Imervue 1.0.39

GPU-accelerated image viewer with non-destructive develop, RAW/HDR/panorama support, AI upscale, XMP sidecars, and a plugin system.

Imervue

Image + Immerse + View
A GPU-accelerated image viewer built with PySide6 and OpenGL

繁體中文 · 简体中文

---

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Features
• Supported Image Formats
• Installation
• Usage
• Browsing Modes
• Keyboard & Mouse Shortcuts
• Menu Structure
• Paint Workspace
• Puppet Workspace
• Plugin System
• MCP Server
• Multi-Language Support
• User Settings
• Architecture
• License

---

Overview

Imervue is a high-performance image viewer designed for smooth navigation and efficient handling of large image collections. It leverages GPU acceleration through OpenGL to deliver fast rendering for both thumbnail grids and deep zoom image viewing.

Key design principles:

• Performance first — GPU-accelerated rendering with modern GLSL shaders and VBO
• Large collection support — Virtualized tile grid loads only visible thumbnails
• Smooth experience — Asynchronous multi-threaded image loading with prefetching
• Extensible — Full plugin system with lifecycle, menu, image, and input hooks

---

Features

Core

• GPU-accelerated rendering via OpenGL (GLSL 1.20 shaders with VBO)
• Deep zoom image viewing with multi-level image pyramid (512×512 tiles)
• Virtualized tile-based thumbnail grid with lazy loading
• Asynchronous multi-threaded image loading
• Thumbnail disk cache system (compressed PNG with MD5-based cache keys)
• Prefetching of ±3 adjacent images for smooth browsing
• Undo/Redo system (QUndoStack for edits, legacy stack for deletions)

Navigation & Viewing

• Folder-based browsing and single image viewing
• Grid / List (detail) browse modes — toggle with Ctrl+L; the list view shows name, size, modified date, dimensions, and a dedicated star-rating column
• Breadcrumb path bar — clickable segments above the viewer
• Fullscreen + Theater mode (Shift+Tab hides all chrome)
• Minimap overlay in deep zoom mode
• RGB histogram overlay
• F8 OSD (file info overlay) / Ctrl+F8 Debug HUD (VRAM / cache / threads)
• Pixel view (Shift+P) — zoom ≥ 400% shows grid + per-pixel RGB/HEX
• Color modes (Shift+M) — Normal / Grayscale / Invert / Sepia via GLSL
• Image rotation (including lossless JPEG rotation via piexif)
• Animated GIF/APNG playback with frame-by-frame controls
• Slideshow mode with configurable interval
• Enhanced compare dialog — Side-by-side / Overlay (alpha slider) / Difference (gain slider) / A|B Split before/after tab with a draggable divider
• Split view (Shift+S) / Dual-page reading (Shift+D, Ctrl+Shift+D for RTL/manga)
• Multi-monitor window (Ctrl+Shift+M) mirrors current image on secondary display
• Hover preview popup — larger preview on tile hover (500 ms delay)
• Touchpad gestures — pinch-to-zoom, horizontal swipe to navigate
• Browsing history (Alt+←/→) + Random image (X)
• Cross-folder navigation (Ctrl+Shift+←/→) — jump to next/prev sibling folder
• Fuzzy search with substring highlighting (Ctrl+F / /)
• Go to image dialog (Ctrl+G) — jump by index
• Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) — fuzzy-search every menu action in one dialog
• Auto-loop at folder ends

Organization

• Bookmark system (up to 5000 bookmarks)
• Rating system (1–5 stars) and favorites
• Color labels (F1–F5 → red/yellow/green/blue/purple) — Lightroom-style flags independent of star rating
• Culling workflow (P / Shift+X / U → Pick / Reject / Unflag) — Lightroom-style 3-state flag with Filter > By Cull State and bulk delete-rejects
• Hierarchical tags — tree-structured paths like animal/cat/british, descendants searched automatically
• Tags & Albums with multi-tag filter (AND/OR boolean logic)
• Smart Albums — save rule-based filter queries (extensions, min resolution, rating, color, cull, tags…) and reapply them in one click
• Timeline view — Google-Photos-style grouping by day / month / year (EXIF DateTimeOriginal falling back to mtime)
• Similar-image search via 64-bit DCT pHash with Hamming distance threshold
• Per-image notes in the EXIF sidebar — free-text, debounced save, persisted across sessions
• Staging tray — cross-folder basket that survives restarts; bulk move/copy/export
• Dual-pane file manager — Total Commander-style two-tree view with move/copy between panes
• Sort by name, modified date, created date, file size, or resolution
• Filter by file extension, rating, color label, cull state, or tag/album
• Advanced filter — resolution / file size / orientation / modified date range
• Stack RAW+JPEG pairs — collapse shoot-in-RAW+JPEG captures into one tile; the preview is shown while the RAW stays accessible as a sibling
• Session / Workspace save & restore — snapshot current tabs, active image, selection, and filter state to a .imervue-session.json file and reload later
• Workspace layout presets — save named window layouts (geometry, dock / toolbar state, splitter sizes, active folder) via File > Workspaces… and flip between Browse / Develop / Export arrangements without rearranging panels every time
• Macro record / replay — capture rating / favorite / color / tag actions and reapply them to any selection (Alt+M replays the last macro)
• Recent folders and recent images tracking
• Automatic restore of last opened folder on startup
• Thumbnail status badges — left-edge colour strip, favorite heart, bookmark star, rating stars
• Thumbnail density — Compact / Standard / Relaxed padding
• File tree extras — F5 refresh, New Folder, Expand/Collapse All
• Drag-out to external apps — press and drag a selected tile into Explorer / Chrome / Discord

