Today sees the release of version 2.2 of Nodality, my node based image editing and compositing application for iPads. Version 2.2 is available, free of charge, at the App Store and includes some fairly major new functionality:
High Resolution Output
Previous versions of Nodality used the same 800x800 asset for both the node widgets and the final output. Version 2.2 is based on PHImageManager and uses a 512x512 proxy asset for the widgets and a 2048x2048 asset for the final output. This makes interaction faster while editing parameters and allows for high resolution output.
New Asset Browser
A side effect of using PHImageManager is that I've had to write a new asset browser/picker. I've opened up the source code for that component and you can read about it in this recent blog post.
I'd like to think my new browser/picker is better than UIImagePickerController: users can add and remove favourites, albums are displayed persistently in a top segmented control and the scroll position of albums is maintained when navigating between them.
Twitter Support
Adding Twitter support was such a breeze, I couldn't resist implementing it. I blogged recently how to add a "tweet" button in a recent blog post.
UI Changes
The main user interface change is to highlight the relationship curves of the selected node with a "string of pearls" effect:
I tried a few different approaches and decided this was the clearest. There's a nice and unexpected visual effect when moving nodes as the "pearls" appear and disappear.
The full list of fixes and features for 2.2 is:
- Added Twitter support - images can be shared on Twitter via the 'save image' dialog
- Highlight relationships of selected node with a "string of pearls"
- Nodality now uses a 512 x 512 proxy image in the node widgets but offers a 'view high resolution' (which replaces the 'save image') option where the user can save the image at 2048 x 2048 pixels.
- Images are no longer saved in Core Data, rather the location of the image is, this reduces the size of the amount of data stored so I've upped the maximum number of snapshots stored to 100.
- Project snapshots now store their zoom level and scroll position
- Further build optimisation
- Fix bug which duplicated some nodes after reloading complex project
- Save nodes before hires render
- Favourites support in images browser. With a long hold, the user can toggle the favourite status of an asset
- Known issue: vortex distortion radius doesn't scale properly when viewing in high resolution
- Better labelling in call out when removing inputs
- Fixed bug which prevented projects based on new-user default nodes from saving properly
- Improved support for pre 2.2 assets: these are rendered in the widget with a red warning border
- Auto save before loading new snapshot
Nodality remains free of charge and available at the App Store:
