MIMIC - WHAT'S NEW
==================

Version 1.3.17 - HDR, Handled Properly
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HDR sources match the way they should, the Monitor
goes fullscreen again, saved LUTs say what they
expect, and Mimic joins the camera bundle.

HDR MATCHING, FIXED. Scene-linear EXR and HDR
sources no longer clip their highlights when Mimic
measures them. Bright skies, practicals and speculars
keep their gradation through the match instead of
piling onto one clipped value, so matches made on
HDR material come out sane. SDR material is
unchanged - if neither side is HDR, nothing about
your match moves.

CTRL+F9 FULLSCREEN IS BACK. The Monitor's Ctrl+F9
borderless fullscreen works again. It was being
swallowed by the global F9 and F10 shortcuts before
the Monitor ever saw it; now the Monitor gets its
key first, and plain F9 and F10 work exactly as
before everywhere else.

SAVED LUTS DECLARE THEIR DOMAIN. Every .cube Mimic
saves now states its input domain right in the
header - sRGB, display-referred - so Resolve,
Premiere and other hosts read the LUT the way Mimic
meant it: predictably, with no guessing.

NOW IN THE CAMERA BUNDLE TOO. Mimic is now also
included with the UberCam 4 + HyperCam bundle, and
existing bundle owners get Mimic too - it is
grandfathered onto your bundle license. Prefer it
on its own? Standalone Mimic stays available,
exactly as before.

MATCHING HDR TO HDR - ONE NOTE. Matching two
360-degree environment HDRIs to each other can look
washed out: an environment is a picture of light
itself, so the match carries the two environments'
brightness relationship along with their color. If
that happens, pull Strength back and let the Post
bumper's Blacks guard re-seat the shadows. HDR
footage of real subjects is not affected.

Version 1.3.6 - More Muscle, Better Manners
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Updates that actually arrive, a fourth guard character
with real muscle behind it, sliders that go where you
point them, and two keys borrowed from LightWave.

THE UPDATER, FIXED. Check for updates now does the
whole job: it downloads the update, and it does not
call the download done until the file is complete and
verified, byte for byte. If the connection drops
midway, it tries again on its own. And if a download
still cannot finish, Mimic tells you plainly what went
wrong instead of leaving you guessing.

ULTRA - A FOURTH GEAR FOR THE GUARDS. Spirit and both
Post bumper sliders, Blacks and Clipping, gain a fourth
character beyond Hard: Ultra, with roughly double the
muscle. The measured stops themselves never move -
Ultra simply holds the line harder as color pushes
toward them. Soft, Firm and Hard work exactly as
before.

SLIDERS THAT GO WHERE YOU POINT. The mouse wheel now
scrolls every slider in the natural direction. And
clicking anywhere on a slider's track brings the value
straight to your click and drags from there - no more
jumping a page at a time, no more landing somewhere
you did not aim.

TWO KEYS FROM LIGHTWAVE. F9 runs the match, exactly
like pressing MAKE MINE LOOK LIKE THAT. F10 saves your
LUT, exactly like pressing SAVE MY LUT. Hands stay on
the keyboard, eyes stay on the picture.

Version 1.3.2 - A Guarded Finish
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The finish stage gains a guard of its own, the Post
protection is rebuilt on stops measured from the film
itself, Strength past 100% no longer bends hues, and
the whole panel fits on screen again.

SPIRIT - A GUARD FOR COLOR ITSELF. First in the finish
row, with Free on its left and Restrained on its
right, Spirit watches color rather than channels: as
a color nears the film's measured limits, its chroma
is bent back progressively, so no single channel ever
clips on its own and hues never rotate. Its character
- Soft, Firm or Hard - sits beside the slider, and the
stops themselves never move. At its minimum Spirit
withdraws completely and changes nothing.

POST BUMPER, MEASURED FROM THE FILM. The Post stage
no longer protects against fixed numbers. Its walls
are the darkest and hottest values measured in the
film you are matching, and it now works through two
sliders: Blacks guards the crush end, Clipping guards
the blow-out end, each with its own Soft, Firm or
Hard character. Every launch starts both at their
suggested positions - Blacks 10%, Clipping 85% -
marked by teal ticks on the tracks. Double-clicking
either slider returns it home.