Editing & Export

• Built-in image editor (crop, brightness, contrast, saturation, exposure, rotation, flip) with non-destructive preview — edits are previewed live on canvas and only written to disk on explicit Save
• Develop panel sliders — white balance (temperature / tint), tonal regions (shadows / midtones / highlights), and vibrance in addition to the classic exposure / contrast / saturation controls; every edit remains non-destructive via per-image recipes
• Watermark overlay — place a text or image watermark with configurable position (9 anchors), opacity, and scale; applied on export without touching the original pixels
• Export presets — one-click pipelines for common targets: Web 1600 (long-edge 1600 px JPEG), Print 300 dpi (full-resolution, color-managed), Instagram 1080 (square / portrait crop at 1080 px)
• Export/Save As with format conversion (PNG, JPEG, WebP, BMP, TIFF)
• Quality slider for lossy formats (JPEG, WebP)
• Batch operations (rename, move/copy, rotate selected images)
• Contact Sheet PDF — grid of thumbnails with captions, configurable rows/columns and page size (A4 / A3 / Letter / Legal)
• Web Gallery HTML — self-contained folder with index.html, JPEG thumbnails, inline lightbox; optional copy-originals for portability
• Slideshow MP4 — render image sequences to H.264 video with configurable FPS, hold-per-image, and fade transitions (requires imageio-ffmpeg)
• External editor integration — register programs (e.g. GIMP, Photoshop) and launch them on the current image from File > Open in External Editor
• Set image as desktop wallpaper
• Copy image / image path to clipboard

Metadata

• EXIF data display in collapsible sidebar, including a star-rating strip that edits the image's 0–5 rating in place
• EXIF editor dialog
• Image info dialog (dimensions, file size, dates)
• XMP sidecar (.xmp companion files) — import / export ratings, title, description, keywords, and color labels for round-trip interop with Adobe Lightroom and Capture One (safe XML parsing via defusedxml)

