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Fog Panther v0.4.0 — Clipping Masks, Typography Panel, and More

March 15, 2026


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE



Fog Panther v0.4.0 delivers a substantial update with new editing
capabilities, an improved text workflow, and expanded non-destructive
adjustment options. This release adds clipping masks, text spacing
controls, five new adjustment layer types, a dedicated Typography
panel, and a canvas grid overlay.


New Features

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Clipping Masks — Layers can now be clipped to the alpha of the layer
below, restricting their visibility to the base layer's content. This
is essential for PSD compatibility and a standard feature in professional
image editing workflows.
Multiple consecutive layers can share the same base, and clipped
adjustment layers affect only the base content. Full PSD and FOG format
roundtrip support is included.

Typography Panel — A new sidebar panel houses all text formatting
controls: font picker with large preview, style selector, bold/italic/
underline/strikethrough toggles, text color with eyedropper, horizontal
and vertical alignment, plus the new tracking and leading controls. The
panel auto-shows when the Text tool is selected and is toggleable via
the Panels menu.

Letter-Spacing & Line-Spacing — Two fundamental text controls that were
previously missing. Letter spacing (tracking) adjusts the space between
characters; line spacing (leading) controls the height between lines.
Both are stored per-text-object and preserved in the FOG format.

Expanded Adjustment Layers — Five new non-destructive adjustment layer
types join the existing Levels, Curves, and Hue/Saturation:

  - Brightness/Contrast
  - Exposure
  - Vibrance
  - Color Balance (with Shadows/Midtones/Highlights tone ranges)
  - Invert

Each includes a live-preview edit dialog with zero-mark sliders and
snap-to-zero behavior. The Hue/Saturation dialog now features a color
spectrum on the hue slider. All types support layer masks, opacity,
blend modes, and clipping.

Grid Overlay — A toggleable grid drawn over the canvas at configurable
spacing (default 50px). The grid auto-hides at low zoom when lines
would be too close together, stays within document bounds, and persists
across sessions. Accessible from View > Grid.


Bug Fixes

---------

- Fixed double text rendering during editing (compositor and tool
  overlay both drew the same text object simultaneously)
- Fixed text position shifting between edit mode and committed rendering
  at non-100% zoom levels, caused by resolution-dependent hinting
- Fixed Convert to Pixels producing shifted or clipped glyphs by adding
  padded render surface and matching font rendering options
- Fixed potential application hang on window close caused by autosave
  timers firing during widget teardown
- Fixed GTK popover finalization warnings when switching between text
  objects in the Typography panel


UI Polish

---------

- Zero-mark indicators and snap-to-zero on all centered sliders across
  adjustment layer dialogs (Hue, Saturation, Lightness, Brightness,
  Contrast, Exposure, Vibrance, Color Balance)
- Hue slider displays the full color spectrum as a gradient
- Levels dialog shows center tick marks on input histogram and output
  gradient areas, with snap-to-midpoint on gamma and output drags
- Adjustment layer icons in the layer panel for all 8 types


Compatibility

-------------

- PSD import now reads clipping mask byte (previously parsed but
  discarded)
- PSD export now writes clipping mask state
- FOG format stores clipping, letter spacing, line spacing, and all
  new adjustment layer types with backward-compatible defaults
- Undo system correctly handles all new properties including text
  alignment, vertical alignment, auto-size, letter spacing, and line
  spacing (fixes pre-existing gap in copy_text_object_state)


System Requirements

-------------------

- Linux with GTK4 (>= 4.10)
- Available as Flatpak, Snap, .deb, .rpm, and Arch packages