Changelog
Every feature, fix, and improvement since launch.
June 16, 2026
New ASCII Magic v1.0 is here v1.0
- Dither Engine — a full dithering pipeline: 11 algorithms (Bayer 2/4/8/16, Floyd–Steinberg, Atkinson, Stucki, Sierra Lite, halftone, line & noise), 16 retro palettes (C64, Game Boy, CGA, PICO-8, NES, risograph…), contrast/threshold/scale controls and animated matrices.
- Recipes — one-tap curated looks. Click a recipe to load its image and style, then tweak any setting, export, or share the exact recipe as a link or code.
- Color controls — a new Color panel: tint with 11 blend modes (multiply, screen, overlay, soft-light, hue, saturation, color-burn/dodge…) and grayscale for instant grading or duotone, plus build-your-own custom dither palettes and chroma modes (standard / luminance / per-channel RGB).
- Background library — a new drawer to browse the full set of 70+ built-in backgrounds, filter by type, and drop any straight into the editor. Faster thumbnail gallery with hover-preload so picks load instantly.
- Crop & Rotate — aspect-ratio presets plus drag-to-reposition.
- Advanced Blur — directional, radial and progressive blur with a draggable angle control.
June 11, 2026
New What's New, right inside the editor v0.21
- A What's New card now appears in the bottom-left of the editor whenever the tool ships an update — dismiss it and it won't show again until the next release. Reopen it any time from the menu.
- Tool updates are now versioned, starting at v0.1.0. The card always highlights the latest release; "View all updates" brings you here.
May 26, 2026
New Landing v2 — full rewrite + go-live
- Brand-new landing page at ascii-magic.com positioned as a free image & video shader tool across all 13 styles. SEO/AEO-optimised copy, 17-question FAQ with structured data, custom 404, llms.txt for AI search engines.
- Fully responsive — 4 breakpoints, fluid clamp typography, mobile hamburger menu, horizontally scrollable effect pills with overflow dropdown, multi-state copy buttons (loader → tick → fade) for Context.md and email.
- Asset optimisation pass — hero MP4 re-encoded with faststart (3.5MB → 1.9MB), CTA video swapped for compressed (-46%), Cross + Post-FX PNGs replaced with JPGs (-98% each). First-paint budget cut roughly in half.
- PostHog autocapture now enabled across landing and editor — 30+ event types tracked anonymously, including the full export funnel.
- Returning-visitor redirect: anyone who's used the editor before bounces straight to /app. First-time visitors get the landing.
?show-landing=1 override and a "Landing page" link inside the editor menu let returning users get back to the marketing view whenever they want.
May 22, 2026
New New homepage + sharper video backgrounds
- Brand-new homepage at ascii-magic.com — image & video stylizer positioning across all 13 styles (pixel art, ASCII, mosaic, voxel cubes, halftone, glitch, retro VHS, and more)
- The tool itself moved to /app. First-time visitors see the homepage; once you've used the editor, you skip straight to it on your next visit
- Expanded FAQ + structured data so search engines can show rich snippets
- Fix: uploaded videos now render with a sharp background at
bgBlur=0 or bgMode=Original — the bg used to upscale from the per-character sampling buffer, which made it look soft. Sampling stays cheap; bg is now drawn from the full-resolution frame.