STRENGTH THAT KEEPS ITS HUES. Turning Strength past
100% now pushes the look harder without turning its
colors: the dose scales the look's displacement
instead of its channels, and in testing the hue
deviation measured 0.0000 degrees at every dose.
Stronger, never different.

CLEANER SKIES. The saved LUT is now sampled
tetrahedrally and its steepest slope is reduced,
which removes the visible steps a strong look could
stamp into smooth gradients like skies and fog.

A FLOOR THAT ALWAYS HOLDS. The baked LUT can no
longer dip below the legal black floor - not only
when the black anchor engages, but in every bake.

SCOPES THAT SHOW THE REAL STOPS. The waveform rails
now sit at the film's measured darkest and hottest
values and are labeled as measured, so the edge the
scopes show is the same edge the guards protect.

THE PANEL FITS. The full window - finish row, bumper,
status line and all - fits on screen at the default
size, with nothing clipped.

Version 1.2.4 - Anchored at Both Ends, and a Match That Checks Its Own Work
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The look is now anchored to the film's own darkest and
brightest picture values, the match measures its own
result and corrects what it finds, and short clips tell
you when they are measuring thin.

ANCHORED AT BOTH ENDS. Your deepest shadow now lands on
the film's deepest shadow, and your brightest highlight
on its brightest highlight, with the film's own
measured falloff between. Near-black and near-white
detail keeps its separation instead of piling onto one
value, and no highlight can be pushed past the
brightest value the film itself contains. The stops are
measured from the picture inside any letterbox bars,
and a lone stray pixel - one hot sparkle, one dead
spot - cannot set them.

A MATCH THAT CHECKS ITS OWN WORK. Once a look is
built, Mimic measures what it actually does to your
footage and corrects the difference it finds.
Saturation above all is now measured, never assumed -
the same machinery no longer swings one pair of clips
too colorful and the next one drained. Feed Mimic the
same clip on both sides and the result is your footage,
unchanged: the match has nothing to invent.

SHORT CLIPS SAY SO. The readout beside MEMORY LIMIT
now notes when a clip is short enough that every frame
of it is in memory - "(every frame in both clips)" -
and after a make, the done line speaks up when a side
measured from only a few frames: short clips measure
rougher, and a longer section (or the full range)
gives a more accurate match.

ALSO SINCE 1.2.1: the split wipe is framed by the
picture itself in both the preview and the Monitor, so
the line sits exactly where the two halves divide
(1.2.2) - and the floated scopes now stay on top,
riding above the Monitor while you work (1.2.3).

Version 1.2.1 - Read Once, Protected at Both Rails, and Stripes That Tell the Truth
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A big one. Mimic now reads each clip once and works
from the frames in memory, the crush limiters protect
at two rails, and a new set of instruments - a memory
readout, a scale on the scopes, and a zebra overlay on
the Monitor - shows you exactly what the look is doing.

READ ONCE, RANGE FREELY. Loading a clip reads its
frames into memory once, up front. The frame-range
sliders then simply choose from the frames already in
memory - moving a range never sends Mimic back to the
file, and every count is exact: the frames measured
are the frames the range covers, first to last. The
preview, the flipbook and the Monitor all read from
that same set, so the frame you are looking at is the
frame that was measured.

A MEMORY LIMIT YOU SET. Beside SAMPLING there is now
a MEMORY LIMIT field (1024 MB by default) and a live
readout - "104 frames in memory - ~29 MB" - so you
always know what Mimic is holding. The set stops at
whichever comes first: the frame count you asked for,
or the memory you allow. And Custom sampling counts
are now honored all the way to 3000 frames, as far as
your memory limit permits.

