Backlight
  • Blog
  • Update bonanza! Backlight + Kiln + Tessera

Update bonanza! Backlight + Kiln + Tessera

A wealth of updates today, to Backlight, Kiln and Tessera.

Backlight 6.5 makes your site easier to share, safer, and more accessible. Kookaburra pages unfurl richly and load faster, site owners get new controls over search, AI training, and image alt text, and Essays are more capable and more secure. It also fixes several bugs, including structured data and Publisher download issues.

Backlight 6.5.1

  • Fixes Kookaburra download buttons ignoring disabled download source
  • Fixes editable metadata fields not resolving per-engine
  • Adds img_alt to more Pangolin engines
  • Reinstates file restrictions to only jpeg and jpg files in Backlight's Publisher
  • Fixes issue with handling underscores in URLs
  • Fixes essay presentations not rendering when only native album images are used

Backlight 6.5.0

  • Adds blog post Open Graph data to kookaburra-page unfurling
  • Adds fetchpriority="high" to kookaburra masthead images
  • Adds Display Search Button toggle to kookaburra-page navigation
  • Adds admin-configurable AI training opt-out and nosnippet controls to page engines
  • Adds Img Alt as an editable Publisher metadata field
  • Adds Essay extensions: standalone, inline templates, and XSS escaping
  • Adds Essay toolbar styling for single/static presentations
  • Kookaburra Page: Better default lineHeight for the running head title
  • Updates all yoursite/yourcompany URLs to use https://
  • Tidies authView essay creator styles
  • Narrows essay-creator public API behind IIFE
  • Moves essay creator script into static/js/essay-creator.js
  • Updates Uppy module for Publisher image uploads
  • Changes getDownloadURL() to use the correct case of the file extension to cater to uppercase JPGs uploaded via Backlight's Publisher
  • Fixes invalid JSON-LD in kookaburra single-photo structured data
  • Fixes issues in creating Backlight links
  • Fixes essay presentation loading and tidies essay__.php
  • Fixes actions overlay for single-column image presentation; big refactor of essay JS

Kiln 0.1.0-beta.7

The next public beta of Kiln is available to download from the forum.

This update improves and polishes nearly every part of the app. It feels more like a finished product and less like a work-in-progress prototype. In truth, it's both.

Use Kiln to browse, ingest, and manage your exported JPGs. Functionality is packaged into widgets, and you can assemble them into separate workspaces for specific workflows.

Use the Folder widget to browse image folders on disk.

Import images into the Catalog widget to manage them within the app. You can keep all your images in a single catalog or use several to keep them apart. For example, you might separate personal and professional photography, or landscapes, portraiture, and commercial work. Catalogs will do more as the app evolves.

In the Collections widget, assemble projects and collections from your cataloged images. A single collection can combine images from multiple catalogs.

In the Image Export widget, define multiple renditions to export as a single job. Save the job as a preset to make future exports easily repeatable.

Use the Icon Export widget to crop an image to a square, then export app icons, favicons, PWA icons, and more.

Use the Animated Export widget to combine images into an animated GIF.

Kiln is designed to be flexible to purpose, and familiar to users of Lightroom, Capture One, and similar applications. Over time, new functionality will be added via new widgets.

The beta is free to download and remains valid through the end of 2026. Future beta releases will extend that date until we reach 1.0.

Changelog and downloads

I'd like your feedback and bug reports. Please give Kiln a try and share your thoughts in the forum.

Tessera 1.4.4

Tessera 1.4.4 sands off some rough edges from the 1.4.0 release, bringing bug fixes and usability improvements to existing features. You can use Tessera for free online (visit the site and add it to your phone's homescreen to use it as an app offline), or purchase the desktop app to use desktop-exclusive features and to support development.

  • Partial Overlay
    • A new way to separate your reconstruction: keep only some of the shapes, chosen by where they sit in the image.
    • Linear mode
    • Keeps shapes on one side of the image.
    • Angle (0–360°) sets the direction.
    • Coverage sets how much of the image is kept.
    • Sensitivity sets how soft the edge is.
    • Radial mode
    • Keeps shapes near points you place on the preview.
    • Tap or drag the preview to position a point.
    • Each point has its own radius and sensitivity.
    • You can place up to 8 points. A shape is kept if it falls within any of them.
    • The Show points toggle hides the point markers.
    • Invert flips which shapes are kept and which are dropped, in either mode.
    • Works with Source, Custom, and Device bases.
  • Composite with your original photo
    • Overlay the result on your source photo, at the photo's full native resolution.
    • For Unsplash photos, Tessera fetches the full-resolution version rather than the 1080px preview.
    • Blend with source
    • Choose from 16 blend modes, including Normal, Multiply, Screen, and Overlay.
    • Set the opacity.
    • Your choices are remembered between sessions.
  • Export formats
    • SVG: overlay only.
    • PNG and WebP: overlay only, or composited onto your photo.
    • JPEG: composite only.
    • The buttons appear in the same order as the main export dialog.
  • Layout and window
    • Two-column layout: on wider screens, including tablets, the Partial Overlay modal shows the preview on the left and the controls on the right.
    • Window memory (desktop): Tessera opens maximized the first time you launch it. After that it restores your last window size, position, and maximized state.
  • And more