Fixed taskbar jumplist icons. Potential crash fixed when logging some strings. Postscript / illustrator checks for supporting rendering full image or fallback to embedded thumb fixed. Postscript / illustrator better heuristic to discern width / height for image properties to correct resolution / dpi. Bug decoding some SKP files. Regression from 2023.3.0. Improved refreshing open folders and recursing into sub-folders when enabled improved is better managed. Handling of refreshing thumbnails on the desktop improved including refreshing transparency and other settings. Postscript files specifying inches/cm are scaled accordingly where possible. Some postscript files would try to render too large due to xmp metadata not in pixels. Fixed occasional occurance of temporary files being created where they shouldn't have. When creating small icons, if transparency is checkerboard, it is treated as canvas color instead.
2023.4.2 23/08/23	Tutorial tooltips now render with DPI scaled icons the same as regular tooltips. Bad handling of dialog boxes when entering license key in Admin mode. WebP now supports animated images using the page context menus. WebP no longer requires an installed WIC codec. Windows Metafile images are now procedural in QuickView so they refresh when scaled and support vector imaging. Improvements to sizing QuickView windows from the corners. QuickView window not opening to the correct size of some images.
2023.4.1 10/08/23	Windows Metafile reworked to used Direct2D decoders. Gdiplus dependencies removed. Control panel 'About' feature F1 help updated with option key button variants.
2023.4.0 03/08/23	Added Convert to... BMP, DDS, GIF, JPG for more flexibility with common file types. The context menu items are also sorted by extension name. Export / Import file format settings function for sharing file type settings with other machines/people. - To export settings, select 'All Formats' mode, hold [Alt] and press the Export button which replaces the Undo button. Saves a .mtsettings file to the user's Downloads folder. - To import settings, hold [Alt]+[Shift] and press the import button which replaces the Undo button and choose the file to import. Hyperlink buttons were not responding to button clicks. Regression from 2023.3.0. QuickView image scale is kept when moving between files or changing modes such as metadata transform/rotation. When moving between files in QuickView using Explorer or the cursor keys, the new file's settings are loaded. They used to be kept from the current QuickView settings. This behaviour was not ideal. QuickView context menu - apply changes to file - was not applying metadata transforms back to the file. Windows Bitmap (.bmp) file type now defaults to non-premultiplied alpha for consistency. Convert to ICO icon file now also saves a 256 size icon. Memory leak when filling control panel combo boxes. Scaled up tooltip icons on HiDPI displays. Improved visual fidelity of tooltip icons. Fixed size of language combo button, was slightly too long for non-HiDPI. Fixed bug when refreshing open folders could cause refreshing of other items and lagging tray / QuickView app. QuickView windows were not showing in the taskbar. Fixed a long standing bug with QuickView sometimes opening with a blank window, requiring a refresh. QuickView: when changing embedded thumbnail options the image is reloaded and resized to adjust accordingly. Pressing [Space] to open QuickView now opens all selected items in the Explorer window.
2023.3.4 26/07/23	Improved performance of DirectX images. Fixed some issues with QuickView painting transparent images and repainting in general. Improved QuickView window erasing / painting for dark mode and various other scenarios. Fixed a massive problem with some images such as jpeg not decoding correctly. Updated and improved performance on many file types. When using context menu on a thumbnail with checkerboard or canvas color transparency or full thumbnail, options to change them are available. EPub performance improvements. Fixed EPub not loading content files and therefore not working. Improvements to 'Apply to All' state buttons. More visual improvements to context menu icons. Performance gains for context menus.
2023.3.3 12/07/23	AVIF format added to High Efficiency Image format. High Efficiency Image format (HEIC/AVIF) now suports transparent images. Fixed some multi-state buttons icons when in apply to format or apply to all modes. Improved metadata transform button behaviour. Increased performance in double clicking multi-option buttons. Added color conversion support to many image types based on EXIF / embedded color data. About information window updated with some new and improved splendor.
2023.3.2 10/06/23	Fixed a problem where other apps installed may have injected hooks into dialog boxes that was causing the control panel to crash.
2023.3.1 08/06/23	Control panel starting up with incorrect text on the buttons. Better icon representation for choose icon button in apply to all / apply to format mode. Potential crash bugs from other apps not playing nice with the Win32 API and dialogs (Listary).
2023.3.0 04/06/23	!!! This is a very major update - Please read the changes !!! Windows 10 or 11 are now required to install or update from older versions. Windows 7 and 8 support has been retired. Click here to show the last version compatible with Windows 7 and 8. Icon and small icon handling has been completely overhauled. You may notice some differences in the control panel from previous versions with how icons are displayed for file extensions and applications as well as in File Explorer. Czech and Slovak languages added (draft). Checkerboard colors are now per-file extension. Added a checkerboard color chooser with a customizable preset library. To choose the checkerboard colors for a file extension, set the transparency mode to checkerboard and double click the button. Use tooltips (if enabled) in the checkerboard dialog for information. Checkerboard and Canvas colors are now selectable from the shell and QuickView context menus. Added a new option to only show Explorer context menus if holding [Shift] key when right clicking. To enable/disable, double click the global Context Menu button. Small icons for file types that use Windows Store / UWP applications are now shown. Having a file extension small icon generation disabled but assigning it a custom icon now uses the custom icon for small icon, details and icon views. Added older style Office document support for files saved with a thumbnail. (.doc, .xls, .ppt, .vsd). Added Icon (.ico) format for icons. Added .pub Publisher file support. Added .aftemplate extension to Affinity file type. Allow manipulation of full thumbnail mode when in apply to all formats on a base format that doesn't support it. Opening multiple QuickView files from Explorer when the QuickView app was not already open would not open them all. Popup sliders for max file/pixel size and gamma are now presented correctly in dark mode. Clear thumbnail cache after entering a license key was not functional. Crash fixed in updater introduced in beta preventing updating from within the control panel. Updates from current beta versions will have to be made directly from the website. Control panel help button was not available if there was no internet access. It now resets to local help if no interenet access. Embedded thumbnail mode could have caused a lockup for some file types. Pressing ESC key during tutorial could crash the control panel. No double click support on transparency button when file format doesn't support transparency. Canvas color shows correctly now in scale up/full size button. When changing between different file extensions of a file type, the associated application / icon was not being updated with different associations. Choose icon dialog now works with redirected Windows 10/11 icon libraries that are in System32. When changing a file extension overlay icon, the search for extension icons were not being updated correctly. Issues with installer/uninstaller and languages. Fixed bug with choose icon dialog OK on no file chosen. Fixed potential bug with WMF/EMF files. Fixed crash copying QuickView window to the clipboard. Potential bug with the control panel language combo box not exiting active mode properly. Changing from small icons to not-small icons didn't show the default icon proper. This should now be fixed. Attempt to fix QuickView sometimes opens with a blank canvas. Archive (.zip & .rar) files no longer respect/apply transparency, scale up or full size options. Improved gamma slider tooltip in QuickView. Disable transparency button when not in apply to all mode and the file format doesn't support transparency. Double clicking scale up/full thumbnail when the file format doesn't support full thumbnail will instead just toggle scale up. Various cleanups to prepare for release. Optimized HDR, PSP, PVR, SKP file format decoding. Improved HDR decoding performance. Faster and more visually pleasing control panel refreshes when changing modes such as dark mode, expert mode and changing file types. Removed contol panel sound functionality. It was unnecessary (originally designed for accessibility) and only partially implemented and overly complicated. Improved selection visibility in the choose icon dialog. For canvas color transparency mode, select canvas transparency mode then double click the button. Improved clear icon cache so it doesn't restart Explorer if the icon is deleted successfully. Added a notification so changing a file association automatically refreshes the control panel. Adjusted/optimized some file format registry settings. Improved the choose icon dialog to keep selected icon when switching icon size. Improved refreshing folders when changing thumbnail/icon enabled. Many optimizations on registering and unregistering MysticThumbs for system stability. Optimized DSO file reader (3ds Max, Kubotek, Office Document, Publisher). More changes to small icons to use the icon of the application that opens them, or the default assigned icon of the file type, when small icon thumbnail isn't enabled. A new check added for potentially invalid registry links with file associations when unregistering a file extension. Made extraction of icons when small icons is enabled possible to be done using a background thread. May improve performance. Added tooltip text for control panel main window combo boxes to show that keyboard searching is possible. Improved performance of system file types (JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, CUR, ICO and other WIC defaults files.) Changed sampling button text. Postscript performance: changed pinging for properties to use embedded thumbnails when found to prevent very large files stalling Explorer. Large postscript, including Adobe Illustrator .ai files were taking too long to inspect. File types that don't support full thumbnail backgrounds no longer support toggling their full thumbnail setting in the control panel. Optimizing and attempt to fix PNG images that are determined to be Metro/UWP icons. A lot of internal refactoring. Changed registering support file types properties from Picture;Image to Picture. Cursor and Icon formats now default to nearest sampling filter. Some changes to small icon extraction.
2023.2.0 08/01/23	This is the last version supported on Windows 7 and 8. Added Affinity file type. Only supports .afphoto, .afdesign and .afpub files saved with embedded thumbnails. Fixed a bug when extracting thumbs from SmartCAMcmc and Pulse Signature Embroidery files. Refresh open Explorer windows after changing custom icon overlays in the control panel. Added .mun extension to Choose Icon dialog for Windows 11 type icon libraries.
2023.1.0 05/01/23	This version should fix a bunch of things with small icons and thumbnails when enabled/disabled that were a problem in prior versions. Bug in compressed Corel CDR files. Attempts to drill too deep into archive files causing recursion and slowdown. There were some problems with EXR using multithreaded mode. Improved refresh of desktop and Explorer windows when clearing thumbnail cache. OpenEXR, when used, shutdown improved to reduce memory leaks and potential crashes.
2022.3.2 31/12/22	Warning, small icons are always enabled in this version regardless of the control panel setting. Archive (ZIP/RAR) files were causing Explorer to lock up generating thumbnails with some types of content. Possible race condition / lockup when reading some postscript or ZIP/RAR files with postscript files within. Changed the default of 'Apply refreshes open Explorer folders" to Enabled. Holding [Ctrl] key when opening the control panel will reset some key settings back to default in case there is a problem. Some code cleanups. Some internal potential bug fixes when looking for file types that don't exist.
2022.3.1 22/12/22	Warning, small icons are always enabled in this version regardless of the control panel setting. If you had problems with version 2022.3.0 and are running an older Windows 8 or 7 OS you will need this version to fix. There are some other incoming important changes coming in the next few days. Stay tuned. Regression from version 202230: introduced a dependency on Windows 8.1 that caused the control panel to not open on prior versions of Windows (8, 7). Now able to enter a user license over a machine license if desired. Useful for situations such as the user license having a newer maintenance date than a business license so more recent versions can be installed and used. Enter license key dialog improved for better clarity when entering a license key. Potential crash when entering license key. Right clicking the tray icon to get a context menu may have (almost certainly did) shown the context menu twice. PES Embroidery files did not work. Now they do. Optimizing and attempt to fix PNG images that are determined to be Metro/UWP icons. Allow cancellation of toggling debug logs using ESC key. Increased size of restore button state to default in control panel for greater clarity.
2022.3.0 26/11/22	Warning: This version is not compatible on Windows 7 or 8 (8.1 is fine). It will be removed in time. Major update overview Administrator users can now install an 'all user' license seat on a machine so that users can switch on that machine on just one seat. Regular users on a machine with an 'all user' license installed will now have their own profile setup automatically when required. User created format plugins can now be loaded from the as-before install directory or from their user app data folder for development purposes. Much improved File Explorer folder refresh for both thumbnail and small icon modes when using Apply Refresh or Refresh Open Folders options. Many other fixes and optimizations. Detect new non-admin user accounts and setup everything when required. Plugins now loaded from both user %LOCALAPPDATA% and the install folder so both admin and user plugins are read. User generated plugins with the same name are prioritized for ease of development in multi-user environments. See the Plugin information in the user guide online for further information. Buffer overrun on some dynamic icon generations. Some buffer overrun potential bugs. Some more logo animation types in control panel for some visual variation. Installer required GhostScript version set absolute to 9.56.1. Do not try to update Ghostscript to a newer version for now as there are some incompatibilities. Some language string changes and translations. Updating Explorer folders when many changes are made so thumbnails are updated correctly. Cancelling a search in a combo box (eg. search / file format / extension) will properly restore the previous selection. Control panel: File extension search button is now disabled whilst file extensions are collated to avoid possible UX bugs. Potential control panel crash when previous plugins dont exist. Some multi-threading improvements to decoders. Refreshing icon cache on Apply to open Explorer windows when any window is in a small icon mode so the icons will immediately reflect the appropriate changes. Some DDS file formats didn't report their bit depth correctly. When applying changes to formats with small icons enabled a folder refresh is issued to update small icons. Toggle all blocked folders will now update all of those folders immediately. Toggling a blocked folder will (should) now update the small icons and thumbnails appropriately. Applying changes from QuickView when "Apply changes to file" is enabled improved and fixed for gamma correction. QuickView issue not displaying context menu sometimes. Improved the way small icons are handled when enabling/disabling and also with blocked folders. General code cleanups to improve efficiency. PSD decoder improved.
2022.2.3 11/10/22	Context menu validation check to prevent possible crash. Fixed up some non-translated language items. Removed "for current apply to state" redundant text from tooltip for restore default state. Regression - file properties / details mode information may not have been reporting and missing in some situations such as when both thumbnail and small icon modes were disabled for an extension. Changing thumbnail adornment in the control panel now updates the shell windows appropriately. Updated thumbnail adornment button images for better clarity. Updated theme button image.
2022.2.2 27/09/22	Convert to... context menu was broken. Should be now able to convert most file types to the usual targets.
2022.2.1 26/09/22	Improved fetching of file extension and associated application icons in control panel. They should now be more accurate representing default Windows 10/11 UWP and default Windows applications. Updated user guide with double click gear icon control panel images and information.
2022.2.0 21/09/22	New Blocked Folders and gear indicators on control panel buttons for extra features for clarity. Blocked folders (experimental privacy feature) - double click the control panel folder recurse global button to select folders that will be ignored for thumbnailing. Control panel controls that support double click to open extra functions or toggle second functions now show a gear icon overlay as an indicator. Choose custom icon button correctly reflects multiple states in file format / all file formats mode. User plugins may not have been working binding. Should now be working. You can now change the show icon overlay setting for file types/extensions even if thumbnailing is disabled for that type. Across installs, now remembers state of Win11+ 'Legacy Explorer' context menu setting on the notification tray icon across installs/uninstalls/updates. Default all context menu wasn't restoring metadata rotation. Removed change gamma control from the shell context menu except for default. Gamma control only available from QuickView or the control panel. Reworked file format and extension icon associations. UWP, Windows Store and default Windows 10+ applications should now be better represented. Sort extensions by extension number where appropriate. Added .blend1 through .blend32 file extensions to Blender file type for users that use the backup system to the maximum of 32 backups. Removed transparency support from blender files since they are thumbnail only. For file types that only support embedded thumbnails, the Transparency option is now locked to Canvas mode because the canvas color can be used for full thumbnails and wants to be visible. Some control tooltip tweaks.
2022.1.3 25/08/22	Control panel was possibly getting keyboard events that it didn't want when not the foreground application.
2022.1.2 22/08/22	Using local help mode (F1 in control panel) the help was not being displayed.
