Shadowforge 21 — Cool & Warm, Safer Shader Previews and More

Hey everyone, Michel here.

Shadowforge 21 is here, and this update continues the work on expanding the Image tools while also making sure these effects don't get in the way of actually using the editor.

The biggest new addition is Cool & Warm.

New: Cool & Warm Shader

A new Cool & Warm tool has been added to the Image menu, directly underneath Pixel Halver.

The idea is pretty simple:

Dark colors can be pushed toward cooler versions of their existing colors, while lighter colors can be pushed toward warmer versions.

Instead of simply putting blue over the shadows and orange over the highlights, the shader works with the colors already present in the artwork.

You can independently control how strongly the shadows are cooled and how strongly the highlights are warmed.

Normal, Gradient & Tunnel Modes

Cool & Warm isn't limited to applying the effect evenly across the entire image.

There are now three modes:

Normal applies the Cool & Warm treatment normally across the artwork.

Gradient lets the temperature effect follow a gradient, with additional controls for its direction and softness.

Tunnel uses a radial/tunnel-style distribution, allowing the temperature effect to change across the image using radius and softness controls.

This gives Cool & Warm uses beyond basic color correction. It can also be used for lighting, atmosphere, environmental coloration and more stylized pixel-art effects.

One-Shot Shader Preview System

A significant part of today's work has also been about performance and safety.

Shader previews should not need to recalculate an entire canvas every single frame just because an effect window happens to be open.

Cool & Warm therefore now uses a one-shot preview system.

You choose your settings first.

Nothing is processed while you're moving sliders or selecting modes.

When you're ready, press PREVIEW ONCE.

Shadowforge generates the preview once, caches the result, and then simply displays that result instead of continuously running the shader again and again.

Changing a setting invalidates the old preview, allowing you to generate another one when you're ready.

Large Canvas Protection

During development, we found another important performance problem.

Even if an effect only runs once, asking Shadowforge to suddenly generate another full-resolution copy of a very large canvas can still cause a noticeable freeze.

So Cool & Warm's preview system now has additional protection for large projects.

The preview can use a reduced working resolution instead of unnecessarily processing something like an entire 4K, 6K or 8K canvas just to show what the effect is going to look like.

The full-resolution operation is reserved for when you actually choose to Apply the effect.

Apply Means Apply

The workflow is now deliberately separated:

PREVIEW ONCE = safely see the result.

APPLY = commit the full-quality effect.

CANCEL = leave the artwork untouched.

Opening the window itself does not mean Shadowforge has permission to start processing the image.

That distinction is something I'm going to continue using as the Image tools become more powerful.

Continuing the Image Tool Expansion

Shadowforge's Image menu has grown considerably over the last few versions.

Gradient Color, Tunnel Vision, Pixel Halver and now Cool & Warm are becoming a much larger part of what you can do directly inside Shadowforge without having to export your artwork into another program just to experiment with it.

There is still plenty more work to do, especially around performance, selections and making these different systems cooperate properly.

Shadowforge 21 is another step toward that.

Thank you to everyone using Shadowforge, testing these builds and reporting problems when something doesn't behave correctly.

Welcome to Shadowforge 21.