Product Updates August 2026, part 2 of 4

What shipped in August 2026, part 2 of 4

• 23 releases published between 2026-08-20 and 2026-08-27. This is an archive page — the current release notes live on the main product updates page.
• 2026-08-27 — The Fabricator Moves to a Clear 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 Ladder: ULTRA is now a true 4K premium tier for both single-part and multi-panel generation at 8 CR. Its provider request, cost accounting, preflight detail label, and member-facing price now describe the same high-resolution product. FORGE COLOR is now the dedicated 6 CR palette workflow, completing the simple SPARK 2 · FORGE 4 · FORGE COLOR 6 · ULTRA 8 ladder. Automatic multi-panel routing remains included in each selected workflow price.
• 2026-08-27 — Forge Color and Multi-Panel Workflows Become Automatic: FORGE COLOR is now a distinct 4-credit engine choice instead of a modifier shared by multiple engines. It keeps the Solid and Shaded finish choices, palette controls, reference-image support, No DNA workflows, and exact physical-mask delivery in one predictable route. FORGE and ULTRA now detect two or more painted art zones automatically and pack the complete job into one coordinated 4K generation at the normal selected-engine price. Members no longer need to find, enable, or pay an add-on for Multi-Panel. Small multi-panel masks now receive several whole-sheet alternatives inside one provider result, followed by measured local selection and exact inverse mapping. Heroes stay complete in the largest compatible panel, supporting regions remain decorated, protected cutouts stay empty, and the private checker scaffold is removed before delivery.
• 2026-08-27 — Image Lab Keeps Every Operation in View on Desktop: Image Lab now presents Prep, Upscale, Remove BG, Vectorize, and Slice together in one equal-width desktop tab row. Desktop operators no longer need a horizontal scrollbar to reach an operation, while the compact swipeable rail remains available on phones and tablets.
• 2026-08-27 — Recovery, Mobile Production, and Account Workflows Level Up: Paid AI work now has a dedicated Jobs center with durable status, recovery links, settlement details, and reload-safe visibility. Image Lab also adds a guarded subject-isolation batch queue with an up-front total-credit boundary, bounded concurrency, per-image retry or refund state, and recovery after a refresh. Subject Isolation now validates the returned transparency before delivery and routes extreme long, narrow images through a purpose-matched background-removal engine. Duplicate requests reuse the same operation and every terminal failure settles exactly once instead of leaving a blank result or ambiguous charge. Saved projects now include a recoverable Trash, Profile includes reconciled credit usage and refunds, and the home screen can resume the newest recoverable project directly. Account-scoped local state is cleared safely when users change accounts on a shared device. SVG generators now hand off units and source metadata to Production Bridge, generator recipes and learning progress can sync by explicit opt-in, and the learning library has one shareable search across tutorials, manuals, tips, FAQs, glossary, and help content. Mobile and keyboard workflows received a broad usability pass: camera capture is available for proof and image tools, short-landscape messaging keeps the composer usable, pricing and Coin Designer use complete keyboard patterns, and signed-out navigation no longer flashes a member identity. Reticle machine pages can show permissioned, settings-backed output proof, while quote requests preserve a private two-step draft and client intake supports resumable multi-file uploads with strict type, size, deadline, and safety checks. Subscription recovery now restores same-period entitlements idempotently, payment-failure notices remain transactional rather than marketing, and lifecycle messages wait for confirmed delivery before being latched as sent. New-member welcome credits now settle once even when account setup retries in the background. The account and admin histories show one authoritative grant without changing a member’s real balance.
• 2026-08-27 — Placement and Finish No Longer Refund Complete Artwork: A complete reference subject that sits low, high, or toward one end of a part is now delivered instead of refunded. The reference check treats centering and the reserved outer band as placement preferences and reports them as advice, while the real manufacturing failures -- artwork amputated by the cut, missing anatomy, or a subject crossing the physical boundary -- still refund exactly as before. Members who had deliberately asked for artwork placed low were among those affected. Asking for a photographic or shaded finish no longer counts as missing content. Engraving output is flat by design, so a request for shading the format cannot produce is no longer scored as though the artwork left something out. The check still confirms every subject, attribute, and count you actually asked for. Fabricator no longer starts a quality retry it cannot finish. The remaining attempt budget is read at the moment the decision is made, so a job that has already used its attempts reports its real result instead of failing on an attempt limit and discarding images that were already generated.