2022.1.1 22/08/22	MysticThumbs build numbers are now Year.Version.Revision numbering format. This significant update contains extensive rework of some major systems for performance and optimization as well as some changes to the control panel settings. It should notify you when opening the control panel and show you the changes. Please consider taking note of the changes. While a lot of testing has been done, due to the myriad of different machine setups, there may be unforeseen issues for some users. If you experience problems please use the support request from the control panel or website to notify us and revert to the previous version. Worth noting: Refreshing or changing settings in Explorer through context menus is now massivey faster and very useful due to multi-core capabilities. Try it? Control panel Scale Up and Full Thumbnail modes have been merged into a single button. Single click to toggle scale up mode, Double click to toggle full thumbnail mode. Tooltips and tutorial have been updated to reflect this change. Explorer and QuickView context menu now have 'Metadata rotation' entries. Full thumbnail canvas color mode added. Fixed. Added Commodore 64 (C64) file type including file extensions .kla, .koa, .prg, .fli, .shi, .esh currently, for Koala painter multicolor images and fli and shi images that are not encoded in d64 program format. Control panel at unusual screen scales could cause a crash. Small icons would render with full thumbnail if it was set, which was not correct. They are always now transparent and achored for better clarity. When opening QuickView, sometimes the window would require a manual refresh/resize. Crash when unregistering/reregistering plugins. Support for checkbox controls - proxy dialog. WEBP animated image support added. The first frame is used. WEBP now requires having a WIC codec installed on your computer. Windows 11 and 10 should already have one installed by default, older OS may require installing one either from Microsoft or another vendor. Switching Global overlay icon will properly refresh open File Explorer windows. Global checkerboard option icon will show light or dark checkerboard depending on currently selected file format. When changing multiple files at once using the context menu a refresh was sent to the window which would reset it's position. This has been removed as Explorer seems to now be better at refreshing the thumbnails according to size correctly in recent Windows builds. If thumbnails don't show at correct size after a context menu file refresh then press F5 to manually refresh an Explorer window. QuickView now supports viewing supported file formats that have been disabled in the control panel. Theme dialog load theme icon improved. Removed tutorial videos as they are legacy. After entering a valid license key the thank you dialog defaults to clearing the thumbnail cache to refresh evaluation thumbnails. When clearing the thumbnail cache you can choose to also delete all thumbnail overrides you may have made on individual files in Explorer. Using tray context menu / clear thumbnail cache now opens the control panel / clear thumbnail dialog so you can choose what to clear. Now unable to open registration dialog more than once if using the Register tray context menu item. Tray icon is more visible now when thumbnails are being generated. Potential crash when un/re-registering/applying changes to file formats. Changed context menu Convert to file format to explicitly say "Convert to ..." for clarity. Improved Restore All context menu so it doesn't process files more than once. Stabilized and improved performance with open explorer windows refreshing from control panel or context menu. Context menu text Embedded thumb changed to Embedded thumbnail for consistency. Changed tooltip for thumbs generated link to "Reset count to 0" for clarity. Changed 'Control Panel' menu item text to 'Thumbnail Control' for clarity. Added a new tray icon context menu entry for Windows 11 to be able to toggle old style / pre Windows 11 shell context menus so it doesn't take two clicks to get to standard application menus. QuickView clears border color in border opaque areas with white or black depending on system Dark Mode setting. Rotating embedded thumbnails of RAW file thumbnails correctly. Added context menu "Default All" to restore any changed file/settings back to current defaults for the file format/extension. Added context menu "Default All" to restore any changed file/settings back to current defaults for the file format/extension instead of one at a time. Added an 'Apply Changes to Open Explorer Windows' global option. If you want to compare changes live, enable this option to make changes and apply to refresh open Explorer windows to see the changes immediately so you can do comparisons etc. live in Explorer. This option was already available via pressing [Ctrl]+Apply. This option simplifies the workflow. The 'Apply' button changes to reflect this state. Rotating embedded thumbnails of RAW file thumbnails correctly. QuickView clears border color in border opaque areas with white or black depending on system Dark Mode setting. Applying changes to open Explorer Windows now works with Explorer Search windows. Context menu in Explorer windows is vastly improved for visual and performance reasons. A multi-threaded job system is now used to vastly improve performance. Popup sliders in QuickView may not have visually updated. This has been fixed. Potential deadlocks when waiting for tasks to finish on closing shutting down some systems. Changed RAW to use embedded thumbnails for better performance by default. Refreshing / manually changing shortcut links now refresh their thumbnails when refreshed from the source file. QuickView "Always Scale To Fit" color picking was incorrect. Potential issue making the notification icon register and function correctly. Preventing unnecessary flickering and refreshing of desktop & explorer windows when applying non-icon related state changes. Restoring full thumbnail mode may have failed to work. Performance maximum sizes and gamma button sliders now show 'Inactive' when inactive for clarity. Control panel - Sample button showing resizing text was doubled up. Control panel - tutorial potential crash due to missing video player in tutorial mode. Control panel - Global option context menu now displays a more intuitive text when disabled. Fixed updating folders thumbnails and windows when changes are made via context menu. Crash when trying to decode bad WMF files. Removed all Facebook and Twitter links. Added Windows 11 OS detection for some platform spectific functions. Control panel - Rearranged some buttons and tabbing ordering to be more logical. Performance improvement - When applying changes to open Explorer windows (ie. [Ctrl]+Apply) only file extensions for settings that changed in the control panel will refresh. An example - So a window with 100 files and only one PSD file will only refresh the PSD file if only PSD settings were changed. Alignment of checkerboards with Full Size Thumbnails RAW files with dodgy rotation may have returned a corrupt image. Control Panel - Apply all changes to open windows is no longer available if there are no changes to any file. Photo orientation meta tag support for RAW images. Some memory leaks and various bugs.
5.2.5 22/08/21	Newer versions of Ghostscript should now work after v9.52. When creating a support ticket the auto control panel screenshot is taken in English to help the support team.
5.2.4 28/06/21	Re-implemented multi-monitor and HiDpi monitor support. Intentional regression from v5.2.1. Windows 10 seems to handle things without crashing now - if you have any problems please report a bug. Opening previous windows such as the Control Panel and QuickView should now better handle multi-monitor systems. Some rare control panel closing issues that may have caused a crash.
5.2.3 09/04/21	Ghostscript required version was incorrect. Reset to 9.52. If you happen to have a newer version(s) please use Windows Add/Remove Programs first to remove newer Ghostscript versions as they can cause issues.
5.2.2 07/04/21	CR3 file extension added to RAW file format. This may require installing a WIC codec pack such as Microsoft's Raw Image Extension from the Windows Store. Quickview may not function correctly with these files (being investigated). RAW and some other WIC based files forced embedded thumbnails may not have been rotated correctly. This may cause rotation issues with some pre-existing files (please report if so) due to some cameras not rotating thumbnails in accordance to image rotation metadata. Potential files not thumbnailed if they had bad extension case.
5.2.1 23/03/21	Added nfo, md, diz and json to Text file format. Ghostscript dependency locked into 9.52. If you happen to have a newer version please uninstall it first or you may have problems with postscript based files. Fixed network error messages when refreshing license keys. Removed DPI aware capability as it was causing issues on some multi-monitor systems. Made text file format thumbnail scale roughly 80 columns wide. Changes to Hardware ID calculation to prevent changes with Windows reinstall.
5.1.9 01/10/20	Please note v5.2.0 has been removed because of issues with Ghostscript causing some postscript files not to be converted. We are looking into this. If you have problems with postscript files not converting please revert to this version. Removed Microsoft Codec Pack for RAW prerequisite installer as Microsoft has terminated support along with Windows 7 and it is no longer available from their servers. No change to existing installs are made and your RAW files will continue to be thumbnailed if you already have it. New users may have to source it from elsewhere if required. There is still a fallback for older and more generic RAW formats that should work for most cameras without the codec pack. Internal structural changes and bug fixes. Recompiled with compiler fixes and optimizations.
5.1.8 15/08/20	Shell Convert to file format was not working for non-ICO files. Regression from v5.1.5. Control Panel Control panel crashed when clicking on and off some links and buttons, i.e. version info link and performance sliders. Improved default icon for control panel sounds so it is clearer in both light and dark modes.
5.1.7 31/07/20	Shell Fixing incorrect registry default file type links upon uninstall. Possible regression. Note that this fix will not take effect until uninstalling or updating this version. Added .jpe and .jfif extensions to JPEG file type. Control Panel Optimized restore default state text. When changing global option to show/hide icon overlays, some times the Explorer would not sync correctly. Dark mode support for the update buttons in update available dialog. Potential crash with tooltips in update available dialog. Update progress dialog progress bar was in a bad position.
5.1.6 03/07/20	Installer asking for Ghostscript update when it should not have. Shell EPUB now supports newer v3.2 packages. Control Panel Made choose canvas color dialog dark mode compliant and further customized.
5.1.5 18/06/20	Updating from earlier versions will update Ghostscript to version 9.52 if required. Shell Open Office files now default to a white canvas background due to issues on Windows Dark Mode. EPUB files - some files did not show a thumbnail. Improved performance of context menu convert file to format. Control Panel Performance improvements to the control panel.
5.1.4 24/05/20	Control Panel If updating and there is no update button in the dialog, press bottom right of the dialog where OK usually is to perform the update. Control panel non-modal dialog boxes are correctly set to pinned/unpinned if the option is toggled. Export debug file extension info had a problem exporting extensions without associated file types. Some button image changes to better suit both dark/light modes.
5.1.3 15/05/20	If updating and there is no update button in the dialog, press bottom right of the dialog where OK usually is to perform the update. Fixed support for older format .ai files with embedded thumbnails.
5.1.2 08/05/20	If updating and there is no update button in the dialog, press bottom right of the dialog where OK usually is to perform the update. Dark mode initial implementation - experimental and not officially supported. See new dark mode toggle switch in the control panel for more information. Updated DirectX (.dds) to support more formats and files with DX10 headers. Some language translations new line breaks were not correctly marked up. Control Panel Cancelling save as dialog in theme editor showed a spurious error. Fixed control button text overlays for changed values such as gamma to work on dark and light themes.
5.1.1 12/04/20	Italian translations updated. Converting a file using the context menu would crash if file already existed (regression.) QuickView Improved performance of context menus. Convert file context menu could save to the wrong location in QuickView. Fixed and improved context menu convert to file type 'Replace All' dialog when converting more than one file.
5.1.0 02/04/20	QuickView Context menus in Explorer and QuickView now all have generic 'Default' options for option resetting. Moved gamma correction context menu out of a submenu for clarity and easier access since there is only one item to choose from.. QuickView for Postscript based files now adjusts for screen DPI. Control Panel Changing language in the control panel now immediately updates any open QuickView windows and the tray application menus.
5.0.9 26/03/20	QuickView Added an "Always scale to fit" context menu option to QuickView that overrides the file / control panel settings so scaling the window will always scale the image if desired. Large images opened in QuickView would open the window too large for the monitor and lose the title bar off screen. An auto QuickView (from pressing Space bar) window will no longer update the current file when multi-selecting files in a shell folder. Improved responsiveness when selecting different shell folder items with an auto QuickView open from pressing Space bar. Disable QuickView Scale menu items when 'Always scale to fit' is enabled for clarity. Improvements to QuickView placing windows on screen. PDF images for HiDPI monitors for a more consistent QuickView size across monitors. Improved resizing Quickview window from placing the title bar off screen for images larger than the monitor. Control Panel Searching through the file formats list using the keyboard was not working correctly. Executables with corrupt or missing icon resources could cause a control panel crash. Control panel would sometimes crash when closing. Some potential control panel crashes on exit. Some machines with error prone file extension information in the registry could cause the control panel to crash when opening. Potential bug initializing graphics device causing control panel crash or failed thumbnails. Improved some control panel information dialogs. Added Cancel buton to clear thumbnail cache dialog for clarity. The dialog close button or Escape key still also cancel. Crash dumps of control panel and quickview tasks are now available in %LOCALAPPDATA%\MysticThumbs\CrashDumps to help debugging for the developer. Shell CBR and RAR files now should show the appropriate dimensions of contained files / selected page. Potential error showing correct context menus in Explorer / QuickView for some menu items. Explorer context menu had redundant separators for disabled file types/extensions.
5.0.8 01/03/20	Clicking on control panel version link button did not correctly go to the relevant version history link web page. Updated to Ghostscript 9.50 with security adjustments. This version should now be asked to install on update. Ghostscript prerequisite install is now quiet and doesn't require user interation once accepted. Uninstalling Ghostscript option on application uninstall for a more clean uninstall process. MysticThumbs installer now requires initial Administrator priviliges to start the installation process. This is a combined effort to reduce the amount of admin elevation requests when Ghostscript etc. are required for install and uninstall. Unfortunately this means the user if locked into user mode is not able to see the initial information before install. This is regrettable. Improved / fixed the size and image of the uninstall icon the Windows Start Menu.
5.0.7 17/02/20	Please note that this version has some issues with Ghostscript causing File Explorer to stall when decoding thumbnails. If possible update to the next version or downgrade to the previous version if you experience this issue. Added Blender (.blend) preliminary file support. Embedded thumbnails only. Added 3D Print file format (.3MF). Files must have an embedded thumbnail. Some files with thumbnails stored in ZIP format may have not retrieved the thumbnail due to filename case sensitivity. WMF metafiles didn't correctly support transparency. Files without an associated application would show as 'MysticThumbs file' which could be confusing. Now they correctly show i.e. 'PSD file' for .psd extension. QuickView could fail to open files after switching between Explorer windows. Control panel file types now default to the most common extension for clarity. Control panel sounds now default to mute. Improved thumbnail generation time for all files. Should improve thumbnail generation time for folders with many files. Improved PSD thumbnail performance.
5.0.6 29/01/20	Missing translations. Some buttons not showing correct info tooltip. Some bug fixes.
5.0.5 09/09/19	Pressing space bar in a File Explorer search window could spawn QuickView if enabled.
5.0.4 12/08/19	Refreshing or entering a product / license key renewal may have still been stuck in version trial mode.
5.0.3 06/08/19	Some PSD files with RLE compression may have caused misalignment, crash and invalid thumbnails during unpacking.
5.0.2 04/07/19	Context menus now when opened highlight the active state(s) to help identify the currently active states for the file selection.
5.0.1 01/07/19	Language mapping in some languages had issues causing things like dialogs not opening at all in the control panel.
