What changed, and when.

A security and reliability release: licences are checked more carefully, sending usage counts is now your choice, damaged files and pulled cards can no longer take the app down, and your tags stay on the right photos. It also brings the copy sheet for gallery photos.

Before you update

• Go online once after updating. Your licence is re-checked the first time the new version starts. If you are offline at that moment, Lamplit asks you to connect before it unlocks; after that it works offline for up to 30 days at a time.
• Plain FTP is no longer offered. Transmit presets that used plain FTP still load, but refuse to send until you switch them to FTPS or SFTP. Plain FTP sent your password and photos unencrypted.

Copying and moving

• Copy (⌘⇧C, the Share menu or the right-click menu) opens a sheet for the selected photos instead of a bare folder picker: choose the destination (with recent folders and an optional backup), organize into date or year/date folders, keep the original names or rename with a template, and see the resulting path before you start. Copies are made the way card imports are: each file is written to a temporary name, re-read and checked against the original, and never overwrites anything already at the destination. RAW+JPEG pairs and sidecars travel together.
• Copying into a folder inside the shoot, such as a new “Selects” folder, works; the photos’ own folder is refused, since every copy would land beside its original under a changed name.
• Move (⌘⇧M, or the same menus) opens the same sheet to choose the destination, then moves as before, with its confirmation, verification and undo.
• On Windows, Delete and Move on a memory card, USB drive or network share keep the original where it is instead of removing it, because those drives have no Recycle Bin.
• Ingest from Card has a button at the top of the folders panel.

Your tags stay on the right photo

• After a batch rename, ratings, picks, labels and captions follow each photo to its new name.
• Quitting from the Dock, logging out or shutting down now waits up to 8 seconds for tags that are still being written, with a “Saving…” notice, instead of dropping them.

Steadier with damaged files and cards

• A damaged or deliberately malformed photo or sidecar is skipped instead of crashing or freezing the app.
• Pulling a card or losing a network share while browsing it no longer crashes Lamplit.
• Captions and keywords with invisible control characters are cleaned when written, so other programs can read them.

Privacy

• Sending daily usage counts and crash reports is now off unless you turn it on (first-run notice or Settings). Choices you already made are kept.
• Crash reports no longer contain file paths or your computer’s name.
• On macOS, Lamplit’s own files (settings, caches, licence) are readable only by your user account.

Transmit

• SFTP asks you to confirm a server’s identity the first time you connect, and refuses to send if it later changes.
• Connections time out instead of hanging, and a saved password is forgotten when you change the server, protocol or user name.

Updates and licences

• Updates are checked against the version they claim to be, so an older build can never be offered as an update.
• Licences are checked against Lamplit’s own products, and a signed confirmation from lamplitphoto.com lets the app stay unlocked offline for up to 30 days.
• The licences of the open-source components Lamplit uses are included with the app.

Known limits

• Moving photos into date folders or renaming them as they move is not available; a move goes into one folder with the original names.
• Location editing stays off.

A full visual redesign, a simpler crop and straighten tool, keyboard shortcuts you can reassign, and a wide pass over large folders, tagging and scrolling.

A new look

• Flatter surfaces throughout — panels, menus and dialogs — with far less blur, roundness and shadow, and a new typeface, Public Sans.
• Colour is gone from the controls. The one accent left marks the selected photo and the marquee; colour labels and destructive actions like Delete keep their own colour.
• Hover, selection and toggles are shown by a line under the control’s label instead of a filled background or a glow. Keyboard focus is a set of corner brackets instead of a ring.
• The tagging bar, in the gallery and in single-photo view, is a plain row of controls instead of a rounded glass capsule. Menus open and close faster.
• Grid tiles are square-cornered, with a small strip under each for its rating and colour label. Rejected photos are dimmed in the grid itself.
• Scrollbars and sliders share one look, and a scrollbar grows to an easier-to-grab width near the pointer and while dragging.
• When the window is not in front, its controls dim a step while the photos stay as they are. Dark mode was rebuilt with its own contrast rather than being an inversion of light.

The gallery

• The Show panel is redesigned: verdict and rating are rows of small shapes, like the colour-label row. Two filter bugs are fixed — certain combinations, or filtering while ratings were still loading, no longer show an empty gallery when photos match, and “Show all” restores combined RAW+JPEG viewing.
• The photo count reads “N photos” when nothing is hidden, and “N of M” only while a filter is hiding something.
• An overflow menu beside Show holds the file-view options (JPEG only, combined RAW+JPEG, or all files separately), burst grouping and badge display.
• Selecting several photos shows a tagging bar with rating, pick, reject and clear-verdict controls, the same as in single-photo view.
• The export button, previously “Deliver”, is now “Share”, with Move to folder beside copy, export and send, and a way to reveal photos in Finder or Explorer.
• When a drive disconnects, its open tabs and folders close instead of sitting open on errors; disconnected drives and their recent folders are shown greyed out.