May 19, 2026
New Privacy Policy + small cleanups
- Full Privacy Policy page at /privacy — covers exactly what's tracked, what isn't, and confirms images and videos never leave your browser
- Privacy link added to the hamburger menu (shield icon)
- Removed the Disco Randomize ↻ button — wasn't pulling its weight; pattern is now deterministic per render
- Removed the Sparkles ✨ post-processing effect — barely used
May 13, 2026
New Disco — mirrored-tile Style with placeable lens flares v0.20
- New Style: Disco ✨ — renders the image as a mosaic of beveled mirror tiles. Each tile is its own little facet with a vertical gradient (bright top, dark bottom) so the surface reads as a disco-ball-style faceted mirror, not a flat colour grid
- Brightness comes purely from the source image — bright regions get a soft additive halo so lit areas bleed/glow rather than reading as flat grey
- Uniformity slider (0–100) controls per-tile brightness variation: max = identical tiles, low = some tiles brighter, some darker
- Randomize ↻ button rerolls the per-tile pattern so you can hunt for a shimmer arrangement you like
- Lens Flares panel (the existing Lights pad, repurposed when Disco is active) — toggle on to place up to 4 lens flares anywhere on the canvas. Each flare carries its own Size, Intensity, Blur, and Rotation sliders
- Sparkles ✨ — a new optional post-FX that scatters small twinkling 4-point glints across the rendered output. Works on top of any Style, pairs especially well with Disco for the full disco-ball look
May 10, 2026
Improve Crop transition + About redesign v0.19
- Opening Crop now flies the canvas image into the editor with a shared-element transition — single image traveling, no static copy left behind
- Save grows the cropped image naturally from the crop rectangle's exact position to the new canvas size — no squish, no pop
- About modal — animated cloud video hero (lazy-loaded on open, torn down on close so it never sits in memory), Instrument Serif title with a soft glowing sparkle, looser line-height for the description
- About modal rebuilt as a fluid flex container — outer card and inner body card, padding/spacing pushes content naturally instead of fighting absolute coordinates
- New letterpress separator effect — a black hairline with a 1px white highlight below it, applied across the whole app: panel sections, hamburger menu, About modal dividers
- Removed the dividers between Post-Processing rows (the section is already grouped, the lines were noise)
- Lights perf-note now fades out smoothly instead of jerking off
- Cube Style hides the Font Size slider (Cell Size handles it)
May 10, 2026
New Cube — voxel-style 3D Style v0.18
- New Style: Cube — renders the image as isometric 3D cubes packed in a true hex tessellation (no overlap, no gaps)
- Cell Size slider (4–60 px) drives cube edge length directly, independent of font size
- H. & V. Spacing sliders for tessellation override (100% = perfect hex packing)
- Top Shade / Light Side / Dark Side sliders for per-face brightness control
- Outline slider draws cube edges
- Flip Light toggle swaps lit / shadowed sides
- Brightness drives colour, not size — dark areas stay full-cube, just darker
- Inspire now rotates through Cube as one of its variations
May 1, 2026
New Analytics & Event Tracking v0.17
- PostHog analytics integrated — tracks every meaningful interaction without collecting personal data
- Events tracked: Style changes, Lights on/off, Animation toggle & preset, all 13 Post-FX toggles
- Export funnel: every export click, completion, and failure tracked by format (PNG, JPG, GIF, MP4)
- Upload tracking: method (drag-drop, file picker, paste), file type, and size
- Inspire clicks and gallery background selections tracked with style/font-size context
- Mask, Crop, and feedback submissions also tracked
April 28, 2026
New Styles, Lights, and a Slider Rework v0.16
- 5 brand-new shape Styles — Lines, Diagonal, Cross, Diamond, and Mixed (different glyph per cell)
- Block Characters promoted to its own Style
- New raster Styles — Pixel Art, LEGO, Mosaic, Braille
- Mosaic Tile Shape — Square / Wide / Tall
- Point Lights — up to 4 placeable light sources via 2D pad UI; lit chars glow with hot-white centre + soft falloff and auto-bloom
- Per-character Bloom — chars actually glow now, even mid-animation (real shadow-blur)
- Per-character Chromatic Aberration for that lit-up RGB-fringe look
- Sliders rewired so each does one job — Coverage = pure dither, Density = brightness threshold, Brightness/Contrast = colour only. No more ghost characters when you tweak brightness.