5.0.0 20/06/19	Theme Editor. Edit and share your MysticThumbs icon themes. Sharing via the website coming soon. For now, send your themes to our website support to share them. Added High Efficiency Image Format (.heif, .heic) file format. Added .reg extension (Registry file) to Text file format. File Explorer context menu now has override options for full size thumbnails. Some ZIP files would lock up generating thumbnails due to some internal inconsistensies such as MacOS metadata.. Potential issues switching through files in QuickView using cursor keys. SVG with DPI related units such as inches are now sized appropriately especially on HiDPI displays. Potential crash / error thumbnailing multiple web rendered thumbnails concurrently. SVG rendering was bugged in some situations such as HiDPI displays. This has been re-written to account for these issues. Japanese translations updated. Sometimes if the tray app was not already open, a QuickView operation would fail the first time. Potential crash/leak with rendering SVG files. Fixed potential control panel group text overflow formatting issues for some languages. Some translation adjustments. Removed exception reporting as it was causing some issues. If exceptions occur now it will be necessary to manually report them if required using support. Attempts to fix issues with some compound button images that had irregular bitmap formats. Potential crash or graphical issues with systems with weak, dual or non-existant graphics cards or bad drivers. Disabling global thumbnail mode could lead to a lockup in the control panel. QuickView shows transparent images on dark background theme when appropriate. Telling File Explorer that thumbnails are alpha always even if failure may return thumbnails in their correct transparent form. Added extra error checking logging to help trace user issues. Possible control panel crash when opening with dodgy graphics drivers fixed. There was no state information on the full thumbnail appearance option in novice mode. Regression from v4.9.8. Was unable to middle click to select a new tutorial button. Global thumbnail enable option not darkening background like other dialogs do. Some issues with a few version updated tutorials. Some operations could have caused a deadlock in the button renderer, i.e. toggling the tray notification icon. Should be fixed now with a multithreaded renderer. Full transparent thumbnail options in the context menu are now in parity. Potential menu item text corruption with some items. Top shelf icons are ghosted to reduce clutter. Hovering the mouse or keyboard focus brings them to full opacity. They have also been moved around a bit to save space. Tray application icon sometimes showing when it should not. Improved some issues if other apps/windows are bought to focus whilst operating the control panel. Improved performance of control panel when darkened with slider or dialog boxes open. Improved rendering of sliders to remove glitches. Updated info and tutorial buttons. Moved some top shelf buttons around for space saving. If skipping by cancelling the warning dialog for disabling global thumbnails and deselecting the ask again checkbox, the button would not have toggled again unless [Shift] was pressed. Canvas transparency context menu option shows correct canvas color where possible. Changed some icons so they are more visible on both light and dark theme. QuickView menu items for changing checkerboard size now only appear if the file is in checkerboard transparency mode. Tooltips for full size thumbnail control panel option now gives a description. Improved button representation of switching between debug logging modes. When choosing an overlay icon in file format mode, the new button icon might not have refreshed correctly to the new icon. Improved size of images in low DPI control panel buttons. Sound (.wav) files in transparency mode on Windows dark theme now show a light waveform when refreshed. Improved QuickView icon for Explorer dark theme. MysticThumbs used to attempt to correct embedded thumbnail rotation and cropping but it would often be incorrect due to inconsistencies in cameras etc. This is no longer done so thunbnails may appear rotated incorrectly and with black borders. Improved debug export of extension keys from control panel. Sound (.wav) did not show the waveform correctly when set to Opaque transparency. QuickView window placement. Opening QuickView with multiple selected files would sometimes drop one or more of the files from being opened. Selecting control panel screenshot when making support request did not work. Also, ability to delete the screenshot would be hampered for a while. Control panel screenshot when making support request compression quality improved.
4.9.8 22/02/19	Some files with embedded thumbnails did not render in some situations. PSD without 'Maximize Compatibility' option in particular affected. Improved selection algorithm to choose embedded thumbnail. Resetting the small icons setting to default did not work as expected. Small icons are not as efficient to generate as regular thumbnails, therefore the default state of small icons has been changed to disabled for better overall program performance.
4.9.7 09/02/19	Some files including JPEG files with camera rotation applied could cause an image processing CPU stall. Regression from v492. About information updated and improved. Improved cycling of control panel checkerboard scale/anchor button.
4.9.6 17/01/19	Paging through Archive files using context menu. RAR files were not working correctly. Possible crash reading archive files. Possible crash cleaning up Internet Explorer rendered files. Improved rendering of postscript based files in preview pane. Improved postscript / exif search for thumbnails and renderability. Changed some context menu and control panel information text for better clarity. Copy to clipboard in QuickView now always uses transparent mode. Prevent multiply copies to the clipboard when [Ctrl]+C is pressed and held in QuickView. Some files, .xml, .txt, html, .eml could get locked and undeletable / unmodifiable. Change ping on Postscript files to report correct size based on embedded thumb if exists, due to artboards possibly different from actual image dimensions.
4.9.5 08/01/19	Small icons were being computed when disabled in some cases. This has been improved. Archive files (ie. ZIP) did not respect the context menu page option. Using context menu 'Thumbnail->Refresh' could sometimes leave behind hidden __mystic__ files that were used to update the parent folder thumbnails. This feature has been changed so that no temporary file is created. If you find any empty hidden __mystic__ files you can safely delete them.
4.9.4 03/01/19	Fixed crashing from Archive/ZIP files from contained files with a percentage sign in their name. Some graphical issues with the warning icon when removing/adding license keys. When entering a license key the accepted dialog was not displayed. Checkerboard scale global option has changed. When on touch devices and in tablet mode, you still double tap the button to change the checkerboard scale. In desktop mode simply click or right click the current anchor point on the button to change the scale. Updated Spanish translations.
4.9.3 13/12/18	Archive thumbnails looked bad. First attempt to make them better. Improved archive (zip / rar) thumbnail rendering and performance. Archive (zip / rar) thumbnails now show HTML based images when supported instead of a generic icon. Refreshing renewed license keys may have not correctly represented correct maintenance date. Some issues with temporary trial build licenses. MHTML (.mht) extension moved to new file format group - Web Aggregate. Settings may have to be reset for these formats. Added .mhtm and .mhtml extensions for this format. Email stationary (.eml) files did not render correctly. Regression from v4.8.0. Improved performance of SVG decoding. ASPX files rendering improved. Changed the way PSD handles multi channel mode files. In some cases the color may not be correct but before the file may have displayed nothing but white. (Photoshop file specification issue). Fixed wait cursor in QuickView when decoding / processing images. Improved performance of large Photoshop files. Premultiplied / non-premultiplied appearance settings were not respected - regression. QuickView icon optimized so it is clearer on Explorer dark theme. Improve performance of the control panel logo.
4.9.2 20/11/18	Fixed lag when holding [Ctrl] key in the control panel continually recreating button images and bogging down the CPU. Postcript file type didn't support transparency or embedded thumbnail options and automatically extracted embedded thumbnails which caused problems with files saved from some applications. Plugins loaded might not have kept correct states. Language control panel was not resized correctly in all language / DPI settings on all Windows versions.
4.9.1 9/11/18	Fixed regression issue with some files getting stuck generating thumbnails on pre-Windows 10.
4.9.0 8/11/18	Do not use this build on Windows prior to Windows 10 as it contains an issue with files getting stuck generating thumbnails. Indeterminate states for slider controls (performance and gamma) did not correctly show multiple states. Multiple states for novice mode icons and text for buttons. Toggling overlay icon is now always available instead of only when override icon is enabled. This disconnects their reliance on each other and allows more intuitive icon overlay control. Gamma control now always shows two decimal places on gamma value. Improved registration dialog button tooltips. The remove license button in the control panel now prompts for confirmation. Enable/disable tooltips now shows a disable icon overlay when disabled. Updated OpenEXR to version 2.3.0. OpenEXR now supports parallel decoding for improved performance. Potential deadlock when performing some tasks such as clearing thumbnail cache, exporting settings. Improved choose and show icon overlay button images based on apply to state. Automatic check for updates would crash if choosing to update from notification balloon. Gamma correction to images within archives sometimes was not applied. Changed gamma button page size to 2.2 for simplicity to push linear color spaces into sRGB. Multiple states for novice mode icons and text for buttons. Indeterminate states for slider controls (performance and gamma) did not correctly show multiple states. Incorrect subtext in novice control panel mode when changing an appearance option. Tray application sometimes not responding to registry changes. When in Apply to All mode changes, the Apply overlay may have been incorrectly shown on some buttons. When opening control panel via "Register" context menu the online store page no longer opens explicitly. Installer now asks for Administrator elevation before installing instead of when running, so information and other details are visible to non-administrator users. Added a warning symbol to Enable all Thumbnails button when disabled to help clarify the global implications of this function. Closing control panel deadlock under some situations such as having done a "Apply and refresh to open Explorer windows". Using context menu in Explorer windows to refresh/change thumbnails could lead to files needing to sync to OneDrive. Improved some epub extraction. Restore original apply to mode after post update tooltip notifications. Potential crashes due to control panel sounds playing. Control panel interface clean ups and performance improvements. Control panel crash when closing after tutorial. Occasional issue / potential error shutting down control panel. Elevate to change site license dialog was broken. Completely overhauled. Improved control panel tooltips on global items to be consistent. Performance improvements to some control panel controls.
4.8.3 25/09/18	Note this version originally had a bug with entering license keys after running with a build trial license. This has been fixed and patched. If you had/have this issue please download again and reinstall, then remove and re-enter your license key. Crash when a process that had used MysticThumbs in Open/Save dialog boxes was terminated. Missing icons in tray menu in some situations. Performance improvement with context menu actions / cache when applying to appearance changes. Performance improvement with button images via caching. Control panel and context menus. Performance improvement in situations where Explorer windows were closed and context menus used again.
4.8.2 24/09/18	Control panel: always show red revert arrow on file extension option buttons when settings are not default indicating that they can be reverted back to default using [Ctrl]+Undo. Before now, this only showed when the [Ctrl] key was held down, now it helps to indicate the item has changed and the option to to revert back to the default state. Defaulted ABR files to light checkerboard transparency in line with other file types. Removed vsync wait on QuickView windows to improve performance slightly. Ghostscript prerequisite installer updated to v9.25. When refreshing thumbnails using Ctrl+Apply in control panel, override appearance settings on open thumbnails are cleared if different to applied settings to correctly apply new settings. Removed unnecessary timer from notification tray application to reduce CPU overhead. Disabled OpenMP code. It's inherently unstable with onoing Visual Studio updates. Some thumbnails may be a little slower because of this but stability should be increased.
4.8.1 14/09/18	Visual quality of cubic sampling not as expected, replaced with anisotropic sampling (regression). Refresh open Explorer thumbnails from control panel not working as expected (regression in 4.8.0). Tooltip icon was distorted on language combo (regression). Using hardware acceleration instead of WARP software acceleration functions to manipulate graphics should improve performance. Improved some tooltip texts in the control panel. Adjusting canvas color for all file formats state machine improved. Cancelling control panel with changes made now allows ESC key to break from the question dialog.
4.8.0 11/09/18	Update notification for Canvas transparency mode with optional restore settings notification. Added Canvas transparency mode that uses the chosen canvas color (double click on transparent button) in the control panel as the canvas behind transparent areas. Opaque transparency restored to always ignore alpha (regression fix from earlier versions). Added control panel "Global enable" mode button for temporary disabling of all thumbnails. Added a thumbnail counter to each file format and extension to track which are most commonly used. This may be used in forthcoming releases for various optimisations and other reasons. Stability fix for random crashes with spawned Explorer processes and other situations. Moving through files with cursor keys in QuickView could sometimes skip some files without a correct refresh. Some files not opening in QuickView. Cubic sampling mode used a high quality cubic filter that would diminish color information when down sampling. Now uses regular cubic filter. When thumbnailing is disabled then the file type / application icon is used. Some thumbnails in transparent mode would show a black background after an Explorer reset. Icons and thumbnails were showing as a blank document when a thumbnail was not able to be extracted. Sound and WMF files rendering to non-premultiplied render targets so they aren't blackened out when final rasterization is done. Opaque mode was not functioning as intended and alpha was will transparent. Alpha/transparency channel is now discarded. PSD files did not thumbnail beyond 15k pixels or large file sizes in some cases. Overlapping log messages from different threads could cause log file corruption. Clear thumbnail cache improvement for Windows 7/Vista MysticThumbs icon not shown in Disk Cleanup app etc. Performance: Restoring file override properties such as transparency on entire folder(s) now only operates on files with an override instead of refreshing all files within the folder. Photoshop support for images with arbitary alpha channels. Crash when closing control panel after using it to refresh open Explorer windows when the notification/tray app wasn't open. Refreshing a thumbnail selection in Explorer was refreshing the entire folder's contents instead of the selection. Checkerboard size/repeat correct for High DPI displays. Fixed / added some help mappings, e.g. Proxy dialog. Improved a lot of task / question / information / error dialog boxes. Some buttons didn't make sounds. Control panel about/info not responding correctly to keyboard / ESC message. Tutorial mode focus rectangle would be on the wrong control when moving to another tutorial. Clearing icon cache on Windows 10 could throw up a spurious system dialog box saying file not found. Renew now in update window did not open the renew web form. Removed "Delete Thumbs.db files on network drives" global option as it was only minor-functional and unreliable due to the way Windows thumbnail refresh works. Checking download versions had unreliable results in some circumstances, notably beta checks. Fixed icons when removing the app with message box asking if to clear thumbnail/icon cache. On DX11 capable machines, QuickView was not properly adjusting images correctly when scaled. Was able to scale Office files out of aspect in QuickView. Office files didn't report thumbnail size properties. Color values were being reported in QuickView unscaled mode outside of the image. Fixed some issues with some file type icons not showing correctly when they were not 32 bit. Temporary files that were created in the %TEMP% folder for some file formats (HTML, SVG, TXT, XML, etc) that could cause slow down and thrash storage drives are no longer created. Novice control panel mode group highlighting more inline with system colors. SVG now correctly respects transparent areas in the image for transparency modes. QuickView tooltip not showing correct value in expanded window mode. Improved control panel button sizes and placements. Choose Icon control panel dialog box is now resizable.>
4.7.6 24/06/18	v4.7.5 has been removed as it contained some unfortunate problems. Removed Playstation TIM support as it was not ready for production and caused massive memory leaks and consumption. Endless CPU reading Postscript files. Incorrect handling of "Only show if [Shift] key is pressed" in dialog box questions introduced in v4.7.5. Added enabling debug logging warning. Below items were in v4.7.5 Logging issues on Win 7 and below resolved. Debug logging can now be enabled again. Control panel was flashing when entering / removing license key. Remove warning icon from control panel when entering a valid license key. Control panel group boxes not drawing correctly on non-Windows 10 in some situations. Inconsistent button text in the global control panel group in some configuration changes. Bettrer handling of control panel modifier keys ([Ctrl], [Alt], [Shift]) to set button state.
4.7.4 19/06/18	Some visual glitches with resizing between novice and expert modes. Control panel buttons in novice mode now show current state text information as well as icons. Context menu for shell shortcut links to be able to change settings through shortcuts. Clearing icon cache on Windows 10 is now an immediate operation that does not require a restart. Changed Open Office files to Opaque by default.
4.7.3 16/06/18	Ugly artifacts when changing the control panel mode between novice and expert. Embedded thumbnails were not working in PSD files.
