This release is about improvements to the media browser, the template picker and the user interface of Posterino. You should notice a much shorter loading time of the media browser. Especially if you have a lot of images in your Photos library. And, I made a few small tweaks here and there to improve the user interface.

Media Browser

• Improved the load time of the media browser on opening a document.
• Scrolling performance in the image browser was a little slow. This has been fixed.
• Made the asset count of the media browser more legible when an album is selected.
• Under macOS 14 Sonoma and later the section and folder expansion state of the media browser is now persistent.

Zoom

• The zoom interaction now zooms the document live and is much faster than before.
• During a zoom interaction, an overlay shows the zoom percentage near the mouse pointer or in the centre of the view.
• Zooming using the keyboard is now much smoother.
• The zoom interaction now plays haptic feedback if the trackpad supports it.
• There are now dedicated zoom levels (5%, 10%, 25%, ...).
• At the end of the zoom interaction, the document is now automatically centered if it is moved out of view.

Template Picker

• The Template Picker now remembers the paper size you selected to create a new document.
• The paper size popups now provide a way to select new paper sizes.
• The Template Browser now gets the first focus when the Template Picker is opened. The selected template will also have focus. (macOS Sonoma)
• You can now navigate the selected template of the template picker using the keyboard arrow keys (macOS 14 and later).
• The selected template and template category are now persistent.
• The template picker now respects the user's local measurement system when presenting a default paper size.

Changes

• Improved performance when loading thumbnails for a drag and drop operation.
• The "Reduce Crop" flag in the "Tile" layout is now switched on by default.
• User-defined data such as paper sizes, aspect-ratios and templates are now placed at the top of a list.
• Made the whole online help layout a bit more compact. This is especially nice when Posterino is running on a MacBook screen.
• Made the color palettes in various color pickers be sorted by title.
• Document previews are now twice as large.

Fixes

• Fixed a case where Posterino refused to open a current document file and displayed an "Unknown document format" error instead.
• No longer changes the number of images in a document if you drag a set of images onto the frames of the document and there are more images on the drag than there are frames in the document.
• Fixed a message in the upgrade process that still referred to "Posterino 4" and not "Posterino 5".
• Updated a text message in the license system to correctly refer to past or future dates.
• When creating a document from the template "Moscow", there is no longer an error message attached to the postage stamp.
• Adding images to a document based on the template "Pop" could result in an endless cycle of image filter updates. This has been fixed.
• Exporting a document to Photos no longer adds a white border and Background > Export settings are interpreted correctly.

Fixes

• Made sure the actual user language is used for the media browser when Posterino is run under macOS Monterey.
• Cleaned up the online help search results.
• Handled typo on license system screen.

New

• The media browser now indicates errors in image folders and authorization problems with an exclamation mark directly next to the folder in question.

Fixes

• Fixed a condition where no renewal options were displayed on the license screen for a canceled and expired subscription.
• Under macOS Monterey, you can now add image folders to the media browser using drag & drop.
• Corrected a typo in the language support file which prevented a translation from actually showing.
• Handled a possible crash when performing a Tile layout.
• When using images with transparent backgrounds, the thumbnails are saved in the Posterino document file now preserve the transparency.
• Added missing „social media“ template category in template creator.
• Handled a typo on the upgrade screen of the license window.

New

• When exporting your document, Posterino now explicitly handles the download of full-size images during document rendering. This step is relevant if full-size images are saved on iCloud and only thumbnail versions of the images are available on your local Mac. This gracefully handles the situation that Posterino no longer appears to „hang“ during document export when it is actually working very hard downloading your images.

• The search field in the online help is back. The search results are now delivered right within the online help window. The search results also list templates related to the search term. You can click a template search result to reveal the corresponding template in the template picker.

• The search field in the menu bar under Help > Search is now connected to the online help and delivers the same results as a search in the online help window.

• A couple of articles in the online guide are updated and connected to corresponding inspector panel.

