Chroma Beta 1 Development Update

Beta 1 was the first version of Chroma that left our machines. It was rough in places, and it was supposed to be. The goal was to prove the foundation: open an image, grade it intelligently, refine it by hand, export it.

What Beta 1 established

• The first working UI systems: the editing surface, panels, and adjustment controls
• Smart Grade in its first usable form, producing real starting points on real images
• The core editing pipeline, non-destructive from the start
• Early RAW support work, laying ground for the deeper pipeline now in Beta 2
• First rounds of performance work on preview rendering

What testing told us

Early testers were generous and blunt, which is the most useful combination. Smart Grade impressed on some images and missed on others, and the misses taught us more than the hits. The interface had the right shape but too much friction. Exports were dependable; speed was not always.

Beta 1 is still the current public build, and plenty of it is being reworked in the Beta 2 cycle. That was always the plan. It was a foundation release, and the foundation held. Everything now in development builds directly on what this milestone proved.