4.7.2 15/06/18	The last release introduced some unexpected control panel bugs. We believe these are now fixed and v4.7.1 has been removed and it's changelist is in this version. Logging is disabled from this release until further notice. This is a very large change from the previous release. If you find things are not performing as expected - try the 'clear thumbnail cache' control panel option. Control panel startup crash, esp. on Windows 7 and Vista. Crash due to logging enabled. Temporarily disabled. Visual artifacts in control panel on some systems. Tray icon not visible regression. Icon overlays for assigned applications sometimes not showing for some files. Changed settings are kept without applying when changing control panel window mode. Size of font on slide controls was incorrect in some situations. Multiple taskbar tray icons being created when user switching and in some other cases. Folding of groups in control panel, specifically the Global group. Tooltip hovering over a control panel group title now shows information on that group. Control panel size modes - novice and expert. Control panel size was incorrect on non-HiDPI displays. Bad disable video flag set/restore for updated control panel tooltips. Recent file history tray tooltip can be toggled for users with potentially sensitive file names. QuickView always now opens in "Scaled to fit" mode and properly resizes the window to fit onto the monitor(s) work area if required. This also applies to moving through files using the cursor keys / Explorer window. 3ds Max and Kubotek memry leak generating thumbnails. Convert file could fail when overwriting files on Vista. Control panel crashing immediately in beta 8 due to debug dependant code. Dialog box to ask you if you want to refresh open windows when applying changes. Bug reading some multichannel Photoshop files. 32 bit per channel PSD files could overflow. QuickView shutdown potential crash. Potential crash playing sounds on closed control panel child dialogs. IFF / Amiga IFF error handling for some files. In desktop mode (non-tablet mode) clicking with the mouse on the checkerboard anchor button now sets the anchor based on the quadrant the mouse clicked the button on. If clicked in tablet mode or with the keyboard the anchor toggles as before. Massive performance improvement for Photoshop files. Improved performance reading some file formats, in particular Photoshop files. Icons for applications and file extensions are loaded on a background thread so using the Search Loupe and other icon based control panel functions are more responsive. Updated to Ghostscript 9.23 with some performance improvements in PDF, AI and other postscript files. Added some more updated/startup tooltips for changed features such as restore to default settings. Enabling debug logging now also enables installing an exception handler allowing the user to attach a crash dump to an email for investigation by the developer. Thumbnail and QuickView checkerboard anchoring and size improved. Context menu recursion global option (on/off) didn't work properly under some circumstances. Checking for updates now takes into account build revision and beta versions where relevant. Improved choose color dialog for selecting opaque canvas color. Added debug logging mode for testers. When in 'Apply To All' mode, appearance options embedded thumbnail, transparency and premultiply can be toggled visually correctly regardless of if the current file format supports them. To test, select jpeg which does not support transparency, enter all file formats mode and toggle transparency. Changes to how full size thumbnails and checkerboards are handled for greater parity across file types and thumbnail sizes. Rewrote Web/HTML/SVG etc. parser as it was causing stalls in Explorer windows requiring a refresh / F5 to continue. Re-enabled OpenMP for faster thumbnailing of some file types. Various bug fixes performance optimisations. Uninstall now prompts if you want to clear the thumbnail and or icon caches. QuickView - you can now traverse images from a QuickView that was not opened using Space bar from File Explorer. Changed default thumbnail canvas color for most file types to the system window color (usually white) for a more consistent visual experience when using full size thumbnails for example. Full thumbnail setting for file extensions improved for both thumbnail and small icons. Control panel apply to open explorer windows uses the control panel instead of the background tray task for efficiency. Made global icon override setting show a NO icon when disabled instead of nothing to distinguish the function. QuickView scale to fit not working correctly. Possible crash with threads cleaning up. Potential crash closing control panel depending on how it was spawned. Control panel potential crash when loading internal icons based on process generation state. Occasional crashes generating SVG, HTML, Text, XML etc. IE rendered files. Changing premultiplied (and possibly other appearance states) when in Apply to All mode would sometimes not show the correct new state and appear to get stuck on one state. Added Adobe XD file format added. Added Office Open XML format supoport for .docx, .xlsx, pptx, .vsdx (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio) files. Please note that these files must be saved with embedded thumbnails by enabling the appropriate option in the source application. Window size control panel option. Use to make the control panel smaller or larger depending on your needs. Opaque color for each file extension is now customisable. Double click the transparency button in the control panel to edit the current opaque color for a file extension. When creating a support request a screenshot of the control panel is created in your downloads folder as an option to attach to the support ticket to help give perspective on the situation. Combined global checkerboard scale & anchor into one control panel button. Single clicks change anchor, double clicks change scale. Full thumbnail mode is now a file format/extension option instead of global. PDF now uses opaque rendering along with a white opaque background by default. This fully fixes some issues where settings for PDF were not obvious and producing black thumbnails. Further improvements to control panel or QuickView windows being opened off screen and not visible, they should always be placed on screen or centred if required. Right clicking on the control panel when the about info is running will quit in line with other controls of the control panel. Reset control panel window position on uninstall. Improved QuickView to re-render open windows with changes to the global checkerboard setting in the control panel and when Apply is pressed. Sound WAV files improved rendering for all transparency modes. QuickView sync with settings / defaults improved regardless of the 'Apply changes to file' setting. Reset to defaults undo button now works on the Apply To mode level, so you can reset extensions, file formats or everything back to defaults. Reset control panel window position on uninstall. Improved QuickView to re-render open windows with changes to the global checkerboard setting in the control panel and when Apply is pressed. Sound WAV files improved rendering for all transparency modes. Potential infinite loop when processing archive (zip & rar) and the file is deleted. Some Postscript / EPS files would extract embedded thumbnails regardless of setting. Some applications could flood thread message queues and cause an infinite loop. Restarting control panel tutorial using [Ctrl] key was inverted. Corrected. Potential draw issue with some file formats transparency button. RAR version 5 support added. Comic Book (CBR/CBZ) did not generate thumbnails. Full shutdown of QuickView windows on closing tray app. Control panel tooltips and tutorial might get stuck behind the window if enabling pin to top mode. Context help button was not enabled on clear cache and proxy dialogs. Photoshop files with explicit alpha channels may not have worked. Improved checks made for these cases. QuickView checkerboard scale was functionally inverted. White pixel at top left of images copied to clipboard from QuickView left from a top-down bitmap check. Using QuickView and moving through files with left/right cursor keys could cause a crash when coming across a file not supported. Files not supported are now skipped. Revert to default small icon mode now matches the default thumbnail enable mode. License registration dialog expiry date could report an incorrect date for multi-maintenance year licenses. Reset to defaults correctly handled when in Apply to All mode
4.6.1 08/03/18	This version is nearly identical to v4.5.9 but has the added feature of development beta build checking for anyone who wants to test development builds. Please let us know if there are any problems with checking or downloading beta builds. Option to check for development beta builds on the hour. Setting is controlled through the Check for Updates global option in the control panel. Show messages next time option capability added to informational dialog boxes such as Check for Beta Updates.
4.5.9 01/12/17	Memory error registering plugins. Control panel help button [Ctrl]+click was inversed. [Ctrl]+click now toggles state as it should have been. Click enables help on next clicked item as it should. Canceling search for extension combo did not correctly restore previous extension. Changing the active extension for a file format doesn't cause an undoable state. QuickView windows sometimes created off screen after monitor changes. Control panel darkening when opening a modal operation such as a dialog or file format combo improved. Improved file extension export for developer. Control panel doesn't eat any significant CPU if hidden by other windows. Changed the context menu global option icon. Quickview window save position can be almost completely off screen before being adjusted back onto screen when opening a new QuickView or switching between files.
4.5.8 23/11/17	For testing purposes you can now export the registry keys of selected file extensions for help in debugging issues on individual systems with the developer. QuickView for files without explicit dimensions such as .wav may hae not worked. ZIP / RAR extraction with some files (ie. CDR) is fixed. Extraction of some images within Archive files would not work due to unusual pixel formats. DDS and PVR cubemap QuickView size regression introduced in v4.4.0. When a valid license was installed but the current build was newer than the maintenance expiry date, the registration dialog did not show the hyperlink text explaining the problem. QuickView next/previous file window frame&size adjustments improvoved. Paging with context menu shows which page is next or previous when relevant. Reduced button image rendering overhead.
4.5.7 27/10/17	High CPU / process lockup and errors trying to thumbnail large PDF documents. Due to the Ghostscript delegate renderer, large files may still take time. Consider using embedded thumbnail mode for PDF in this case if possible. PDF now allows for embedded thumbnails.
4.5.6 23/10/17	ZIP files could cause an infinite loop & high CPU usage.
4.5.5 20/10/17	Paint Shop Pro v5 file format was not reading correctly. Improved support for v5, v6+ formats. QuickView copy to clipboard was not working correctly. QuickView was pointlessly refreshing / reloading the image if moved using the title bar. Disabled thumbnails on Html/Text/Xml files within zip/rar archives due to potential endless loop.
4.5.4 17/10/17	Check for updates is now optioned as daily/weekly/monthly/disabled instead of daily. Hover over notification tray icon to show the last 5 thumbnail file names processed. This is a useful debugging tool to track down any problem files in case of an Explorer crash or processing lockup if the CPU hits 100% and stays there. Added .indt and .inx file extensions to Adobe InDesign file type. Crash when hovering for tooltip on license and hardware info in registration dialog. Control panel memory leaks / close down checks. Moved Hardware ID info in the registration box to sit with the other text. PDF now defaults to transparent instead of opaque. Updated user guide troubleshooting pages. Improved sizing of text in File Type and File Extension & Extension Search combo drop controls. Improved control panel interface updates for keyboard state changes.
4.5.3 22/09/17	PowerVR cubemap textures with an opaque background would display incorrectly. When first enabling icon override for a file extension the default sometimes was not correctly loaded. Corel Draw files not reporting bit depth/dimensions for their thumbnails. Opening ZIP files could cause Explorer / surrogate DLL to lock up. Control panel asking to disable "Always show icons, never thumbnails" did not work as expected and would keep asking on relaunch. Improved keyboard search in control panel file type/extension/search controls to find best match by substring. For example, typing 'targa' in the file drop list will highlight TrueVision Targa. Added context menu IObjectWithSite interface support for brevity. Size of revert overlay icon on control panel buttons improved so they don't overlap and confuse.
4.5.2 14/09/17	Control panel file type, extension and search combo drop list boxes did not open their drop lists on non-English systems. Regression from v4.4.3. Re-enabled transparency settings for PDF. Some Cursor files eg. .ani were not generating thumbnails. When double clicking the choose icon control panel button and accepting the change, the button now always sets the state of overide icon. Enable Explorer 'Refresh' context menu option with per-file selection on supported files even if they're extension is disabled in the control panel. So files assigned to other thumbnail providers for example can be refreshed. Registry cleanup with file formats with auto file type associations improved. Re-introduced IExtractImage interface for applications that may use it. Updated the user guide local and online help with new and improved function information.
4.5.1 05/09/17	This build is a quick fix to address the unicode filename issues reported by some users. If you have any issues revert to the prior version and contact us using the control panel. Files with unicode filenames sometimes not read/converted with some file types, notably postscript files such as PDF, AI, PS, EPS.
4.5.0 04/09/17	Some file types that require special handling were not working in all situations or users, PDF, PNG, Web, Maya, Postscript, Illustrator. These should now work for everybody. Control Panel shutdown problems. Potential crash on control panel exit is sounds were still playing. Some Metro (Apps for Windows) apps, notably System and App icons would display with checkerboard or opaque when PNG was set to non-transparent mode and enabled. The heuristic that checks for these files has been improved. Postscript files not reporting EXIF information. QuickView was not disableable. Allow Corel Draw embedded thumbnails to be transparent.
4.4.9 22/08/17	Significant changes to the way thumbnails are handled with the checkerboard / anchor / full size global options. If you're playing with these, see what happens. As usual, if things malfunction, revert to a previous good version that works for you and send us a support query. PDF was generating greyscale thumbnails for CMYK documents. They all should now be colour. PDF and some other file types not reporting EXIF / file properties. PDF was not pinging document size. Using [Ctrl]+Apply to refresh open explorer windows and then closing the control panel could cause a crash and not complete the refresh. This task has now been handed to the tray application (QuickView) to perform. Improved checkerboard and full thumbnail button appearances. Apply to all file formats mode in control panel - you can now cycle through all settings such as embedded thumbnails even if the active format does not support them. Changes are still not applied to the formats that don't support the changed setting. Control panel right click followed by left click quickly would go to previous state instead of next state. Checkerboard size on thumbnails for all thumbnail sizes and within folders fixed. Issues with properties not being fetched on some files. Some function descriptions and translations updated. Files that don't support transparency should fill unused space (full thumbnail) with transparency. Checkerboard anchor / full size thumbnails mode completed. When closing the control panel with unsaved changes, the warning dialog now asks to apply and shows an apply icon instead of an ok tick. OpenMP being used was causing intermittant problems with thumbnails getting stuck when generating. Now disabled, some larger thumbnails may be a little slower generating but should be more stable. QuickView did not work for Explorer shell views such as search results. It now does. Jpeg files now support embedded thumbnails. Some system file types with rotations (ie. jpeg) could cause WIC to lock up for some reason. Worked around.
4.4.8 16/08/17	Some new features are still a little experimental and may not be perfect. If anything doesn't work right after updating, uninstall and reinstall a known good version. Multi-state control panel buttons such as checkerboard size & anchor now respond to right mouse clicks or context menu key to go to the previous state. Regression v447, ePub and Archive files may not have extracted embedded images. Regression, active file format was not being restored on control panel open. Some times QuickView would not open. When searching file types using the keyboard, the current selection was not being reflected to the file extension list. More visible arrows on the checkerboard anchor. Some Amiga file type adjustments. When using the search file extensions control panel tool, after a short delay (key repeat delay) the file format for the currently selected extension is activated. Canceling the search restores to the prior format/extension. Improved access to embedded thumbnails for file types that have them, and those that only have them. Files only with embedded thumbnails no longer offer an embedded thumbnail option via control panel or context menus. Changed HTML file type to Web, and added .aspx extension.
4.4.7 08/08/17	Regression, QuickView may not have opened some files. HTML / Text file types had ugly nearest sampling thumbnails regardless of settings. Further improvements to enhance stability on Explorer DLL cleanup. Arrows on checkerboard anchor made red to help with visual impairments. Improved individual thumbnail fetch system overhead & performance. Improved performance of PNG.
4.4.6 04/08/17	Overall stability enhancement as well as regression fixes and a few improvements. Convert context menus had disappeared! They are now back, and ICO now produces always square icons. Corel and some other archive files may not have extracted a correct thumbnail. QuickView titlebar not showing color information when color was pure white. Stability bug fixes to reduce (or eliminate) process crashes from some file types. Global checkerboard anchor can now be set to center on the 8 cardinal and inter-cardinal points. Improved graphic of global checkerboard size & anchor buttons. Explorer previews now respect checkerboard size setting. QuickView may not open all files.
4.4.5 31/07/17	Control panel buttons now show if they differ from the default state if you hold the [Ctrl] key and allow you to restore to the default state on a state-by-state basis. Load global default state is still available with [Ctrl]+Undo. AI / some other Postscript files were not recognising the ability to render as a PDF instead of always extracting an embedded thumbnail. ie. Respected embedded thumbnail setting where appropriate. Apply/changed states may have been incorrect depending on the 'Apply To' state. Control panel tooltips now update to show the correct state when modifier keys are changed in real time. Load defaults control panel action now loads the default state without being destructive, so you can undo or apply. Improved combo box drop sound.
4.4.4 29/07/17	Stabilization build to improve Postscript/AI files support and to enhance general stability. As always, if you have problems, use an older version that suits until stability is maintained. PSD dimensions/bit depth not being reported, possibly others. Wait cursor was not showing where appropriate in some cases. Downloading updates would fail after 8 seconds. Unfortunately this fix will only help when downloading the next version and newer. Removed "InProc" style processing of files to reduce cross error rates and to improve performance. Control panel Explorer context menu is now at the root along side Thumbnail and Quickview menus for easier access. Improved performance of small icon and async extraction, should not stall Explorer like it did before. Improved exception handler to not crash when encountering an error when making thumbnails - instead no thumbnail will be made and things should continue. File format appearance buttons disabled when both thumbnail and small icons are disabled. Holding [Ctrl] key to apply changes and refresh open Explorer windows now works regardless of if there are any file format changes so a refresh can be made to update thumbnails for changed checkerboard size/anchor etc.