Fixes

• A situation is fixed were saving a document with a calendar took two seconds longer than necessary.

• A calendar events authentication issue under macOS 14 Sonoma is handled.

• There has been a noticeable response time in image object selection when using image masking. This is gone now. Resulting in an improved performance of image drawing for images using effects.
• Reworked the way document preview images for Finder are generated. The process is now way more performant and no longer needs background execution.
• The Metadata layer now extracts image metadata from image files from Finder.
• The tiny round corner visible on images on the display is now gone. Image corners are now sharp and pointy.
• Handled a situation where action execution during graphic object setup could lead to a crash.

Fixes

• The color picker now works properly together with the system color panel under macOS Ventura.

New

• This update adds language support for the new features of version 5 for Dutch, French, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.
• Added a new template called „Yearbook“ featuring editable text captions.
• Added a menu command to save the last exported image without actually re-rendering the document. See File > Save last export.

Changes

• Updated the calendar template preview images to reflect the upcoming year.

Fixes

• Some images could appear to be empty when using the template Pittsburgh. This has been fixed.

Auto-Crop

Posterino 5 allows you to automatically crop a set of images to their subject. To the face, the upper body, or to the main part of the image. All this, with the click of a button. Or - using the new set of auto-crop enabled templates - with no click at all. Just drop your images onto a template and the crop is done.

• If Auto-Crop is enabled for an image, the placeholder icon is no longer just a small camera icon but a symbol hinting to the kind of crop that is applied.
• The Auto-Crop behavior can be controlled via a corresponding inspector panel. Settings exist for the document as a whole and for each individual image.
• A "crop warning" sign appears on an image in case an auto-crop subject, like the face, could not be found on the image.
• Auto-Crop enabled templates get a little "crop" icon below the title to make them easy to spot.

To learn more, go to How to apply Auto-Crop in the online help.

Subject Masking (macOS 14+ only)

On top of the auto-crop feature you can add subject-masking to rid an image of its background. In the most simple case, this makes the background transparent.

• The image inspector panel now features a „Mask Subject“ property to control the masking behavior.
• The image placeholder - the small camera icon - is now longer opaque. This allows the layer behind the image to be visible if parts of the image are transparent. This way images can now have visible backgrounds.
• Subject masking builds on a feature of macOS 14 and later. On previous versions of macOS, subject masking it not available.

Color Palettes

With the image background out of the way, there is room for something new. Something colorful. Posterino 5 comes with a set of color palettes to choose from.

• The color picker has been updated, so you can now page through a set of color palettes.
• There is now a new inspector group called „Document“ holding global document wide settings. Global color schemes can be added here.

Template Power

The new features taken together - the auto-crop, the subject-masking and the color palettes - give Posterino templates a new level of power. Grab a bunch of images, one of the new templates and experience a new stage of Posterino automation and flexibility.

For example, to create a collage yearbook, you just need to drop a set of portrait images onto the right template and you are done. Done with crop, masking, background, placement and all. And in case your image file names correspond to the names of the students, you don't even have to touch the captions.

• Posterino now indicates "new" templates relative to the previous version of Posterino installed on your Mac.
• New templates are marked with a green "New" badge in the template picker and appear under a dedicated "New" category.
• Since the Subject Masking feature is not available on all version of macOS, please note that templates using this feature are not available on versions of macOS 13 or earlier.

Face-Mosaic

Finally, as the sugar on top, some fun.

Based on the beloved Mosaic-Crop action of Posterino, using the new features outlined above and a bit of algorithmic magic, you can create something really special in Posterino: A Face-Mosaic.

How does this work? Basically you take a set of portrait images - from one or from different persons - and you chose a layout for your document. Then you apply the Face-Mosaic action which will align the faces from the individual images to build one face stretching over all the images of your document. The Face-Mosaic action can be controlled using a corresponding inspector panel.

To learn more, go to How do I create a Face-Mosaic? in the online help.