Single-photo view, the filmstrip and crop

• Crop and straighten is much simpler: the same drag-to-move, resize and rotate gestures, with an aspect-ratio control, an angle readout, and Done and Reset — reachable from a button in single-photo view.
• The exposure preview is on or off, and the current value is itself the button that opens the slider. Preparing previews is quicker, and the cache holds far more prepared photos by default (its disk limit went from 2 GB to 16 GB, adjustable up to 200 GB in Settings).
• The background behind the photo can be white, a few greys, black, or the app’s theme.
• Thumbnails keep loading while you drag a scrollbar, in the gallery and on the filmstrip.

The info panel

• Tags and verdicts are a read-only summary; rate, pick and reject from the tagging bar or the keyboard as before.
• Caption and location live in an “Other details” section, collapsed by default.
• Shot details — aperture, shutter speed, capture time — appear without the earlier delay while stepping through photos.
• Default credit information (photographer, copyright, source) can be set once in Settings. It fills blank credit fields when you caption, and never overwrites anything already in the file.

Keyboard

• Most shortcuts can be reassigned in Settings. Taking a key another shortcut already uses frees it from that shortcut instead of binding it twice. The arrows, Home and End, Enter, Esc and the help key stay fixed.
• The old shortcuts overlay is replaced by a searchable keyboard reference, shown in the info panel’s place or as a full window. It now lists shortcuts that were missing before: rotate, compare, remove colour label, open Settings.
• Settings rows that differ from their default can be reset one at a time, and a “Maximum columns” setting caps the grid’s width.

Large folders

• Reopening a folder of 24,000 to 100,000 photos you have opened before reads ratings and other metadata noticeably faster. A folder’s very first open is unchanged.
• First scrolls through a large folder show far fewer empty, still-loading thumbnails.
• Ratings, picks, rejects and colour labels update on screen together everywhere they appear — the grid, the tagging bar and the filmstrip.
• Thumbnails use less memory on macOS, where they had been decoded at a much higher resolution than they were shown at.
• On macOS the app asks to draw at the display’s full refresh rate (Settings › Appearance, on by default). It has not yet been checked on a high-refresh Mac display; the switch turns it off.
• Click-and-hold zoom appears straight away, and marquee selection stays responsive deep into very large galleries.

Fixes

• The grid’s hover highlight and marquee line up with the photos on every row again.
• Moving photos to a folder asks for confirmation first and can be undone.
• Importing from a card reports what was skipped, copied and failed more accurately, and a “skipped” file that has since gone missing from its destination is copied again.
• The Location dialog’s “Remove added location” explains that a position recorded by the camera stays in the file, and no longer reports success where nothing changed.
• A metadata save that fails because a file is locked or protected says why.
• “Clear all caches” and “Deep clear” in Settings clear everything they claim to, including prepared exposure previews.

Known limits

• The new look has not yet been reviewed by eye on Windows.
• Importing from a card whose photos carry no camera information at all can, in a rare case, still create an oddly named destination folder.

An exposure preview for RAW and JPEG culling, quicker large-folder browsing, and transfers that work on more external drives while keeping your originals recoverable.

Exposure preview

• A new optional Exposure control in the viewer brightens or darkens the current photo from −5 to +5 EV without changing any file. It is off by default and does no work until you open it.
• RAW photos are developed from sensor data by the operating system’s RAW engine: Apple RAW on macOS, or an installed camera codec that supports RAW development on Windows. Values above display white are kept, so lifting an underexposed frame reveals detail the embedded preview clipped.
• JPEG photos are adjusted in linear light from the rendered picture. A JPEG cannot recover detail the camera already clipped.
• Development starts once navigation settles. Unsupported cameras report an error instead of showing a substitute image. This is a culling aid, not a match for Lightroom or camera-maker rendering.
• Developed previews are kept in a bounded cache (memory plus a configurable disk limit in Settings › Cache) keyed to the exact source file, so returning to a photo does not develop it again. While the control is open, the next few photos in your direction of travel are prepared in the background, and a “Prepare N selected” or “Prepare this folder” button develops a chosen set ahead of time with progress and cancel. Nothing is prepared unless the control is open or you ask.
• While a RAW develops, the embedded JPEG is shown brightened and labelled “Provisional (JPEG)”; it is replaced by the RAW result and never presented as RAW.