• 2026-08-26 — Advanced Fabricator Opens With Every Tool in the Left Dock: A first desktop Advanced-mode session now opens with the complete tool set in the left dock from 1024px through ultrawide layouts. Operators who prefer the top toolbar can move the tools there with the clearly labeled location control, and that explicit browser preference is honored on reload and later visits. Simple mode keeps its familiar toolbar, while collapsing the left dock no longer changes the saved location preference.
• 2026-08-26 — Spark Keeps Every Valid Narrow-Part Alternative: Spark now recognizes all four visibly separate ornament alternatives when the image engine draws a long, narrow result taller than its planning row. Fabricator maps each complete returned envelope back to the exact part without stretching its cutouts, then selects the strict-safe alternative with the least protected-space intrusion instead of overlooking valid choices. Correct white-on-black relief candidates on this same guarded Spark route are now checked against both the returned chroma census and the independent post-composite engraving coverage. A clean cutout-preserving result is no longer mislabeled as inverted merely because one census lands just below its historical threshold.
• 2026-08-26 — Spark Preserves Long Cutouts Before Clipping: Long, narrow Spark ornament generation now measures large edge-open slots and notches and gives their exact positions and depths to the image engine before it draws. The generated candidates preserve those openings instead of closing or shortening them and relying on the final mask to amputate misplaced artwork; when several candidates are usable, Fabricator selects the one with the least pre-clip intrusion into protected space.
• 2026-08-26 — Reference Heroes Fit the Mask and Color Adds Shaded Finish: A single style-less reference on FORGE or ULTRA now recovers the complete generated hero before exact-mask delivery, measures the hero itself instead of its uploaded photo or card background, and seats the largest complete 70%, 85%, or 100% alternative inside the physical part. This prevents clipped anatomy, tiny PMAG figures, shifted registration, and private checker or magenta guide pixels from reaching members without changing styled, multipart, banner, border, seam, Panel, or Spark workflows. Color Mode now offers Solid and Shaded finishes before FIRE. Shaded uses crisp palette-color highlight, midtone, and shadow planes suitable for separate LightBurn color layers while continuing to forbid gradients, airbrush, soft shading, and photographic texture.
• 2026-08-26 — Color References Stay Inside the Part and One-Run Recovery: Registered style-less Color Mode reference boards no longer refund a complete, safely contained hero because an AI reviewer calls its measured placement off-center. Missing anatomy, physical-edge contact, and cropping still stop delivery; the exception applies only to the one-reference FORGE and ULTRA candidate-board workflow. When a style-less Color Mode reference board has several complete mask-safe alternatives, Fabricator now deterministically delivers the largest measured-safe hero. The artistic tie-breaker can no longer choose the smallest candidate even though a larger complete candidate fits the same part. Part Templates now establish their contained one-piece placement before the automatic Art Zone checkpoint is saved. A fully prepared template can no longer remain blocked at FIRE as an unplaced part. Part Templates now arrive with a real rasterized Art Zone immediately. Members no longer need to press Fill Outline after loading a vector template, and FIRE can no longer be blocked by an empty mask that merely appeared present in Layers. 8K Ultra Export now converts the provider raster into a real PNG before saving or serving it. Direct, reopened, and merged PNG downloads can no longer contain JPEG bytes under a misleading .png filename. Style-less ULTRA and FORGE Color Mode now size full-body references against the widest aspect-matched area that is provably inside the physical part, instead of inheriting a narrow full-height rectangle that made PMAG heroes tiny. Three guarded sizes ride one paid candidate board; retained small scaffold copies are removed in favor of the larger generated hero, and private checker or magenta registration marks are rebuilt as clean member-safe background. Reference review now requires typed identity, exact class counts, and concrete source-residue evidence. Real duplicate subjects, retained photo cards, interfaces, and printed labels still stop a run; PMAG checker or palette-edge geometry can no longer be mistaken for a source photograph and purchase a needless retry. Equivalent names for uncommon human figures—such as Santa Muerte, Grim Reaper, skeletal figure, or religious figure—now share one broad count class. A complete one-of-one subject can no longer be retried and refunded merely because the reviewer rephrased its label. Repeated delivery of the same paid FIRE now replays its original completed or refunded outcome instead of purchasing another provider image. A deliberate new FIRE receives a fresh request ID, and reconnect recovery surfaces the original terminal result instead of a false already-exists failure.