4.4.3 22/07/17	Stability and bug fix release with a few improvements. This release should fix a lot of problems created from the previous v4.4.x releases. As always, if you have problems, use an older version that suits until stability is maintained. Control panel sounds option, for a touch of distinctiveness. Comes with multiple volume levels and mute. Work in progress. Cubic sampling mode. Only works on Windows 7 with Platform Update or newer with DirectX 11 capable hardware. PDF files were not working due to v4.4 ImageMagick upgrade. Some files were not supporting embedded thumbnails & metadata correctly. Issues with extra large images. Gamma restore icon was incorrect. Postscript / PDF, AI, ABR, PSP files fixed. Register nag balloon was being too naggy. Imprecise initial positioning of QuickView window in some situations. QuickView and possibly thumbnailer were holding a file lock on open files beyond completion of image composition. This could cause app saves & file copy/paste to malfunction. PaintShop Pro files transparent areas didn't respect transprency. Windows 7 & Platform Update, Windows 8 and all newer versions now used even more efficient GPU acceleration for compositing and rendering using DirectX 11. Context menu adjustments from Explorer will now be available if either thumbnail or small icon modes are enabled for a file. Various bug and stability fixes. Sound (.wav) rendering accelerated with GPU. Resizing large PostScript images to a reasonable size when required to make them render at reasonable sizes. PDF scaling in QuickView. Search extensions drop list combo had an erroneous border. It's been removed. Taller control panel file format/extension/search combo boxes. Don't forget these can all be searched by typing for what you want. Optimised realization of QuickView images. Improved icon composition / rendering esp. with multiple overlay complications. File types are now by default non-transparent capable. If any files you expect to be transparent no longer support it please send us a support request. This is a purity enhancement. Improved context menu icons with better clarity for restore/apply icons and a more accurate restore to state icon in most situations. Discarding thumbnail generation when file dimensions/size are set fixed. Improved rendering performance when generating multiple thumbnails concurrently. Improved real time scaling and interpretation for dynamic images (WAV/ABR etc.) Improved QuickView performance when scaling and changing image options, not requiring reload of image. Improved QuickView performance and image quality when running on Windows 7 with Platform Update or later. PaintShop Pro compositing layers improved positioning & scaling. Note that not all composite modes are currently supported so results may vary. This may be improved in the future. Best save with a flattened image/thumbnail for compatibility.
4.4.2 8/07/17	Was crashing on Windows Vista/7 and maybe 8 due to undocumented differences with some API's. Premultiplied crash fix. Postscript files have issues in this version and may not thumbnail. Very large images >8k dimension may not thumbnail.
4.4.1 7/07/17	This is mostly a stability update, fixing a number of bugs with a few other improvements. Crash reading some large images such as AI files (regression). Potential incorrect undo icon. Potential crash when opening control panel from Explorer context menu. Some file extension icons would not display correctly. Some control panel image button problems. PowerVR cubemaps were incorrect. Crash bug with QuickView. Some 'Open in App' icons in context menu would not look correct. Help updated to more correctly reflect current program visuals and layout. Improved 'Apply changes to file' context menu icon.
4.4.0 4/07/17	This is a very large change! If you experience any problems, contact support and revert to a previous version. The control panel has been improved to support changed states. An apply icon () is shown on any changed state before applying to the system. An indeterminate icon () is shown on any button that has multiple states when in file format or all file formats mode. You can now copy & paste icon paths/indexes from the choose icon dialog box so you can apply them to other formats / extensions. Updates now allow installing explicit or older versions. Progressive Graphics File (PGF) file format support added. Resource memory leak with tray / QuickView task. Some icon overlays may have been black when restarting control panel after a reset to default state. Control panel window could be restored to the incorrect position by a small amount on each run under certain circumstances such as having the task bar at the top of the screen. Icon override settings could get into a bad state. Gamma button text value was not drawn disabled when appropriate. Improved icon overlay override behavior and visuals across all file formats. Reworked PSP format to work around some issues with some files. Control panel undo was not resetting the active file format/extension. Potential corrupt palettised icons when not a power of 2 width. Potential crash if renderer accessed by multiple threads. Potential crash extracting file icons. RAW camera embedded thumbnails are now cropped of black borders to the aspect ratio of the actual image. QuickView task bar jump list task strings were missing for a few items. Memory leaks. Icon overlay selection and toggle now uses single click/tap to toggle icon override, double click/tap to choose an icon. Error / exception handling now allows the user to enter some detailed information about the nature of the error that occurred to help track down problems. Improvements to paging through Archive (.zip / .rar) files. Improved slider controls size & positioning for HiDPI. Active file extension for each file format in the control panel is no longer an undoable state. It is immediate. Control panel active file format is now a global option and is not resolved as part of the undo state mechanic. Control panel 'Apply To' state is now a global state and no longer a changed state for undo. If loading default state in control panel ([Ctrl] + click undo), tutorial is not automatically started on next launch. Better visual handling of settings in control panel depending on selected file formats/extensions. Upgraded ImageMagick core to try help stabilize some issues including memory leaks. Tutorial can be moved directly using middle mouse button on controls. Sets font height of file format and file extension combo boxes to better accommodate the text size. Sizes text in file format and extension combo controls to fit. Improved redrawing of controls when changing apply to state. Tooltip for file format & extension selectors show the application that opens the file extension. File format application icon is updated to reflect the application that opens the currently selected file extension. Improved some control panel control font sizes. Camera RAW default changed to embedded thumbs if larger mode. Camera RAW files no longer support transparency options. Control panel overview updated for greater clarity.
4.3.9 19/05/17	Whilst v4.4.x undergoes stability and beta testing, use this version if you have any problems. Thumbnail global checkerboard size option. Choose between small, medium and large. Refresh license key option in the license key dialog for renewed licenses using a product key so you don't have to re-enter your product key. Icon size option in control panel choose icon dialog. Potential incorrect license removal result message. Maximum file dimension/size indeterminate state display and tooltips. Apply whilst pressing [Ctrl] key did not refresh open explorer windows. QuickView of some images not working (eg. postscript, .ai). Tooltip icon for control panel language combo box stretched. File types that don't support transparency appearance button incorrect icon. Tray app not receiving thumbnails in progress information correctly. Janky QuickView sizing from corners. Improved control panel button pressed and focus graphics. Potential issue re-centering control panel window if off screen when opened. Improved rendering of premultiplied / non-premultiplied alpha images and thumbnails. Changed maximum gamma correction to 10.0.
4.3.8 09/05/17	epub file issues. Embedded thumbnail extraction speed depending on settings.
4.3.7 04/05/17	Adobe Illustrator (*.ai) thumbnails were extracting embedded thumbnail always regardless of settings. Ability to close the tutorial by clicking on the tutorial button (for touch devices without middle mouse button or instant access keyboard). License key icon on license dialog reflecting correct state on license change. QuickView changes when "Apply changes to file" is enabled are refreshed in any open Explorer windows for that file. Checkerboard size for thumbnails are now consistent. Postscript and some other file type properties were missing or incorrect. Potential crash extracting icons from files. Optimised thumbnails for correct size as asked by Explorer. Increased about / credits scroll speed. Improved license dialog box.
4.3.6 27/04/17	Control panel could get stuck closing. Indeterminate icon shown incorrectly when in apply to file format mode. Issues with convert to context menus. Increased size of font for file formats and extensions in control panel.
4.3.5 26/04/17	Occasional Explorer crash when MysticThumbs process shut down. PDF may have been rendered on a black background. Control panel <=8 bit icons for were badly handled. Choose icon dialog didn't set focus to the enabled icon for keyboard control. Better support for file type / extension / open application icons. Added more fine tuning to which file types support transparency and embedded thumbnails.
4.3.4 16/04/17	v4.3.x Windows 7 malfunction due to undocumented differences with Direct2D. Crash decoding some RAW embedded thumbnails. Some rework of process shutdown in the hope it'll prevent lockups and spurious reference counting. Small icon handler may not have been unregistered correctly for file types with more than one extension. Small icons may now be enabled separately from the thumbnail handler. Adornment for file types/extensions is not disabled if the file extension is disabled since it is not dependent on image processing. Supported file extensions are now still enabled in the shell context menu if the global option is enabled, regardless of if the file extension is disabled. If the extension is disabled for thumbnails then only non-thumbnail options are available, such as convert and control panel. Help context links to the correct help topic. Added prerequisite for Microsoft Codec pack to install for Window Vista and 7.
4.3.3 5/04/17	Crash decoding 1 bit PSD files. PSD property dimensions could refer to embedded thumbnail instead of actual image. Page options in QuickView / Explorer context menus for Archive / PDF etc. files synchronized when applying to file. Enable file extension mode when entering tutorial mode. German translations updated.
4.3.2 2/04/17	Transparent checkerboard anchor option toggle between top left and center for thumbnails or QuickView using checkerboard transparency backgrounds. Can be useful for image reference purposes. Gamma correction on files through Explorer context menu, with restore. Occasional crash attempting to open files concurrently locked elsewhere, such as file sharing utilities such as DropBox. Now, if the file is locked, MysticThumbs retries opening the file for a second or fails. This only applies to some file formats. Error decoding .ani files. Global option for file recursion when changing options or refreshing in Explorer windows did not work very well. Some files would not gamma correct regardless of settings.
4.3.1 29/03/17	Bug preventing updating from this version. Use the website to download updates directly instead. Updating from 4.3.0 may not work because of a version specific bug. Start / resume tutorial in the control panel not triggering.
4.3.0 29/03/17	note: Bug preventing updating from this version. Use the website to download updates directly instead. Vista with Service Pack 2 (SP2) and Platform Update for Vista or newer required for this and following builds. GPU performance overhaul for thumbnails and QuickView. Cinema 4D support. Embedded thumbnail only. Added 'Apply changes to file' option in QuickView. When enabled changes are made as overrides to the current file being viewed. Gamma correction adjustment available in QuickView via context menu. Combined with 'Apply changes to file' option allows for per file gamma correction. QuickView context menu now allows you to restore states to the control panel state if changed, same as the Explorer context menu. Added support for some Pulse Signature Embroidery files (embedded thumbnails only). QuickView context menu functions for increasing and decreasing checkerboard size. Also mapped to keyboard + and - keys, [Shift] key increases and decreases faster. Improved handling of some file types, WMF, SVG, EXR, Cursor, Archive Changed QuickView color inspector / window title into RGBA format instead of ARGB for more natural recognition. Using unicode characters in tooltips for [Ctrl] / [Alt] / [Shift] keys. Updated help / user guide. Improved layout of update window. Reduced size of product maintenance warning icon in the control panel so it's not so 'in your face'. Rewrote control panel controls to draw with Direct2D instead of GDI+ for better visuals and performance. Memory management optimized for cleaner startup/showdown within Explorer. DirectX DDS textures are now loaded by WIC for performance and accuracy where possible and supported. QuickView context menus show relevant accelerator keys. Performance improvement: Removed loading/unloading Ghostscript when not required. Redundant keyboard tab stops removed from appearance and performance groups in control panel. Improved QuickView context menu spacing on Windows 10. Removed Icon file type as it doesn't play well with Windows and is essentially useless to handle. Deprecated 'extension associate' function from Vista & Win7 to bring functionality in line with Win8+ version. Xara files not working. Xara currently shows only the first layer thumbnail. QuickView sizing could go haywire. Transparency RGBA values in QuickView are correct regardless of transparency mode. Premultiply mode was not working as expected with some formats and QuickView. Clicking on an 'Update now' web link in the update window did not open the update web page. Errors with some EPUB files. Opening control panel from QuickView to correct file format/extension. Control panel not closing because of generated thread not being event triggered to close. Small icons not being generated on HiDPI displays. Crash with PVR textures. PVR textures could crash properties, crash Explorer and make people unhappy. Memory leaks in control panel credits. Tooltip for override icon. Choose icon overlay dialog not accepting changes. Control panel showing indeterminate state for adornment incorrectly. Re-implemented Gamma correction. Now works for all files. HTML documents over UNC (\\...) network paths did not work. Issue not unregistering Hardware ID when removing license key. Scale up icon state could be incorrect on control panel start. Direction of page up/page down keys paging with gamma and performance sliders in control panel was topsy-turvy. Many memory leaks with icons fixed.
4.2.1 03/01/17	Hold [Alt] key when choosing tray icon->Restart Explorer to cause a 5 second delay between closing Explorer processes and restarting them. This can be useful for example, for programmers who need a few seconds for a quick re-link of a project to keep Explorer from keeping a lock on files / images. Changing global options in the control panel, including language, are now immediate and don't require an 'Apply'. RAW images using 'thumbnail is larger' mode only us the embedded image when it is a jpeg or bitmap. Pressing OK in the choose icon dialog box didn't close the dialog. Spurious / unclear error messages when failing to enter a license key.
4.2.0 14/11/16	New product keys purchased from this date MUST be installed on this or newer versions. Windows 10 Anniversary Edition 1607 compatibility build. Compiling against Windows 10 1607 SDK for compatibility. Improved licensing system integrated using product keys. License renewals now use the original product key if it exists for more streamlined license management. Camera RAW files are now handled with Windows Imaging Component (WIC) codecs if supported for greatly improved performance and compatibility. If you have dedicated WIC codecs installed they are used to create the image to be thumbnailed. Possible control panel crash when closing. Pressing OK in the choose icon dialog box didn't close the dialog. Some interface fixes for HiDPI displays. Ghostscript updated to v9.20. Translations updated.
4.1.0 30/04/16	QuickView shows actual image dimensions for Photoshop images instead of embedded thumbnail dimensions when viewing an embedded thumbnail. GhostScript installer locations fixed and updated to version 9.19.
4.0.9 05/03/16	Added Krita (.kra / .ora) file format. Attempt to correct sub-file (archive) aspect ratios. Error with Explorer when opening archives containing text/html/xml files. QuickView wav files crashed QuickView / notification app. QuickView default window scales according to system DPI settings. Update window was half off screen when updating from the notification app. QuickView now always opens in "Scale to fit" mode. Correctly removing warning icon when installing a license key. Dutch translations.
4.0.8 14/01/16	Windows 10: Removed context menu icon edge and blend for better clarity. German translations.
4.0.7 10/01/16	Regression in 4.0.6 - context menu items not highlighted when appropriate. Small icons losing aspect ratio when non-square. No longer force embedded thumbnails for small icons. This may cause list/details view to load more slowly. Attempts to fix issues with QuickView space key and some applications. This may or may not fix current problems. Please report any issues still remaining including application/game info to web support. Opening control panel from the shell context menu will select apply to extension mode for the chosen file extension ready for editing. Removal of double separator bars on some context menus. Context menu highlight drawing on Windows 10.
4.0.6 16/12/15	Attempts to fix some users getting control panel crashes after updating. Changed keyboard monitoring method to avoid QuickView not working when other apps would not forward hooks correctly. Improved layout of context menus for better clarity and accessibility. Removed low process priority option redundancy. Spanish translations updated.
4.0.5 06/12/15	Updating cancel, download and install manually if update sticks at 100%. Reset thumbnails generated by [Ctrl] click on thumbnails generated / license status link in Control Panel. Added a 'Show in Explorer' context menu item in QuickView. Update task not completing on 100% downloaded. Unfortunately, this fix will only affect updates from this version, so users of recent versions may have to download and install manually to update.
4.0.4 04/12/15	Users of version 4.0.4 and below may experience update getting stuck at 100%. If this happens to you cancel the update and download and install manually. Apologies for this issue, it will be fixed in v4.0.5. Hold [Ctrl] key and press undo in control panel to load all default states for the control panel, file formats and to remove all file overrides. Improved Adobe Illustrator and PostScript images for both thumbnails and QuickView. Revamped QuickView launching. Update and Download progress dialog boxes centering correctly (not top left). Help system fixes. Context help and opening user guide links corrected. Control panel crash due to erroneous saved selection states. Bumped GhostScript install to 9.18.
4.0.3 28/11/15	Crash report emails include version build version and revision. Improved crash report emails to better support Unicode systems. Updated Spanish translation. Control panel house cleaning.
4.0.2 25/11/15	Improved Corel Draw .cdr support. Choose Icon dialog box clean up. Small icons enabled by default. Disabling of embedded thumb option for file types that don't support them for greater clarity. Improved .txt file detection of unicode and non-unicode text. Indeterminate file format enable tooltip. Icon override control panel options are more logical.