- Animation presets — Wave (true 2D ripple from centre), Cascade L→R / R→L / T→B (now correctly directional), Reveal (typewriter sweep, cell by cell), Pulse
- Animation speed widened to 1–8 seconds
- Animated ASCII now works on videos (per-frame timestamp piped through video loop)
- Mask + large font sizes — 3×3 region sampling, no more jagged edges
- Video export no longer freezes playback when finished
- UX cleanup — "Render Mode" renamed to "Style", "Brightness" renamed to "Characters", Cross-Stitch retired
- Style picker now stays put when you swap demos in the gallery
April 27, 2026
Improve Faster Loads, Lighter Page v0.15
- Demo gallery videos now use static thumbnails instead of streaming MP4 metadata for the grid
- Demo videos re-encoded — total drops from 8.2 MB to 860 KB with no visible quality loss
- Demo images re-compressed at higher efficiency — folder shrinks ~30%
- Initial Inspire preload reduced from 6 demos to 1 — page weight on first paint cut sharply
- Open Graph image switched from PNG to JPG (897 KB → 212 KB) for lighter social unfurls
- Static assets now serve with proper Cache-Control headers so repeat visits hit the browser cache
April 1, 2026
New About Modal v0.14
- About page accessible from hamburger menu with version, platform, and credits
- Social links to Twitter/X and Instagram
- 3D tilt entrance animation matching other modals
March 31, 2026
Improve Bug Reports & Changelog v0.13
- Bug reports now capture file name, type, and size (MB)
- Source resolution included — image dimensions or video resolution + duration
- Send button shows ✓ Sent state (green) and auto-closes after 1.4s; shows Retry on failure
- Custom thin scrollbar for technical details block
- Changelog page at ascii-magic.com/changelog with full timeline since launch
- Clean URLs via vercel.json — /changelog works without .html
March 30, 2026
New Hamburger Menu & Feedback System v0.12
- New hamburger menu with animated transition to X on open
- 3D tilt entrance animation on dropdown menu and modals
- Theme switcher (dark/light) moved into menu with ripple animation
- Bug reporting with auto-captured technical details — browser, OS, screen, connection, active effects, render settings
- Feature suggestion form
- Loading spinner only appears after 1 second threshold
March 28, 2026
Backgrounds Gallery v0.11
- Browse 34 curated backgrounds with real video thumbnails
- Gallery mode swaps background image only, Inspire changes full parameters
- Loading spinner for gallery and Inspire with image preloading
- Optimized demo images: PNG to JPG, resized to 1400px
March 26, 2026
Post-Processing Effects v0.10
- 12 stackable effects: Vignette, Scan Lines, CRT Curvature, Chromatic Aberration, Bloom, Film Grain, Glitch, RGB Split, Blur, Pixelate, Halftone, Film Dust
- Inline intensity sliders that appear when an effect is toggled on
- All effects stack and render in real-time on the canvas
March 25, 2026
Export Hardening v0.9
- Fixed 19 export bugs from comprehensive stress testing
- MP4 export QuickTime compatibility fix
- GIF export timeout and size limit improvements
- Smart resolution dropdown — only shows safe export scales
- Disabled MP4 export when H.264 is unavailable (no silent failures)
- Video codec selection with multiple H.264 profile fallbacks
March 24, 2026
Color Overlay & Blend Modes v0.8
- Color overlay with picker, opacity control, and 11 blend modes
- Blend modes: Multiply, Overlay, Screen, Color, Hue, Saturation, Luminosity, Soft/Hard Light, Color Burn/Dodge
- Panel sections reorganized for clarity
March 23, 2026
Crop & Rotate Editor v0.7
- Full-screen modal crop editor with original image preview
- 8 drag handles, 90° rotation, rule-of-thirds grid
- Undo/redo support for crop transforms
- High-res export scaling: 1x to 4x resolution
- Frosted glass backdrop effect
March 22, 2026
Inspire Me System v0.6
- 31 curated demo images + 3 demo videos with hand-tuned presets
- "Inspire Me" button loads a random demo with optimized settings
- Image preloading for instant switching
- backgrounds.supply attribution with toast notification
March 21, 2026
Shape Masking v0.5
- Draw freehand, rectangle, or ellipse masks to limit ASCII rendering
- Invert mask toggle, adjustable brush size
- Show/hide mask overlay with info tooltip
March 20, 2026
Themes & Render Modes v0.4
- Light/dark theme toggle with ripple transition effect
- Edge Map and Dot Matrix render modes
- 5 blend modes: Normal, Overlay, Color Dodge, Screen, Lighter
March 19, 2026
Animated ASCII & GIF Export v0.3
- Static images animate with randomized character cycling
- Animation speed, intensity, and randomness controls
- GIF export with progress bar
- MP4 animation export with duration and frame rate selectors
- 60fps option for smooth animations
March 18, 2026
Video Support v0.2
- Drop any video for real-time ASCII rendering
- Full playback controls: play, pause, stop, seek, speed
- MP4 video export with H.264 encoding
March 17, 2026
Launch v0.1
- Image to ASCII art with real-time preview
- Character presets: Standard, Dense, Minimal, Blocks, Binary, Custom
- Font size, coverage, edge emphasis, brightness, contrast controls
- Background modes: Blurred Image, Original, Solid Black, Transparent
- PNG and JPG export
- Drag & drop, paste, or upload any image
- Mobile responsive layout
- SEO optimized with OpenGraph meta tags
ASCII Magic © 2026. All Rights Reserved.