• 2026-08-23 — Cleaner Guides, Showcase Sharing, and Social Previews: Related resource cards across comparison and workflow guides now open the correct tutorial, tip, manual, puzzle, and business-software destinations instead of missing pages. Public showcase links remain shareable while search discovery now favors entries with substantive curated descriptions, and the magazine stippling template has a properly sized dedicated social preview.
• 2026-08-23 — Private Messages for Reticle Red Operators: Verified members can now find other operators by display name and exchange private, real-time messages with unread counts, read receipts, conversation history, and a responsive phone-ready inbox. Message safety controls include member-level opt-out, block and unblock, per-message reporting, server-enforced rate limits, and participant-only access. Account exports now include conversations, and account deletion removes direct-message threads.
• 2026-08-22 — Work Resumes Exactly, Shop Quotes Get Paid, and Mobile Production Gets Safer: The signed-in homepage now opens the newest saved workspace itself, while editable Coin, Relief, and Magic Edit drafts sync across devices. Case-study samples also survive signup and arrive on the promised tool canvas. Accepted shop proposals can now request a 50% deposit or remaining balance through the operator's connected Stripe account. The client portal shows the secure payment action and both sides update from server-confirmed payment records. Pricing now offers subscriber top-ups and live cost examples, checkout waits for server-confirmed credit fulfillment, onboarding can be intentionally postponed, and returning members keep their intended destination after sign-in. Fabricator restores the exact retry plan after interruption, Image Lab adds reusable recipes and durable stage pins, and generators can send SVG work directly into Production Bridge with machine constraints attached. Proof Burn submissions now issue a trackable receipt, partner applications have a private status page, direct Laser Ready purchases open from the selected item, and resource/support pages carry clearer provenance and diagnostics. Burn Card protects and restores unsaved work, supported production files share with correct file types, long shop sessions can keep the screen awake, and community copy/share actions have reliable fallbacks and versioned rewards.
• 2026-08-22 — Fabricator Generates Heroes Directly in the Largest Safe Area: Hero Style DNA, reference heroes, and free-text hero requests now generate one finished composition directly in the exact painted mask. Fabricator first selects the largest connected material part, then supplies the provider with the measured uninterrupted safe area and its required center. Every primary hero contour must remain inside the server-measured target with at least 15% clearance on all four sides. Holes, slots, notches, cutouts, smaller parts, and the overall canvas center are explicitly excluded from primary-hero placement.
• 2026-08-21 — Trust Center and Clearer Proof Boundaries: A public Trust Center now links pricing, credits, failed-job handling, privacy, ownership, production handoff, support, real operator burns, and workflow examples in one place. It clearly distinguishes permissioned first-party proof from independent third-party reviews.
• 2026-08-21 — Fabricator Keeps Paid Work, Controls, and Results in the Right Place: When a member accepts Spark for a long narrow ornament-only part, the strongest registered nonblank ornament now survives the final pre-clip spill check and is delivered through the exact physical mask with a quality advisory. Long and narrow Spark jobs now use one fixed-1K square image containing four candidate compositions, then return the strongest safely registered exact-clipped result. The candidate workflow never purchases a quality reroll. Run Plan now recommends Forge’s 2K ornament workflow before a long narrow Spark ornament FIRE. Keeping Spark is an explicit one-attempt best-effort choice, so accepting the lower-detail tier cannot silently create a second provider generation at Reticle Red’s cost. Fabricator now allows only one canvas-changing paid operation at a time and verifies the account, source, side, session, and request owner again after every network step. An older hidden result can no longer overwrite newer work, and paid selection jobs can be recovered after navigation without buying them twice. Mobile FIT now uses the visible area above the live command sheet, desktop workflow tabs wrap before account controls can cover them, short landscape layouts remain scrollable, and LEFT DOCK reserves real workspace width with a compact collapse control. Simple Export now leads with Result QA and the recommended machine download while optional artwork formats and follow-on tools stay out of the primary decision path. Run Plan and spend confirmation also summarize retained refinements before FIRE. Paid preview billing copy now reflects the actual server charge, charged preview results survive an accidental dismissal, native controls keep their arrow keys inside MORE, browser zoom shortcuts remain browser-owned, and terminal FIRE failures use one accessible recovery surface. Fabricator libraries, material previews, pending jobs, and canvas mutations are now scoped to the signed-in operator. Switching accounts in a shared browser clears the previous operator’s local Fabricator state and ignores late responses from the prior session.