4.0.1 20/11/15	Windows 10 and 8 issues with user choice open with app being reset back to defaults, especially with Microsoft Edge browser in Windows 10 Threashold 2 update. Dutch translation updated. Minor bug fixes and clean up.
4.0.0 06/11/15	Builds older than v4.0.0 are no longer available or supported. Licenses are still renewable. Polish everywhere! High DPI support. Enjoy the new look MysticThumbs 4! Improved security. Hold control key when pressing Apply in control panel refreshes all open Explorer content thumbnails respecting all settings including folder recursion option. This is useful for quickly previewing different states for folder views. Hold control key down whilst pressing control panel apply button to refresh all open Explorer windows thumbnails after applying changes. Mobi file format added as mobi eBook. eBook format renamed to epub eBook. When converting images to other formats via the context menu you now have an "overwrite all, yes, no, cancel" option. When running a newer version not supported by a license, thumbnails show an unsupported version thumbnail. SVG had some issues rendering. Notification icon menu was not translated correctly. Improved icon override options. Replaced checkbox buttons with multi-state icon buttons for better functional clarity. Fixed refresh timing of animated logo when ie. dragging a window over the control panel. Changed style option buttons from combo boxes to cycle push buttons. Tooltips improved for control panel button states. QuickView is now invoked by pressing only the space key, not [Ctrl]+Space. Improvements to plugin dialog. Help button consolidation, Press [Ctrl] key when pressing help button to enter context help mode. Clicking on the build number link in the control panel takes you to the version history web page for your build version. Twitter icon on control panel. Follow @mysticthumbs to receive important news and information about the product. Hindi language translations. Note: these and many other translations are automatic machine translations and could do with a proper translation. If you would like to contribute a language translation please contact us on our contact page. You will receive a mention in the credits and a proper translation in your favorite app! Not losing keyboard focus after applying changes in control panel. Max size and Gamma sliders when cancelled were indicating a change was made. Clear cache dialog default / tab key order. Undo unsaved changes button in control panel. Improved tab order on some dialogs. Choose icon dialog visuals cleaned up. Some incorrect icons (eg. plugins dialog). Sometimes pinned state would be lost. Remove overridden overlay icon enabled state. Down sampling images on Windows 10 with smooth sampling produces a better image. Deselecting any control in the control panel keeps focus for keyboard input. Convert to file format function could leave incorrect top left pixel.
3.4.3 03/10/15	Facebook button on control panel. Please like us to help grow the community and develop useful discussion! Balloon tip for control panel F1 help. Remove icon override button was not enabled unless global icon overlay was enabled. Setup skips license key dialog if there is already a license key installed. Clicking control panel background unfocuses active control. Control panel functions that rely on an internet connection are disabled if no internet connection is available. Hovering over version in control panel shows version/build number. Dutch translation.
3.4.2 11/09/15	License reminders are less obtrusive, coming from balloon tips. Some Corel Draw files would not thumbnail. Some SVG files units were not translated into correct image size correctly causing incorrect thumbnails and previews. Now able to toggle icon override section when global icon overlay is disabled. Ukrainian language. Correctly reflect seat count after entering a license key. more english language flags. Translations. Updated credits. Upon entering a license in use, you can now open the web site to try to transfer your license. Change license button in registration dialog is now always green to avoid confusion on it's purpose.
3.4.1 22/08/15	Regression in 3.4.0 extracting small icons asyncronously may cause slow down. DDS files may cause crash extracting thumbnails.
3.4.0 21/08/15	Windows 10 compatibility release. Context menus in Windows 10 Explorer are using a custom draw radio button state in Windows 10, due to an apparent regression in the OS. Hardware ID can now be fetched from the registry if required for support. Windows 8 and 10 enhanced support for PNG and Metro icons where they might use checkerboard backgrounds. Existing users with Windows 8 or 10 may need to clear the thumbnail cache and reboot if they have incorrect Metro icons. Notification tray icon global option reflects the state when control panel is opened. Icon override buttons enabled based on global icon overlay option. Embedded thumbnail control panel option state bug. Now able to adjust embedded thumbs control panel option when adjusting all formats. Minimize control panel is replaced by context help (F1) ? button. Some PSD files not opening when reserved header info had data. PNG, JPEG and GIF file types are now disabled by default so they use the default system thumbnail system. If you want MysticThumbs features to apply to them you have to manually enable them in the control panel. Security enhancements. Description and translation enhancements for some dialog boxes. Enhanced small icon creation. updated Hardware ID to be more resilient of reinstalling Windows. Dutch translations.
3.3.6 03/04/15	Security enhancements. Description and translation enhancements for some dialog boxes.
3.3.5 26/03/15	Some minor tweaks to various functional items and descriptions.
3.3.4 11/02/15	RAW files sometimes locked and unable to move/delete due to property info.
3.3.3 20/01/15	You may have to update manually by downloading and installing from the main page. Bug starting installer process when updating the app. Unfortunately this will not fix previous versions from failing an update. Updating new versions after this release should now work.
3.3.2 19/01/15	Shell context menu now shows which options are enabled for selected files. Fixed local help showing evaluation license note. Various minor bug fixes and tweaks.
3.3.1 30/11/14	QuickView - Removed old DIB format from copy to clipboard function as it broke some ability to paste to certain applications such as Photoshop. DDB, DIBV5 and PNG are pasted to the clipboard for a broad range of compatibility with other applications. QuickView - Color picking had some issues. QuickView - no longer increments thumbnails generated count in the control panel. QuickView - for semi-transparent images, Opaque mode renders over black, Transparent renders over white. QuickView - Moved Edit (open in associated Application) context menu item to after Copy.
3.3.0 27/11/14	QuickView can now be pinned 'Always on top' using its context menu. Windows Icon (ICO) support. Windows Cursor (CUR) support. Windows Animated Cursor (ANI) support. Animation is shown as a boxed set of all frames. CRS Cursor set format. Changing options in QuickView context menu may not correctly effect the image. Error processing updates. QuickView improvements. PNG under Windows 8 should now support all options. Previous function was to ignore transparency settings due to Metro using thumbnails. Open commands sent to the control panel associated with a file will focus to the relevant file extension of the sending file. Memory leaks and performance issues. RAW files are now loaded with existing supported WIC codecs if they exist. Performance improvement. RAW files should rotate to the correct orientation. Some translations updated.
3.2.4 08/11/14	Open in app menu item in QuickView. Control panel frame sometimes disappearing. Can now minimize control panel.
3.2.3 04/10/14	Control panel eating CPU for no reason. Attempt to fix update dialog positioning when using multiple monitors.
3.2.2 03/10/14	Google WebP support. Dutch translations. Installer touchup. Minor bugs and cleanup.
3.2.1 19/8/14	Occasional lockup registering or unregistering license keys. Some minor bugs and cleanup.
3.2.0 14/8/14	Many improvements to the overall UX. Option to register license key when installing and unregistering license when uninstalling. Some tooltips not displaying in various control panel dialog boxes. Enable file icon overlay issues. Admin rights required to add/remove site licenses. Darkening when selecting a movable control panel control improved.
3.1.9 01/8/14	Possible crash when removing a license key. Dutch translations.
3.1.8 29/7/14	Possible crash closing control panel. Reinstalling Windows should now not change the machine Hardware ID for registration.
3.1.7 26/7/14	Convert to ICO icon file context menu. Explorer context menu items were not disabled with the global control panel option. Fixed minor registration interface glitches. MysticThumbs global icons updated to be more consistent. Translations updated. Help updated to reflect recent changes.
3.1.6 21/6/14	QuickView now requires Control+Spacebar to activate as using Spacebar only would cause issues when renaming files with a space character. Unfortunately there is no current known work-around for this problem other than to use a combination hotkey. QuickView now works on the desktop. Improved QuickView icon in Explorer context menu and the control panel as well as text and descriptions. german translation tweaks.
3.1.5 30/5/14	Improved QuickView keyboard hooks. Some applications did not register the Space Bar. Fixed some errors in translation strings. Updated Web and Application documentation and help.
3.1.4 29/5/14	QuickView can be called by pressing the Spacebar to view the active file (like on Mac OS X). Use Left/Right or Up/Down arrow keys to move forward/back through files in the same folder. Offline activation is now available by contacting support Control panel 'Embedded thumbnail' was sometimes not synced correctly with the file format/extension. Restoring of QuickView window position. QuickView size & position tries to stay within user bounds and scale whilst open. Slight change to License EULA. Help can be located on line on the MysticThumbs User Guide
3.1.3 3/1/14	If the Explorer option "Always show icons, never thumbnails" is enabled when the control panel is opened, you are asked if you want to disable it and activate thumbnail views. Updated GhostScript installer to install version 9.10 for improved performance of Postscript thumbnailing (PSD/AI/EPS etc.) Recommend existing users download and update here (http://www.ghostscript.com/download/gsdnld.html). Various tweaks and bug fixes.
3.1.2 11/11/13	OpenEXR files did not apply gamma settings correctly. Keyboard input on gamma slider moves by 0.01 for more accurate settings. Updates to version checking. Various bug fixes.
3.1.1 24/10/13	Convert to PNG or TIFF context menu options. Useful tool for converting supported & enabled files to these generic formats. Dutch translations. Support email using UTF8 for unicode language support. Various bug fixes.
3.1.0 07/05/13	Crash selecting gamma or file size limit control panel controls. Pressing enter on file format did not activate that file format. Help was missing some images. Added license/ evaluation status to email support form. Tooltip for proxy settings.
3.0.9 06/05/13	This and future versions do NOT support Windows XP. Targa 32 bit colormapped image corruption. Update install spawning off screen (won't be noticable until updating from this version). Minor bug fixes. Updated software license and EULA. Renewed software signing. Compiling with VS2012, may affect performance.
3.0.8 11/10/12	This is the last version that supports Windows XP. Expired licenses would show a watermark on thumbnails. Support for Windows 8 image transforms.
3.0.7 11/10/12	Potential incorrect evaluation time check and warning display. .wav sound support for 8,16,24,32 integer and 32,64 bit floating point PCM and ADPCM. Sounds display as a waveform.
3.0.6 12/09/12	Crash with very large Photoshop images. Recommend users set the maximum dimension slider setting to help improve performance for images beyond 10000x10000 pixels regardless. Support request attachments could be not sent. Could not operate correctly or at all for non administrator users. Slight decoding performance improvement. Register key in context menu shows correct state for expired licenses. Removed viewer association option from control panel on Windows 8. Email support queries are sent as UTF-7 to preserve encoding over MAPI.
3.0.5 02/09/12	Windows 8 - images thumbnails would not be cached and thus recreated.
3.0.4 27/08/12	Update dialog would stick at 100% and require cancelling to continue. Note that updating to this version will require cancel to be pressed when update gets to 100%.
3.0.3 26/08/12	This version still shows v3.0.2 If the update sticks at 100% cancel it and the update should proceed normally. Spurious message on initialization in v3.0.2. Update dialog would stick at 100% and require cancelling to continue. Note that updating to this version will require cancel to be pressed when update gets to 100%.
3.0.2 26/08/12	This version contains a spurious message that will cause issues. Do not use. Windows 8 Modern UI (Metro) active tiles not displaying correctly.
3.0.1 21/08/12	Internet proxy settings. Viewer supports cycling between images in the current folder with left/right arrow keys. PSD CMYK+transparency did not account for transparency. Resizing viewer window would place image outside of centre. Context menu in viewer aligned to top left.
3.0.0 28/07/12	Licenses older than a year will not support this version. A new license must be purchased. Windows 8 support. An internet connection is now required to register license keys. Support for old TVPaint / Aura images (.aur) as part of the Amiga file type. Image viewer shows color under cursor in RGB and Web formats. Plugin example was not up to date with current interface. Potential crash in license dialog. Updates would sometimes not initialize correctly. If an update was cancelled or failed it would not download again. Control panel locking up when opening support query. Dark checkerboard icon not showing on some displays. Corrected transparent icon rendering in menus. Crash when attempting to retrieve icon from some applications. Image viewer window maximize removed. Image viewer window size could be larger than screen when viewing large images. Now resizes to screen dimensions. Update downloading improved. Updates give option to download latest version that license supports, or latest version. Annoy window shown only once a day if trial or license expires. JPEG photo / exif image rotations supported. Translations updated.
2.8.2 29/05/12	Photoshop BGR stored jpeg thumbnails caused a crash. Some Amiga IFF images did not work with specific chunks. Control panel crash with potentially malformed shell registry settings. More support for Adobe postscript files, specifically V3 Illustrator images. Mouse cursor no longer snaps to slider buttons unless user has "SnapToDefaultButton" system control panel option enabled. Dutch translations updated.
2.8.1 17/05/12	Very large Photoshop files could crash Explorer whilst decoding. Premultiplied alpha improvements. Photoshop, Bitmap, Lab, Greyscale, Duotone, Indexed & Multichannel decoding performance improvements. Photoshop decoding memory usage improved.
2.8.0 03/05/12	Premultiplied alpha transparency options. Dark checkerboard transparency option to help distinguish light transparent images. Crash when selecting multiple files and using context menu to open control panel. Icon override checkmark state wasn't reflected correctly under some circumstances. Different icons for scale up enabled/disabled in control panel. Dutch translation updated.
2.7.9 17/04/12	PowerVR (.pvr) image support. Icons for some file types (jpeg etc.) not chosen from correct path. Potential crashes within plugin modules. Some control panel context help mappings(F1 over a button) didn't work. Some translation tweaks.
2.7.8 12/03/12	German translation. Greek translation. Help updated. Apply to option improved for usability and readability. Tri state checkboxes for options when editing in different apply-to modes. Clear thumbnail cache from control panel now allows you to clear the thumbnail cache, icon cache or both. Changing languages did not redraw some controls correctly.
2.7.7 07/03/12	Disabling file association to MysticThumbs viewer could fail, causing the viewer to be permanently associated. Potential deadlock when closing down control panel.
2.7.6 05/03/12	Property system crashes. Encoding text thumbnails and better code page detection. Crashes in property system when renaming files. Text encoding could get confused and print Asian character sets. PSD 16bpp images saved with RLE compression did not decode fully. Duplicated metadata tags on RAW files. Faster image manipulation. Faster PSD decoding. Cleaner update window.
2.7.5 01/03/12	Improved credits rendering compatibility across platforms and remote desktop. Some 8 bit BMP images causing strange artefacts. Flickering rendering in control panel in remote sessions. Support for UTF-16/UCS-2 text encodings. Associating a specific application would break small icon view back to the file icon. If a new application is associated you may have to re-enable small icons for that file extension. Memory leaks.
2.7.4 25/02/12	About/credits in control panel. Potential crash in property system when dealing with corrupt metadata. Possible lockup/crash dllhost.exe spinning on 100% CPU when unloading surrogate dll.
2.7.3 23/02/12	License error and shareware message when loaded into a protected mode application such as Internet Explorer. Installer Register64 entry not found. Potential crash on unload (dllhost.exe) Restart Explorer saves and restores all explorer windows currently open. If tray application is not running and show tray icon is selected apply/ok will start the application.
2.7.2 18/02/12	Some users may have licensing issues running this version. If that occurs uninstall and download v2.6.6. This fault is being fixed for the next version. Install/Uninstall error "A DLL required for this install to complete could not be run."
2.7.1 17/02/12	Minor patch for XP to prevent control panel from locking up on exit.