LIMITERS THAT PROTECT AT TWO RAILS. The Pre and Post
crush limiters now bend toward two rails: highlights
are held under a ceiling so they cannot blow out, and
blacks are held off a floor just above true black, so
they deepen in a gradient instead of falling off to
super-black. The Amount slider is the depth of that
protection, from none to full. The Highlights,
Shadows and Knee sliders still shape the one curve
both stages share, and the Post controls sit under
the finish sliders, where the Post stage works.

SCOPES WITH A SCALE. The waveform parade now carries
a 0 / 50 / 100 scale down its left edge, plus two
dashed amber markers: 99 at the highlight ceiling and
2 at the black floor - the same two rails the limiters
protect. What your picture is doing against those
rails is now something you can see, not guess.

ZEBRA ON THE MONITOR. Right-click the Monitor (or
press Z while it has focus) and turn on the zebra:
animated crawling stripes over the pixels that are
blowing out, and over the pixels crushing to
super-black. Choose Hot, Crushed or Both, and pick a
stripe color in the same menu - red over the
highlights and blue over the blacks is the classic
pairing. It answers live while you drag: push a
slider and watch the stripes grow, bring the Post
limiter up and watch them clear. A viewing aid only -
it never touches the LUT you save.

ALSO NEW SINCE 1.0.5: everything re-grades live as
you drag - the finish sliders and every limiter
control alike, with no fresh make needed - and the
scopes are on from the moment Mimic opens. Two habits
worth learning: Shift+Click on Strength, Warmth or
Fade snaps it to exact zero, and holding Alt while
dragging any slider moves it at a tenth of the
pointer's speed, for fine work.

Version 1.1.7 - The Whole Clip, True Colors, Two Limiters
----------------------------------------------------------
Three fixes and two new slider habits, all from bench
time with real footage.

EVERY FRAME COUNTS, EVEN WHEN A CLIP WON'T SAY HOW
LONG IT IS. Some video files refuse to report their
duration. Mimic used to take those at their word and
measure whatever frames it could grab - sometimes
only a handful, all from the start of the clip, which
is how a colorful film could measure out gray. Now,
when a clip's length won't report, Mimic decodes the
clip in order and spreads its full Sampling count
across the whole file, beginning to end. What gets
measured is the whole clip, not its first few seconds.

STRENGTH CAN'T FLIP A COLOR ANYMORE. Cranking
Strength used to push a strong color straight through
gray and out the other side - a red light could come
out cyan. Strength is now hue-safe: push it as far as
it goes and a color eases toward gray, but it never
crosses over into the opposite color. Red stays red,
all the way down.

TWO CRUSH LIMITERS, EACH WITH ITS OWN AMOUNT. The
gentle limiter has grown into a pair. The PRE limiter
guards the measured look before the finish sliders,
bending its extremes back inside before anything can
crush. The POST limiter stands after the Strength,
Warmth and Fade sliders - its controls sit down with
the finish sliders now - so a look you have pushed
hard by hand gets the same protection in the preview
and in the LUT you save. Each stage has its own
Amount slider - how much protection, from none to
full - and the Highlights, Shadows and Knee sliders
shape how both stages bend. Either stage can be
switched off on its own checkbox.

EVERYTHING IS LIVE NOW. The finish sliders and every
limiter control - both toggles, both Amounts, and the
Highlights, Shadows and Knee curves - re-grade the
preview as you drag, on the very next frame the
flipbook shows. Nothing waits for you to let go of a
slider, and changing a limiter no longer asks you to
make the look again: the preview on screen and the
LUT you save are figured the same way, from the same
numbers, every time.

TWO SLIDER HABITS WORTH LEARNING.
- Shift+Click on Strength, Warmth or Fade snaps it to
  exact zero - the measured look, untouched.
- Hold Alt while dragging any slider and it moves at
  a tenth of the pointer's speed, for fine adjustment
  with no coarse jumps.

AND TWO SMALL ONES: the Before/After pixel readout
card is sized to fit its numbers now, so the values
sit inside the card instead of spilling past its
edge - and the readout shows in Split view too, on
the preview and the Monitor, with a line naming the
half your cursor is on: Mine, or Mine + The Look.
The readout's After number is the exact value the
saved LUT makes of the Before pixel, figured from
the LUT itself as you hover - it follows the sliders
while you drag, too.