• 2026-08-20 — Fabricator Paint and Result Recovery: Fill Outline now reads the true corner background on fitted black or white silhouettes, even when the part occupies most of the canvas edges. It paints the physical object instead of its surrounding negative space and continues to preserve holes and cutouts. Result QA now stays fully visible beside the optional LEFT DOCK instead of opening underneath it. Brush and Eraser controls now name stroke diameter in canvas pixels and explain that it does not change physical Part Size or export size. A failed FIRE now uses one persistent recovery card instead of stacking the same failure again as a toast. Uncertain deliveries keep a direct Open Armory action, while insufficient-credit attempts use the Credit Wall.
• 2026-08-20 — Fabricator Composes Inside the Physical Mask: Every Fabricator engine now receives the painted magenta area as the exact physical material it must compose inside. Scrolls turn around openings and concavities, complete motifs resolve at cut edges, and no workflow asks an engine to paint a rectangular ornament canvas for the server to crop afterward. If meaningful artwork lands outside the physical mask, normal workflows make one mask-specific correction attempt. Single-attempt workflows and unresolved retries refund instead of saving a cropped fragment. The same protection now applies to Color Mode. Packed multi-panel boards and ornament-only narrow-part boards expose only exact physical material to generation. Holes, slots, notches, gutters, padding, and exterior space remain protected non-material from the first provider image through final export.
• 2026-08-20 — Fabricator Protects Every Cut Before Generation: Fabricator now marks every outer void, opening, hardware cutout, gutter, and padded band with a server-owned yellow-and-white protected-space checker before sending work to any image engine. The prompt explicitly forbids artwork in those areas, and the checker is never included in the customer result. Long and narrow Forge jobs with a recognizable subject or reference image now generate one finished composition directly in the exact mask, with hero centering and safe clearance supplied before the provider begins drawing. The selected design is still hard-clipped to the original physical mask, so every uploaded outline, slot, hole, and disconnected panel remains the manufacturing authority across black-and-white and Color Mode workflows.
• 2026-08-20 — Vector Stacker Gets a Production-Safe Workflow: SVG imports now preserve shifted viewBox origins, merge same-color geometry, reject executable content, and fall back to a complete raster trace whenever CSS, strokes, transforms, or other semantics cannot be reproduced safely. Valid artwork is no longer partially imported without warning. Every paid Vector Stacker action now has one durable request identity. Interrupted tabs recover the original result or confirmed failure without starting a second generation, while refund and uncertain-connection states stay explicit instead of promising money was returned before settlement. Kerf, bridge tabs, registration holes, and unlocked-aspect projects now resolve in physical millimetres. True joined bridges protect nested islands, puzzle compensation follows the stated fit direction, and SVG, DXF, ZIP, nested sheets, and LightBurn projects share the same registration contract. Engraves stay attached to their physical face instead of becoming extra material, and production nesting now respects material groups, fixed sheet sizes, rotation, multiple sheets, operation pairing, and engrave-before-cut ordering. Touch painting, fill, palette undo, large edit history, layer reordering, stale cut settings, Brightness controls, Easy-mode save and export access, warning feedback, and mobile safe-area sizing now behave consistently across the editor.
• 2026-08-20 — Forge Composes Complete Heroes Inside Narrow Parts: When a prompt-only Forge request calls for a recognizable character, animal, vehicle, object, or emblem on one long narrow part, Forge now separates the supporting scenery from four isolated subject options in one hidden square board. The server places the selected complete subject inside the safest measured area before applying the original part outline and every opening. A subject option that touches its hidden tile boundary is rejected before selection, preventing an already-cropped helmet, body, animal, vehicle, or object from being mistaken for a complete hero after the final clip. The workflow still purchases only one Forge image and never buys a quality reroll. If final review cannot confirm a complete recognizable requested subject inside the physical material, the run refunds instead of delivering decoration without the requested hero.
• 2026-08-20 — Forge Preserves Complete Narrow-Part Borders: Forge now maps the complete border returned for a hidden narrow-part candidate back onto the uploaded part before applying the final exact mask. This removes the extra inward crop that could shave off top, bottom, and end details while every pixel outside the physical outline and its openings remains transparent.
• 2026-08-20 — Forge Re-Aligns Narrow Ornament Candidates: Forge now measures the alternatives actually returned for a long or narrow ornament board, ignores an unexpected extra alternative, and re-aligns the selected design before applying the exact part mask. This keeps flowing ornament registered to the uploaded outline even when the image model shifts or slightly resizes its hidden candidate rows.

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