Browsing and culling

• A Photos menu switches between JPEG only, combined RAW/JPEG, and separate files. Counts, filenames, filters and actions follow the chosen mode.
• Zoom and pan are kept while moving between photos. The settled fit view shows more detail.
• The speed of held-key and scroll navigation is adjustable in Settings.
• Opening a single photo from a very large folder no longer waits on folder-sized preparation. Escape returns to the gallery with the photo you were actually viewing selected and revealed.
• Nested right-click menus stay open while you move across them. Info-panel thumbnails fall back to the companion preview or a fresh load instead of showing a stale image.
• Background preview generation is limited to photos near your position and yields to the visible photo, lowering idle CPU use in large folders.
• Displayed resolution, file size and capture time come from the selected original, not from a preview or companion file. HEIF dimensions are read from the primary image, and the EXIF Software field is no longer shown as firmware.

Copies and moves

• Copy and move show a compact progress card covering preparation, copying, verification and completion, including RAW/JPEG companions and sidecars. The macOS destination picker can create a new folder.
• Transfers to external drives whose filesystem does not support exclusive rename (reported earlier as “Operation not supported (os error 45)”) now complete. On that path Lamplit creates the final file name exclusively and streams verified bytes into it, so a file can be visible before it is complete; it is only reported as done after verification, and an interrupted file is kept and reported for recovery.
• Moves on the same volume relocate the original file objects instead of copying every byte, after writing a recovery plan. On Windows FAT32 and exFAT volumes, where the system assigns a file a new identity when it is renamed, each relocated file is verified by content instead.
• Moves that require copying verify the whole photo/sidecar group at its final destination before retiring the originals. Retired originals are kept in a hidden recovery folder beside the source, with a manifest, and are never deleted automatically. This keeps using space on the source drive until you remove them yourself.
• When the source drive cannot retire originals safely, the files stay where they were and the result says “Copied; originals kept.” That outcome is not counted as a completed move.
• Transfer results distinguish completed moves, verified copies with originals kept, failures, and recovery locations. Full details can be expanded and copied. The gallery removes an entry only for a confirmed successful move; a file that cannot be found after a disconnection is not assumed to have moved.
• Recovery folders are excluded from photo browsing and folder watching.
• Verified copies and moves do less repeated hashing while keeping the content verification at publication and before retiring originals.

Known limits

• A RAW that has not been prepared still has to be developed; the cache and preparation only remove repeat work.
• Windows RAW exposure depends on the installed camera codec and has not been validated on real camera codecs.
• Content verification and recovery records make Lamplit’s copies and moves slower than an unchecked file-manager copy.

Get the signed macOS or Windows installer from the download page, or accept the update when Lamplit offers it on launch.

Immediate tagging feedback, smoother large-folder browsing, and stronger protections for your originals.

Faster culling

• Ratings, color labels, picks and rejects appear immediately, without tag animations. Metadata saves continue in the background while you move to the next photo.
• Tagging during rapid navigation no longer jumps back to an earlier photo or interrupts a held arrow key. Manual navigation takes priority over auto-advance.
• Combined RAW/JPEG photos receive tags on both files, including pairs loaded as a folder opens.
• Large folders no longer leave later photos unreachable. Loading and navigation have been tested with 100,000 files, including photos beyond 9,999.
• Gallery previews prioritize visible photos and nearby rows. Reduced duplicate decoding and offscreen preview work lower background CPU use.

Clearer information

• A bottom loading indicator shows file discovery, photo loading and remaining metadata work, with a retry action when needed.
• Filenames and photo information follow the displayed photo during fast navigation. Late metadata responses no longer replace newer details.
• File sizes, paths and resolutions refer to the selected original, including when a JPEG companion supplies the preview. Unsupported source dimensions are shown as unavailable.
• The trial notice is a dismissible, theme-matched amber strip at the bottom and does not shift the gallery.

More reliable file handling

• Improved metadata-save compatibility with external-drive filesystems, addressing temporary-file identity errors and unsupported operations when creating XMP sidecars.
• Added stronger content verification, conflict checks and no-overwrite handling across metadata saves, copies, moves, renames and ingest. Recovery files are retained when an operation cannot finish safely.
• JPEG metadata saves verify that image data is preserved without recompression. RAW edits remain in separate sidecars.
• Delayed caption reads and older save failures no longer overwrite newer edits.

On drives that require the new-sidecar compatibility path, an interrupted save can leave an incomplete new XMP file. Lamplit preserves it for recovery and reports its location.

Get the signed macOS or Windows installer from the download page, or accept the update when Lamplit offers it on launch.

Large galleries now prioritize visible previews and reuse compatible JPEG companions when opening RAW/JPEG stacks. Selection borders scroll together with their photos.

More ways to deliver your photos. Deliver now offers Copy originals to folder and Copy files to clipboard, including stack companions and sidecars. You can also drag selected photos from the grid into a file manager.

Quicker culling controls. Clear tags removes ratings, color labels, picks and rejects from a selection, with undo. Hold Alt/Option and scroll to zoom in single-photo view. Exposure information sits directly below the sidebar preview, above tagging. Auto-advance starts off for new preferences and shows AUTO ON when enabled.