2.7.0 16/02/12	Some machines may report a failure installing as an update. If this happens downloading and installing manually should work. Small icon thumbnails with enable/disable control for each file type/extension. Read the help on this topic before using. Amiga IFF ILBM (.iff, .lbm, .ilbm) support including color mapped, gray scale, HAM6, HAM8, EHB 24 & 32 bit modes. Note that .iff extension is mapped to Maya Image still but is still recognized as an Amiga ILBM when necessary. Xara format support (embedded thumbnails only). Ensure .xar files are saved with thumbnails to display. Adobe Brush (.abr) support. Clearing the thumbnail cache allows you to also clear the icon cache. On XP this only clears the icon cache. Some more properties added for embedded thumbnail files such as Sketchup. Disk cleanup manager hook for deleting small icon cache. Recursion option for folder refresh/assigning overrides from context menu. See global options in control panel. File type icon removal option on a per extension basis. Option to use no file type icon overlay on an extension by extension basis so you don't have to turn them off system wide. More (read only) property support for some files (eg. PSD) - rating, id, application name, title, authors, description, tags, copyright. Support query email attachments and screenshot capability. GDI+ metafile support. Lockup with some corrupt or corrupt images. XP control panel interface cleaned up and now renders buttons correctly. XP control panel and remote desktop logo rendering fixed. SVG rendering on XP improved. Bit depth properties of a few file formats were incorrect. Potential deadlock reading HDR images. Some cases of txt & xml files causing explorer to ask you to open a file should no longer happen. Unable to select first entry in search list. Binding to apply to all formats help. Dialog resource leak. Some icons would display black backgrounds in combo boxes in control panel. Some postscript embedded thumbnails would not work. Properly unregister viewer when uninstalling/updating. Context menu inconsistencies. Old registry settings preventing some options cleaned up. If control panel is off screen when opened it is centred to the closest monitor. PDF embedded thumbnails changed to never by default as embedded thumbnails often don't represent the page. Cleanup of some older registry keys causing issues updating from 2.6.5. Using Copy context menu in the viewer could cause the window frame to resize. Camera RAW files default is now always use embedded thumbnails for performance. Delete network .db files option is now disabled by default. All combo boxes are searchable by typing. Improved EXR parsing. More obvious display of license expiry date. SVG support for systems not running Internet Explorer 9 dropped due to compatibility problems. If you use SVG on non Windows 7 / IE9 systems don't update. Improved performance for context menu and other operations. Faster response times. Typing in the search combobox behaviour improved so you can type an extension to find it. Expired or invalid licenses show a red key icon for clarity. No control panel window darkening effects when running on a remote desktop. Improved reading of RAW thumbnails to prevent potential crashes. Better resolution of file type icons. Updated logo. EXR parsing improved. Multi-image layout files (Maya, ABR) add a border between each image for clarity. Max and Kubotek parsing improved. Registry cleanup improvements. Improved icon fetching speed for file type / application lists. Improved reading of Max and Kubotek files. Removed ellipsis button for choosing an overlay icon. Press the icon to choose a new overlay icon instead. When files are saved thumbnailing could fail in some cases. Attempts are now made to wait for the file to finish saving whilst thumbnailing. When refreshing thumbnails via context menu, the current thumbnail size in the Explorer window is used so immediate thumbnails appear as expected with correct checkerboard size and sharper resolution. All sizes will still be refreshed when subsequently adjusting the thumbnail size. WMF thumbnails are now rendered to a larger size and scaled down to produce a cleaner thumbnail if sampling mode is set to smooth. Some rendering improvements in the control panel. Better support and rendering for text and svg files. Icons for global options in control panel. Support query requires information to be added or mail will not be sent. Copy to clipboard from viewer adds multiple bitmaps including PNG and supports copying transparent images if enabled for pasting into supporting applications such as Outlook. Non-compound images now use isolated process for smoother and more secure Explorer operation. True color embedded thumbnail from XMP metadata support. Text thumbnails render to a document style icon background. Text and XML thumbnails no longer show scrollbars. Faster and better quality image processing whilst generating thumbnails, checkerboard, scaling etc. Faster flattened image extraction from RAW camera images. Opaque setting in viewer now uses a black canvas for better clarity vs. transparent setting which uses white. Improved metafile rendering. Manual support email dialog copies text to the clipboard ready for emailing. File format and extension combo lists drop within dialog only. Dialog titles reflect language. Localized menus load correctly. Improved default application icon extraction for file types.
2.6.6 09/12/11	All MysticCoder products are now code signed! This gives security and peace of mind for all products and protects against tampering. Added tooltip help toggle to control panel. Occasional crash on XP when evaluating. Help links corrected. MysticThumbs lowered the priority of explorer.exe and could sometimes not restore it correctly. Thumbnail extraction now occurs in a separate thread with its own priority. Some memory leaks when asked for unsupported interfaces. Check for updates crashed. Extra low process priority option added for slow machines. Icons added to combo boxes in control panel for file types, extensions. Apply to options are now merged into one option that allows you to apply changes to all extensions or all file formats and extensions. All options are now on a per-extension basis making things clearer and more flexible. Interface update with more user friendly controls and less clutter. Maximum size and gamma controls now have inactive settings to disable.
2.6.5 29/11/11	Support for Mac JPEG files. Option to choose local or web help in control panel. Potential memory overflow crash in some files. Viewer crash when attempting to reload a deleted file. Tooltips for some combo boxes didn't apppear. Spawning control panel under some circumstances didn't do anything. Search by file extension didn't select the correct extension. Faster retrieval of embedded thumbnails from Camera RAW files if they exist and settings are appropriate. Fixed some help links. Made trial thumbnail overlay image slightly transparent for better clarity on trial versions. Removed version from tray notification tooltip so notification preferences remain on new versions. Control panel interface clean up. Removed file extensions from file format selection box for cleaner apppearance since you can search by file extension now. Memory usage in control panel.
2.6.4 18/11/11	Search for file extension to select format/extension in control panel. Windows 7 JumpList support. Pin the viewer to the task bar for added functionality. Portuguese language added. When using the tray or viewer context menu to open the control panel with one or more selected files with the same extension, the control panel will automatically select the appropriate file format and extension. Show/Hide tray icon option in control panel and on tray context menu. Does not close the application, just togggles the icon visibility. Control panel option "Always transparent on Desktop" so desktop thumbnails always use transparency for a cleaner desktop display. InDesign fix for .indd files with spurious stale data. Some users could not see InDesign files due to old settings. Viewer asssigned associations are restored when updating, however will not take effect until next version. Changing language in the control panel is reflected correctly in the tray application. Added clear thumbnail cache to tray context menu. Check for updates now button moved to control panel shelf for a cleaner look. Minor memory leak on XP. Different icon to reflect valid installed license. Daily update check now shows a balloon notification from the tray if a new version is available instead of popping up the update window immediately. Removed property / file info support for PDF. It showed 0x0 size and 0 bit depth. Some performance optimizations to camera decoding. More camera formats suppported. Updater could close running applications without prompting.
2.6.3 08/11/11	XHTML support added to HTML file type. eBook format now uses a heuristic to find the cover image. If no cover image is found the first page is rendered instead. Some SmartCAMcmc PM5 files would not thumbnail or cause a crash. Prevent multiple instances of tray application from opening. Opening multiple files with viewer could cause a long period of the images being set to top. 'Sample default' context menu icon was incorrect. Cleanup of temporary files improved. Some minor crash protection fixes.
2.6.2 27/10/11	Context sensitive help. Presss F1 over control panel items to get help. Added SmartCAMcmc support. Adjusting view window size to account for depth buffer correctly. View context menu positioned correctly when using context menu keyboard key. Close control panel on install. Support for older InDesign .indd files. Specifically CS4. Possible crash bringing up context menu. Choose icon dialog - icon spacing fixed. Thumbnail cache clear settings improved. Installed Ghostscript version listed in support query. Interface update. Postscript files now use embedded thumbnails with no transparency by default. Explorer View context menu now opens files from the tray application. This allows using the tray application as a launcher by pinning it to the taskbar (Windows 7) for previous viewed images and not opening already opened images twice.
2.6.1 17/10/11	View function detects changes to images and reloads them. Press F5 to reload image in view function. Animated tray icon when generating thumbnails. File type association option so you can use the MT viewer to examine files. Uses the tray application which must be running or it will be launched. Control panel remembers its screen position between launches. Pin to always on top option for the control panel. Installer requires Administrator rights to launch to ensure any prerequisite installers (Ghostscript) are launched elevated. Changed Ghostscript installer link to SourceForge for a more stable download connection. View function no longer keeps a lock on images, allowing them to be kept open whilst edited in another application. Thumbnails scaled down with nearest sampling selected were near-sampled causing ugly thumbnails. Near sampling is only for scaling up or view function. Explorer lockup on Vista+ trying to read corrupt system files (jpeg etc.) Control panel items correctly updated when switching to another extension of the same file type. Superscript characters (¹²) were not displaying correctly on some languages (eg. Chinese). Incorrect scale when maximizing view window. Context menu still displayed MysticThumbs options for disabled file extensions. Control panel crash when closing plugins window. Archive files now display interior images with default or override transparency correctly. Comic book thumbnails are now transparent by default. Some control panel design changes. When choosing a new file type override icon, MT will select first the current default icon (if one exists) or the last browsed to path to make it easier to quickly assign icons from the same .dll / icon library. View windows come to foreground more nicely. Stop view wait cursor from spinning endlessly if cursor isn't moved. Wait cursor would not stop until mouse was moved in viewer. Faster Explorer restart function. Control panel thumbnail count flicker when moving window. Removed low process priority option. It is now enforced for smoother operation on all computers. Removed "Changed file format enables / restart Explorer" requirement when enabling or disabling any file formats as it is no longer required.
2.6.0 05/10/11	Major update. Installer has changed. If you have troubles with auto-update download and install the new unified installer directly from MysticThumbs.com Unified 32 and 64 bit installer with prerequisite download. Adobe InDesign .indd support (embedded thumbnails only). Digital Moving Picture (.dpx) support. Support for Maya16 IFF files. Added eBook (.epub) support. Added compressed Windows Metafile file support (.wmz, .emz). DDS 3DC (ATI2) support. Support for DDS palletized images. If there is a .pal or .act file saved along side the .dds file (ie. img.dds & img.act) then the palette will be used from that file. DDS R32 and R16 support. Added copy to clipboard command to view function via context menu or [Ctrl]+C. Nearest/Smooth sampling option for thumbnails and viewing. Useful for examining textures. Added sampling when scaled option (still needs to be made per extension). Kubotek support (.ckd, .ckt). Bit depth of RAW files was reporting only one channel. Potential crashes with RAW & PSD parsing. SVG checks IE version. Uses internal (but flawed) SVG viewer if IE is not version 9 or newer. SVG now requires Internet Explorer 9 installed. Fixes open file dialog problems. Registration/deregistration on Win32 & x64 fixed and cleaned up. Appropriate 32/64 bit registry keys being used. Lockup when trying to view a file when in timed evaluation. "Apply to all formats" control panel option was missing on WinXP. SVG parser corrects malformed and missing attributes to fix some problematic images. Maya depth buffer enable/disable context menu. Maya IFF crash when reading multiple files. Archive page flipping skips unsupported images types. UAC elevation no longer required to change any settings. Image corruption possible generating some thumbnails. Plugin memory management could cause Explorer to crash. Slight redesign. Plugin users download the latest example plugin source to make changes. Prevent View image windows being closed prematurely. View windows get image override defaults such as transparency and size upon opening. potential crash unloading plugins. View function context menu works on any monitor. Auto-update supports unicode paths. Potential lockup with auto-update when running under UAC. Potential crash shutting down control panel when updating. View function shows dimensions in title bar. RAW files now use embedded thumbnails by default for performance reasons. Recommend existing users select this option for faster RAW file processing. Dutch translations. Improved control panel operation and support for Vista/Win7, and now appears in "Appearance and Themes" and "Programs" groups. Added system information to support query. Maya IFF performance. Optimized and improved Windows Metafile support (.wmf, .emf). Much faster and supports transparency and scale. Compound storage types optimized. Archive (ZIP, RAR etc.) image clarity enhancement. Interface graphics cleaned up and improved. All functions except for file type properties are now enabled on install for the installing user instead of the whole machine. SVG default transparency now disabled (faster thumbnail generation.) Cleaned up transparency icons. Tray icon doesn't show machine type for clarity. Better support for some image types (ie. DDS) image properties in Explorer / Find. Optimized memory usage on RAW images. Thumbnail generation performance improved. PSD performance increased up to around 30x. PSP performance increased. DDS performance increased with multi-core processors. Non-transparent thumbnails take less disk space. Apply to all file formats & Apply to all file extensions now work on the Enable switches. Grey out adornment items in control panel when file type is disabled.
2.5.9 06/09/11	Added support for .PspSelection files. Control panel failed to run on Windows XP - regression from v2.5.7.
2.5.8 02/09/11	Do NOT update to this version with Windows XP. The control panel will not work. Maximum file length option added to prevent thumbnailing based on MB. More PSP file formats supported (mask, brush, frame). Control panel didn't restart when asked for elevation. Changing thumbnail adornment requires elevation. Hide elevation shield when running as an elevated user or disabled UAC. Apply button recognizes active file format. Apply to all file formats & Apply to all file extensions were not saved correctly, and are now disabled by default to prevent unintended behaviour. Version error displayed incorrectly. Truncated "Apply to all..." text in control panel. Maximum size and maximum file length now default to 0 - meaning disable the feature. Icon graphic for update now button. EXR defaults to disabled transparency.
2.5.7 31/08/11	Do NOT update to this version with Windows XP. The control panel will not work. Icon buttons for a more aesthetic look and less requirement for translations. RAW .mef extension support added. RAW support for Kodek jpeg based images. RAW R3D support. Support email form from control panel for easier and more consistent support queries. RAW format had some rendering problems. RAW uses automatic brightness adjustment to make images consistent. Useful with some camera models. Gamma settings apply per-extension instead of per-file type. Shareware message not being shown when required. Potential Explorer lock-up viewing some images. License dialog shown properly when evaluation expires. THM files were not handled correctly and could cause explorer to stall. Left clicking tray icon shows menu same as right click.
2.5.6 13/08/11	Start Menu entry with various tools for accessibility. 3ds Max support was not working on some machines. WMF support fixed. Regression from v2.5.0. Was able to open multiple instances of the Control Panel. Double clicking the tray icon will now bring the active instance to the top.
2.5.5 09/08/11	Some SVG files drawn with scrollbars. Control panel no longer requires UAC to run. Will now request Administrator privileges if changing file association bindings. Maya .ma, .mb files causing Explorer crash. Potential mismatches with file extensions with differing cases. Disabled formats or extensions are correctly recognized by the thumbnail generator and ignored if required. Maya swatches optimized into more efficient packing. Reduced extents of Text images for clarity.
2.5.4 07/08/11	HTML/EML/XML thumbnails could generate black bars. Removed threading locks causing random Explorer stalls. Buffer overrun/potential crash on grey scale CDR files. Maya IFF options were not sticking. SVG thumbnail rendering.
2.5.3 03/08/11	Update check doesn't complete. Regression from v2.5.2. This will not fix the problem until installing 2.5.3. You may have to update manually from the website to get this version. Update closes tray application to allow it to be updated. Control panel UAC level doesn't force the need for an administrator. Non-admin users are now able to run it and change user settings. Corel Draw potential crashes and memory leaks. SVG files not displaying and causing Explorer to stall. Improved performance decoding PSD images.
2.5.2 01/08/11	RAR (under Archive file format) and CBZ (under Comic Book file format). Windows Media Photo (JPEG XR) support through WIC system support. May require WIC installed on XP. Explorer sometimes stalling whilst generating thumbnails, particularly in folders with many images. note this can still occasionally happen. Press F5 in the Explorer window to allow it to continue if this happens. Still researching this problem. SVG errors fixed. Now uses Internet Explorer (version 9 required) to generate SVG. HTML resource leak. View scale represented correctly when scaling down whilst not in 'ScaleUp' mode. Stability with multiple instances running at once. .log extension removed from text format support. Regression in 2.5.1. XP asking for credentials when starting control panel was not required. Faster thumbnails, scaling and conversion algorithms. optimized HTML parsing. RAW performance improved. Archive formats don't generate internal thumbnails for disabled file types.