Version 1.1.4 - Gentler Extremes, Honest Viewers
--------------------------------------------------
Five refinements from a night at the bench with real
footage - two fix how Mimic measures, three fix how it
shows you the truth.

GENTLE LIMITER (new, on by default). A mastering limiter
for the look itself. When a bright film is matched
against darker footage (or the other way round), the
measurement could push whole bands of color past the
top - or below black - where they flattened into one
crushed value. The limiter bends those extremes back
inside on soft knees, highlights and shadows alike,
keeping the colors distinct instead of pegged. It is
the checkbox under Sampling; untick it and the result
is the raw measurement, exactly as before.

THE LAST FRAME IS IN. Sampling a clip - or a frame
range - now runs from the first frame to the actual
last one. Clips whose containers fib about their length
no longer lose their tail: if the end of a clip will
not give up a frame, Mimic steps back until one lands.

PIXEL NUMBERS THAT FOLLOW YOUR CURSOR. Hover the
preview picture or the Monitor and a small card floats
beside the pointer with that pixel's RGB numbers -
Before (your footage as it is) and After (with the
look). Judge a face, a sky, a highlight by the numbers,
not just by eye.

EVERY VIEWER NAMES ITS COLOR SPACE. The preview and
the Monitor now carry a small tag: the result is sRGB,
shown on this display - followed by the name of the
profile of the actual monitor that window is sitting
on. Park the Monitor on a wide-gamut screen and the
tag says so; what you are judging against is never a
guess.

PASTE A REFERENCE IN. Right-click the film panel:
"Paste image from clipboard" takes a still straight
off the clipboard (copy an image in your browser, or
snip one), and "Paste from a link (URL)..." brings in
a direct link to an image or video file and treats it
like any local file. (Links to watch pages are not
files - those still need a download first, as before.)

Version 1.1.3 - Frame Ranges, and Pitch-Fader Finishing
--------------------------------------------------
Two upgrades to how you aim Mimic, both about control:
tell it WHERE to look, then season the result like a
pitch fader.

FRAME RANGES. A slim range strip now sits under each
picture. Drag its left or right edge to set the window,
drag the middle to slide the whole window, double-click
to go back to the full range. The strip labels itself in
the material's own units - seconds for a video, frame
numbers for a folder or a multi-pick.

When you press the big button, Mimic measures ONLY
inside the range, spreading the Sampling count across
it - so you can match on one good scene of your footage,
or one reel of the film, instead of whatever the whole
file averages out to. The flipbooks and the Monitor
follow the same range, so what you preview is what was
measured.

PITCH-FADER SLIDERS. Strength, Warmth and Fade are now
pitch controls, like a turntable's: the centre is 0%,
which is the measured look itself, untouched. Left runs
to -100%, right to +100%, and the number at the top
right of each slider reads where you are as you drag.

- Strength: -100% takes the look off entirely, 0% is
  the exact match, +100% applies it at double strength.
- Warmth: cooler to the left, warmer to the right.
- Fade: faded to the right - and to the left is now
  Deeper, pushing the blacks down for a contrastier,
  unfaded feel.
- Double-click a slider and it snaps to the value you
  clicked, rounded to the nearest 5%.

MAKE / MAKE IT AGAIN. A first make on new material now
always starts neutral - sliders centred, the pure
measured result. Press MAKE IT AGAIN (after narrowing
a range, say) and your slider settings stay where you
left them, applied after the new measurement.

Fix: choosing a single file or folder after a
multi-pick sequence could leave the old sequence in
place. Fixed.

Version 1.1.2 - A Second Screen, and X-Ray Scopes
--------------------------------------------------
Two new windows, and both can live wherever you want them.

THE MONITOR. The new Monitor button (next to Scopes) opens
a separate window for the output: your footage and what the
look does to it. Drag it to a second display and it behaves
like a broadcast monitor.