This release also fixes:

• Metadata and edits lost when sorting, stale rotation reads, and date-filter fallbacks.
• Same-name photos in different folders being grouped together, and folder tabs confused with views that include subfolders.
• Replaced files keeping old previews in the grid, single-photo view or Compare, and repaired previews failing to retry after clearing caches.
• Compare undo, unlinked zoom, rapid crop/copy actions, and failed tag writes affecting later edits or undo history.
• Sidecar preservation, interrupted rename recovery, parallel export conflicts, and metadata removal during export while retaining color profiles and rotation.

Copy, move and quit now wait for queued metadata and undo/redo commands. Resetting settings also turns Debug mode off.

Get the signed macOS or Windows installer from the download page, or accept the update when Lamplit offers it on launch.

Two fixes, both of them things you would have noticed.

macOS stops asking about your keychain. If you updated Lamplit and then got a dialog wanting to “use your confidential information stored in Lamplit License in your keychain,” that was us, and it was going to keep happening. The licence key was stored in the macOS keychain, and the keychain grants access to one exact copy of an app — so every update produced a new copy, the grant no longer matched, and macOS asked again. Every update, for every paying customer.

The key now lives in a file in Lamplit’s own folder, readable only by your user account. That is the right home for what it actually is: a subscription token that is validated on our side, capped at three computers, and already sitting in your receipt email. Transmit passwords stay in the keychain — those are real FTP and SFTP credentials for other people’s servers, they have a genuine secret to keep, and they are only ever read when you open the transmit dialog.

One consequence worth stating plainly: deleting Lamplit’s folder now resets the free trial. We would rather that than prompt every honest customer after every update.

Settings looks like the rest of the app. It had drifted — square buttons where everything else uses pills, section headings competing with page titles, a cache page built from boxes instead of rows, and sliders that were drawing themselves in macOS’s colours instead of ours. It is now built from the same pieces as every other window, in both light and dark.

Scrolling in Settings is fixed. It had been moving twice as far as it should on every wheel tick, and bouncing the whole window when it reached the top or bottom. Both were the same bug, and both are gone.

Nothing about culling changed. Same ingest, cull, caption, export and transmit as 0.2.0.

Lamplit updates itself — you will be offered this on next launch. Or take it from the download page, where every installer publishes its SHA-256 next to it.

The first build anyone can download without being handed one. Signed and notarized on macOS, signed on Windows, and it updates itself from here.

Free for 14 days. No card, no account, nothing to cancel. Point it at the biggest, ugliest take you have — a whole wedding, a full match. That is the only honest test of whether it is faster than what you use now, and it is the job it was built for.

It updates itself. Lamplit checks on launch and installs with your say-so. Updates are signed with the same key as the build you already have, so one cannot be swapped for something else in transit.

Three installers. macOS universal — Apple silicon and Intel, 10.15 or newer. Windows x64, and Windows ARM64 for Snapdragon machines. Every one publishes a SHA-256 next to it on the download page; hash what you got and compare.

Nothing about culling changed in this release. The whole loop — ingest, cull, caption, export, transmit — is what the August note describes, verified the same way. What is new is that you can install it yourself, and that it can eventually be bought.

What is not here yet: checkout. There is no way to pay, so nobody can. When there is, it will be $79 a year, and everyone who used the beta keeps $59 a year for as long as they stay subscribed.

Bug reports go to hello@lamplitphoto.com, or through Send feedback in Settings, which attaches your build and OS so we are not guessing.

Not a release — a status note, written on the day the feature list was audited line by line against the source. Proper release notes start with the first public build.

The whole loop works. Ingest from card, cull, caption, export, transmit. Ingest copies to a primary and an optional backup destination in one pass, SHA-256 verifying every copy before a frame counts as done, so the card is read exactly once and it is safe to format when it says so.

Format support was re-verified on 2026-07-22. 17 RAW formats working out of 19 the scanner recognises, checked end-to-end against 40 real camera files. Kodak DCR and Minolta MRW do not work and are named on the formats page rather than quietly omitted.

Shipped and previously mis-documented as missing: ingest from card, advanced filtering (free text, capture-date range, ISO range, focal-length range), full zoom and pan in the loupe, and live folder watching. An internal document had listed all four as absent. It was wrong; the code was there.

Still not built: collections and virtual sets, histogram and exposure analysis, contact sheets, watermarking, export to anything other than JPEG, and saved filter or export presets.

Updated 2026-08-10: side-by-side comparison shipped and has been removed from this list.

Not shippable to the public yet, and this is what gates the beta widening: there is no licensing, activation, trial or payment code, and the auto-updater is not configured. An app you cannot update is an app whose bugs live forever on someone else’s machine, so that goes in before more people get builds.

No benchmark results. There is a harness; there are no committed results. Until there are, this project publishes no speed figures at all — the reasoning is here.