2.5.1 23/07/11	Disable .log file extension under Text file format in the control panel as it causes issues. Will remove in next version. Text & XML support. PES files were not functioning correctly. Temporary files occasionally created in incorrect place, or failed to create causing images not to thumbnail. Vector graphic based files (eg. SVG, PES) are now limited to 2048x2048 rendered bitmap size for performance and memory reasons. File types that don't support properties parse faster.
2.5.0 21/07/11	Thumbnail (.THM) support. Refresh Explorer context menu from tray application. Dune (.aai) format support. Cals (.cal) format support. MacPaint (.mac) format support. Embroidery (.pes) format support. UAC: Control panel now requires user to accept elevation when starting to ensure settings are saved correctly. Memory leaks fixed. Registration context menu not opening registration dialog. Clear cache now uses the Windows 'Disk Cleanup' application to correctly clear the thumbnail cache. 'Apply to all extensions' option disabled when 'Enable Icon Overlays' disabled. More DDS formats supported. ZIP support enhanced. Added property support for MAX. Performance: Faster calculation and more efficient memory usage when getting file information and properties. View function updated with better support for options and threading. ImageMagick components updated to 6.7.1. EXR updated to 1.7.0. Restored transparency option to view context menu options. Was unable to move or resize view window whilst it recalculated an image. Tray app hover information is now only one line.
2.4.9 14/07/11	Tray application not starting with Windows.
2.4.8 13/07/11	Crash when Ghostscript not installed. Performance increase and memory savings when getting file information. No need to elevate UAC when installing a personal license.
2.4.7 12/07/11	UAC problems saving settings and site licenses. Installing a license now requires accepting elevated privileges. User settings are saved correctly on site license machines.
2.4.6 11/07/11	EML support. MHTML file support (under HTML file type). View window maximizing and restore with double click. Improved view function with all the usual context menu options, refresh after size, double click to maximize/restore & more. PSD crash with RLE encoded images. Regression from v2.4.0. Memory leaks. Timer problem, causing some files to not work. Corel 4bpp thumbnails crash. 4bpp bitmaps supported.
2.4.5 22/06/11	Occasional crash and instability with multiple operations and when invoked through external programs. Multiple context menu entries under some situations. Gif was not respecting default transparency options. Quicker response in generating thumbs and bringing up context menus.
2.4.4 20/06/11	New installs not generating thumbnails. Crash with .zip files on x86. .zip files showing black. Auto-update restarting Windows without prompting. Opening control panel from context menu would cause explorer to freeze.
2.4.3 16/06/11	Unable to generate thumbnails with old licenses. Some race condition crashes with multiple explorer windows open. Performance enhancements to system file types. 16 bit BMP support.
2.4.2 15/06/11	Crash after entering and leaving plugin dialog in control panel. Incorrect version reported in non-english 2.4.1.
2.4.1 15/06/11	Licensing Single User license removes existing site license. Fixes regression in 2.4.0.
2.4.0 14/06/11	Licenses purchased from the release of this version can only be registered on v2.4.0 and beyond. Old licenses still work with v2.4.0 and beyond. 3ds max support (embedded thumbnail only). Maya thumbnails generated from swatches if they exist. Radiance (HDR) support. CorelDraw .cdr support (embedded bitmap thumbnails only). Photo CD support. HTML support. Tooltip help on all control panel items. Tiered licensing model. Gamma control on an image type basis (control panel). Low process priority option. Restart Explorer context menu in tray app. System file types (JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, TIFF) now use WIC on Vista/Win7 or Ole (XP) to read when possible for usual system performance with MysticThumbs benefits. System types are now enabled by default since they use system extractor to gather image. Propagate site licenses across the network option when installing a new license. PSD decoder multithreaded problems. Causing memory leaks and potential crashes. Shareware reminder notices were blank. PSD color profiles were not being applied. Two context menu entries were being added in navigation pane. Memory leaks Archive zip and comic book crash under some circumstances. Regression in 2.3.6 - tray icon not restored after explorer restart. PSD and PSP multithreaded scheduling causing memory leaks. Tray application was not running on XP. File registration now backs up previous thumbnail provider and restores it when disabling a file type or uninstalling. Control panel crashing Explorer when asked for information by Windows. Removed option to remove tray application since it's required for many functions. Support for palletized bitmaps in image conversion. Interface search on XP could fail. Occasional MysticThumbs32.dll crash caused by incorrect interface handling. External search for delegates causing incorrect behaviour and occasional crash. Restarting Explorer on XP causing reload of startup programs. Component registration fault on XP, tray application not starting. Updated licence terms and conditions. Process now runs non-isolated to support non-stream file formats (HTML, MAX, Maya etc.) No de/re-register of file types when applying changes in control panel when none have been enabled or disabled. Updated JPEG-2000 support. Context menu handler is now much faster to load and execute, with less overhead. Improved image conversion performance. Faster floating point performance on some image types. Optimized RAW decoding performance. PSD ignore all channels beyond RGBA for performance increase. Uses only the first channel as an alpha/opacity mask. Improved update version information dialog. Dutch translations (Harry Stadman). Greek translations (Anthony at Diastasi Graphics).
2.3.8 31/03/11	Crashes on some ZIP files. Transparent junk in non-transparent DDS images when using transparent/checkerboard. ZIP files view at 256x256 for optimal image quality. more error checking for bad images. Auto update installs automatically without user intervention. When running this version as non-English the version will be reported incorrectly as 2.3.7
2.3.7 29/03/11	Better DDS format support.
2.3.6 28/03/11	Language problems, no text in context menu for some languages. Dutch translations thanks to Harry Stadman.
2.3.5 25/03/11	Crash error dump generation and reporting. This will enable fast turn around on bug reports. Check for updates in control panel. Automatic update check every day (requires tray icon application running). Language not set in control panel on startup. Dutch translations thanks to Harry Stadman.
2.3.4 8/03/11	Plugin support (alpha) RAW image rotations when using the View function. Image size and ratio adjustment when fitting large images on screen when using View function. Remove Register option from tray menu when licensed. View function recognizes DDS cube maps and sizes accordingly. Greek translations thanks to Anthony at Diastasi Graphics.
2.3.3 27/02/11	Google Sketchup .layout support. Turn on/off file type overlay icon from control panel (Vista+) Overhauled file icon overlay. You can now select a specific icon for each file type/extension from a .exe, .dll or .ico file, for example Photoshop.exe (Vista/Win7). Thumbnail adornment option to select either drop shadow (default) or no border around thumbnails for each file type (Vista/Win7). Updated translations, some may not be as accurate, feel free to contact the us with corrections. Added ability to apply some options to all extensions of a file type. Open control panel and register context menu items. Option to delete thumbs.db files on network folders when refreshing thumbnails, to fix thumbnail locking bug in Vista/Win7. On by default. Added a warning to clearing the thumbnail cache. When enabling or disabling file types or extensions you are now given the option to restart Explorer for the changes to take effect. Buggy thumbnail cache clear: it now closes and restarts Explorer to prevent it locking the cache whilst clearing resulting in a corrupt cache. Crash when right clicking and opening some folders (eg. Start menu/Startup). Applying settings in control panel now refreshes the shell to update changes. Changed settings in control panel are recognized by each instance of the thumbnail provider. Install & Uninstall correctly spawning and shutting down the tray application. Install problem not enabling thumbnails for some file types properly. Fixed scale up context menu help not displaying. File extensions enable/disable not functioning correctly. Tray icon was not localized. Folder and thumbnail refreh on network drives. Thumbnails generated counter not updating under some conditions. Corrected context menu icon sizes. Control panel now remembers which file extensions are active for each file type after OK/Apply. Disable Archive / .ZIP file format by default, as it causes problems on some machines.
2.3.2 04/01/11	Explicitly disable "Always show icons, never thumbnails" Explorer option when MysticThumbs is loaded. Some PSD grayscale images did not show correctly. First install balloon icon changed to MT icon for clarity. Registry changes comparison fixed in control panel.
2.3.1 25/11/10	Speech bubble reminder on first install showing the system tray icon. Arvhive/.ZIP file format crash when no images are found. No images in ZIP now uses default icon. File type overlay sometimes drawn when it shouldn't be. System tray startup sometimes failed. Tray icon draws cleaner on remote desktop.
2.3.0 19/10/10	PSD 'show embedded thumbnails when larger' would sometimes not work. Shareware reminder notice when evaluation expires. Added .tub, .psptube extensions to PSP file format.
2.2.9 15/10/10	File locking bug - file locks were kept on files which caused them to be unmodifiable.
2.2.8 14/10/10	Removed this build for file locking bug unable to generate postscript thumbnails when running as x86 under x64 Didn't generate thumbnails for some images that had color profiles when the image is already RGB Don't attempt to ping postscript images for dimensions and properties
2.2.7 09/10/10	Removed this build for file locking bug Memory leaks Kindmap registry corruption PSD file properties bug under certain circumstances PSP file lock to prevent potential crash on file delete ZIP file memory leak and crash under some conditions Dutch translations Unload optimization View memory optimizations Interface redesign to correct memory leaks
2.2.6 29/09/10	IExtractImage interface supported on Vista/Win7 again to fix Bridge. Cleanup temp files on unload.
2.2.5 24/09/10	Image viewer that uses MysticThumbs to preview images. Select 'View' from the context menu. Paint Shop Pro (.psp, .pspimage) support added, 8/24/32 bit support. ZIP archive support added. MT finds images within ZIP archives and can flip through them with the context menu. SVG format. Limited support, some files will not display, some will not display correctly. CBZ page flipping added. Enable / Disable context menu option in control panel. Max Cache Size option. Not completely sure this doesn anything, or on which platforms. tray application displays version or ERROR if there is a problem. Possible install crash bug. Icons displaying in an extra column on context menu on some setups. resource leak with file icon overlays. XP thumbnail handler wasting resources in Vista / Win7. Cleans up temporary files when unloaded. Buffer overrun in some EXR files that would crash Explorer. Tweaked the overlay file type icon so it doesn't appear too large on small images. Increased default maximum image size from 4096 to 10000. Added error text to control panel when there is a problem with the install. Added icons to XP tray context menu.
2.2.4 08/08/10	Overlay file type icon onto thumbnail with size, placement and opacity options. Thumbnails generated information in control panel is updated in real time. Dutch translation update. French translation update. Notification tray icon working animation more visible.
2.2.3 05/08/10	Rotation on embedded RAW thumbnails. Date taken on non-RAW files is represented with date created time. Dutch translation update.
2.2.2 02/08/10	Added .CBZ comic book support, displays first page encountered. Added .RW2 camera RAW support. RAW white balance and image rotation support added. RAW edge case fixes and error handling. Refresh thumbnail works on 256 level to ensure immediate refresh of all sizes.
2.2.1 20/07/10	Support image rotation for RAW thumbnails. Some AI and PDF thumbnails not generated due to being CYMK format. Set thread priority to normal so thumbnails can be generated whilst other processes work.
2.2.0 12/07/10	Photoshop PSB format suport. RAW camera support replaces DNG support. Most cameras supported. EXIF RAW camera properties. Performance enhancement - embedded thumbnail extraction options for PSD and RAW images in control panel and context menu. Now able to choose to ignore, always use or only use embedded thumbnails when they are larger then the requested thumbnail size. Version changed from X.XX to X.X.X to better represent build numbers. DLL waits for a second before unloading when context menus have been used. Work around for some machines crashing when using context menus.
2.19 03/07/10	x64 installer now installs x86 side-by-side dll. This enables x86 and legacy applications to use MysticThumbs. Open/Save dialog boxes now work within 32 bit applications. This is a significant enhancement to MysticThumbs many users have been asking for. Site and Corporate licenses now work through HKLM registry to enable easier installation and multiple users to share the same settings. Chinese translation update.
2.18 28/06/10	Re-introduced right click context menu on folder background due to context menu fix. Image scale options in context menu. Correctly report to Explorer when the DLL can be unloaded. Right click on folders in navigation pane crashed Explorer due to DLL being unloaded whilst still in use. 32 bit BMP transparency, now checks for and ignores transparency when the alpha channel is empty. MysticThumbs control panel was being removed from the 'Appearance and Personalization' group after settings change. Cache icon bitmaps for performance improvement. Improved registry handling. Improved multiple selection - if all images share the same transparency or scale property that property is shown selected. File types are now picture and image property kinds for Windows Search handling. Were just picture. Added 'px' (pixels) to Image Size setting in control panel for clarity. Chinese simplified and traditional translations thanks to Yuan Wen Zhi.
2.17 18/06/10	Win7/Vista - Explorer crash after right clicking on a window or desktop background. File size optimizations. German translations. Chinese translations.
2.16 15/06/10	Win7/Vista - Refresh and transparency context options operate recursively on folders. CAUTION refreshing very large folder trees can take a long time and cause instability - this will become an option in future versions. Win7/Vista - Refreshing folder icons when thumbnails are generated on their content. v2.15 install on XP was broken. German translations. Updated DNG converter to v1.3 SDK
2.15 30/05/10	Win7/Vista - Refresh thumbnail updates parent folder icons. Win7/Vista - Refresh thumbnail no longer touches file modification date. Updates to Swedish translations.
2.14 23/05/10	OpenEXR support added. Language selection in control panel. Translation fixes and improvements for several languages. Cleanup and improvements to control panel.
2.13 18/05/10	Broken file registration in v2.12. Some PSD images not making thumbnails. Optimized file ping for some file types to prevent excessive delay in finding properties.
2.12 16/05/10	Added support for WMF and EMF metafile formats. Bindings to default Windows file types restored when enabling/disabling in the control panel. Fixed memory leak with registry lookups. Context menu no longer acts on files that are not enabled in the control panel. Ratings and tags corrected for Windows default file types. Optimizations to increase performance of context menu. Cleans up registry for files with no active overrides. Control panel no longer applies changes on exit if nothing has changed.
2.11 16/05/10	Edge case for metadata property bindings.
2.10 11/05/10	Metadata property bindings (tags, star ratings etc.) to system image types (jpeg, tiff, png, gif). Removed process priority option since it could cause system instability.
2.09 01/05/10	Potential lockup when applying changes in control panel. for corrupt registry entries causing thumbnails to not be generated. Scale Up option for each file type. Scales up thumbnails to the target thumbnail size. SKM Google SketchUp materials support.
2.08 26/04/10	context menu options without shareware notice. notification tray icon re-added after Explorer restarts.
2.07 24/04/10	support for SKB files (Sketchup backup). context menu crash on non-English systems. potential install error. some missing language strings. memory allocation performance.
2.06 22/04/10	Sets number of image processing threads based on CPU core count.
2.05 21/04/10	images displaying incorrectly with transparency disabled. Removed maximum image size limit of 4096.
2.03 18/04/10	Installer not finishing.
2.02 17/04/10	A few random patches.
2.01 17/04/10	problems with PDF files. some install problems.
2.00 14/04/10	Control panel applet to control file types and options. More image formats supported including: DNG, Maya IFF, Google Sketchup SKP, PDF, AI, EPS, PS if Ghostscript installed. Specific file type options such as alpha channel / opacity display. Thumbnail cache eraser. OpenMP support for multi-core CPU conversion performance. ICC colorspace profile support. Optimizations and extensions to standard Windows supported images such as JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF & TIFF.

Version History

Important information about build dates