- It follows the view buttons - Mine, Mine + The Look, and
  Split. In Split, the Monitor shows the before/after on
  the output itself, with the same wipe bar; drag the bar
  in either window and both move.
- It shows the frame at the source's real resolution, not
  the small preview size. While the preview is playing it
  keeps up with a preview copy, then swaps in the full-
  resolution frame a moment after the picture settles.
  A small tag in the corner tells you which one you are
  looking at: "preview", or the size and "full resolution".
- The Finish-it sliders re-grade it live.
- Zoom and pan work the way they do on the stage: scroll
  to zoom in around the cursor, drag to pan, and a small
  Fit pill appears while you are zoomed - click it (or
  double-click the picture) to see the whole frame again.
- Ctrl+F9 makes it borderless fullscreen on the display it
  is sitting on; ESC brings the window back.
- Its size and position are remembered between launches.

PLAYBACK CONTROL. A Pause/Play button now sits in the
preview row: pause the flipbook on the frame you want to
study. The spacebar pauses and plays from anywhere in the app -
it is the transport key, like in your editor (it only
types a space while you are actually typing in a text
box). Click any picture first (a preview panel, the stage,
or the Monitor) and the arrow keys step one frame back or
forward. Stepping pauses playback, and the Monitor swaps
in the full-resolution frame for the frame you land on.

X-RAY SCOPES. The scopes can now leave the preview.
Right-click the scopes on the stage and choose "Float the
scopes": they move into their own window that you can see
through - the desktop, or any other window, stays visible
underneath, with the traces drawn over the top.

- Drag it anywhere, resize it from any edge; size and
  position are remembered between launches.
- Right-click it to switch between waveform, histogram and
  vectorscope, to dock it back onto the preview, or to turn
  the scopes off. Closing it (or pressing ESC while it has
  focus) docks it back instead of switching it off.
- The same right-click menu sets the Fade. At Full the
  floating scopes sit solid against black, like a normal
  scope window; the lower settings (75%, 50%, 35%) turn
  the background behind the traces to glass, a little
  more at each step. The traces themselves never dim,
  and the border stays solid so the window always has
  an edge you can find and grab. Your choice is
  remembered.
- The Scopes button still cycles the modes, wherever the
  scopes are living at the time.

PICKING A SEQUENCE. "Choose a file..." now accepts a
multi-selection: Shift-click (or Ctrl-click) a run of
stills and the pictures you picked become the sequence
for that side - measured, previewed and flipped through
as one. Dropping several stills onto a panel does the
same. One video at a time, as before.

Version 1.0.5 - The Adjustable Middle
-------------------------------------
The gap between the two preview panels and the rest of the
window is now a working divider. Hover it for the up-down
resize cursor, then drag: the preview panels grow while the
preview stage gives up the same height, or the other way
around - live, as you drag.

- Double-click the divider to return to the standard layout.
- Dragging the main window's edges keeps your chosen balance.
- Your split is remembered between launches.
- The panels and the stage both have minimum sizes, so
  nothing can be dragged off the window.
- Zoomed panels keep their zoom while you drag.

Version 1.0.4 - From the Field
------------------------------
- Zoom and pan on both preview panels: scroll to zoom
  (25%-800%) around the cursor, drag to pan, double-click
  to fit. Panels now show the whole frame at any aspect
  ratio - 4:3, 16:9, 9:16, square, scope, in any mix.
- Swapping material mid-session is reliable: drop a new
  file any time, even while a job is running, and the
  viewers update without a Reset.
- Reset now returns everything to a true fresh-launch state.

Version 1.0.3 - Scopes, Reachable
---------------------------------
- The built-in scopes float over the preview. There are
  three of them - waveform (RGB parade), histogram and
  vectorscope - and the Scopes button in the PREVIEW row
  cycles through them: keep clicking it to go Off ->
  Waveform -> Histogram -> Vectorscope -> Off. One click
  per mode; click until the one you want is on stage.

Copyright (C) 2007-2026, Kelly Lee Myers, Declaration Pictures,
Liberty3D.com, Black Tiger Recordings LLC. All rights reserved.