Extra Tools

• Image Sanitizer — Re-render images from raw pixels to strip ALL hidden data (EXIF, metadata, steganographic content, trailing bytes); rename with date + random string; optionally upscale to common resolutions (1080p / 2K / 4K / 5K / 8K) using traditional methods (Lanczos, Bicubic, Nearest Neighbor) or AI (Real-ESRGAN) while preserving aspect ratio
• Batch Format Conversion — Convert images between PNG, JPEG, WebP, BMP, TIFF with quality control
• AI Image Upscale — Super-resolution via Real-ESRGAN (x2 / x4 general, x4 anime) with ONNX Runtime (CUDA/DML/CPU), plus traditional lossless methods (Lanczos, Bicubic, Nearest Neighbor); supports folder selection with recursive scanning
• Duplicate Detection — Find duplicate images by exact hash or perceptual similarity
• Image Organizer — Sort images into subfolders by date, resolution, type, size, or fixed count
• Batch EXIF Strip — Remove EXIF, GPS, and metadata from all images in a folder
• Crop Tool — Interactive crop with aspect ratio presets (Free / 1:1 / 4:3 / 3:2 / 16:9 / 9:16), rule-of-thirds overlay, and drag handles
• Library Search — SQLite index with multi-root scanning; query by extension, size, dimensions, filename
• Smart Albums — save & reapply rule-based filter queries
• Find Similar Images — pHash-based search with adjustable Hamming distance
• Semantic Search (CLIP) — query the library with natural language ("golden retriever in snow", "neon street at night") via a CLIP text/image embedding index; embeddings are cached to an .npz archive and queried with an O(N) cosine scan. Requires optional dependencies open_clip_torch + torch; the feature degrades gracefully when they are absent.
• Auto-Tag Images — heuristic (photo / document / screenshot / landscape / portrait) with optional CLIP ONNX upgrade
• Hierarchical Tags manager — tree-structured tag paths with bulk assign/untag
• Token Batch Rename — live-preview templates like {date:yyyymmdd}_{camera}_{counter:04}{ext}
• Export Metadata (CSV / JSON) — one row per image with EXIF, cull, rating, tags, notes
• Culling dialog — filter by Pick / Reject / Unflagged, bulk delete all rejects
• Staging Tray — cross-folder basket for batch move/copy/export
• Dual-Pane File Manager — Total Commander-style two-tree view
• Timeline View — day / month / year groupings of the current image set
• Macros — record/replay batches of rating / favorite / color-label / tag actions across selections
• Contact Sheet PDF — multi-page PDF with grid layout and filename captions
• Web Gallery — static HTML gallery with thumbnails + lightbox
• Slideshow Video — MP4 export with fade transitions
• Tone Curve editor — draggable-points RGB and per-channel (R/G/B) curves with monotone cubic interpolation; stored on the recipe so curves apply non-destructively
• Apply .cube LUT — pick any Adobe 3D LUT (up to 64³), trilinear-interpolate, and blend with an intensity slider; results persist on the recipe
• Virtual Copies — named recipe snapshots per image. Try a look, snap it, continue editing, and swap back any time — all variants live in the recipe store alongside the master
• HDR Merge — combine 2+ bracketed exposures via OpenCV's Mertens exposure fusion (with optional AlignMTB pre-alignment); writes a single merged image
• Panorama Stitch — stitch overlapping frames via OpenCV's Stitcher in panorama or scans mode, with black-border auto-crop
• Focus Stacking — fuse shots at different focus distances (Laplacian-variance focus map + Gaussian blending) for macro / product work, with optional ECC alignment
• Healing Brush — click-to-add circular spots over the image; applies OpenCV inpainting (Telea or Navier-Stokes) and saves a cleaned copy
• Lens Correction — pure-numpy radial distortion (barrel / pincushion), vignette lift, and per-channel chromatic-aberration correction with a 4-slider preview
• Map View — plot geotagged images on an interactive Leaflet + OpenStreetMap map (QtWebEngine); falls back to a coordinate list when WebEngine is absent
• Calendar View — browse the library by capture date; days with photos are highlighted on a QCalendarWidget, selecting a day lists its shots
• Face Detection — OpenCV Haar frontal-face cascade surfaces faces in the current image; naming each face persists into the recipe's extra blob
• Local Adjustment Masks — brush / radial / linear gradient masks with per-mask exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, white-balance deltas and a feather slider; stored on the recipe and blended non-destructively
• Split Toning — Lightroom-style shadow/highlight hue + saturation with a balance pivot; writes to recipe.extra and applies in the develop pipeline
• Clone Stamp — shift+click source, click destination with a feathered source-to-destination blit (complements the healing brush)
• Crop / Straighten — normalised crop rectangle plus arbitrary-angle straighten that auto-crops to the largest inner rect (no black corners)
• Auto-Straighten — Hough-line horizon/vertical detection computes the rotation to level tilted horizons or buildings, with one click to apply
• Noise Reduction / Sharpening — edge-preserving bilateral denoise (optionally luminance-only) plus unsharp-mask sharpening with amount/radius/threshold
• Sky / Background — replace detected sky with a gradient or remove the background (transparent or white fill); optional rembg/U²-Net when installed
• Soft Proof — load an ICC profile, simulate the destination gamut, and highlight out-of-gamut pixels in magenta
• GPS Geotag editor — read existing EXIF GPS coordinates and write new lat/lon back via piexif (JPEG)
• Print Layout — compose multiple images onto a multi-page PDF sheet with configurable page size (A4/A3/Letter/Legal), orientation, grid, margins, gutter, and crop marks

Paint Workspace

A MediBang-style Paint tab embedded as a third top-level tab (alongside Imervue / Modify). The workspace is its own QMainWindow with menus, a left tool strip, a context-sensitive options bar, and a tabbed dock column on the right. Multi-tab document editing — open many drawings at once, each with its own undo stack and recipe.

• Tool palette (24 tools) — Brush · Eraser · Fill · Eyedropper · Rect / Lasso / Wand / Quick Select · Move · Text · Gradient · Blur · Smudge · Pen · Clone Stamp · Speech Bubble · Rectangle · Ellipse · Line · Polygon · Crop · Transform · Hand · Zoom (single-letter shortcuts: B / E / G / I / V / T / U / R / P / S / C / Z / H, Shift+R/E/I/P for shapes)
• Brushes — pen / marker / pencil / highlighter / spray / calligraphy / watercolor / charcoal / crayon, with Size / Opacity / Hardness / Density / Blend-mode controls; pressure curve editor; brush-tip capture from a selection; import/export brush presets
• Layers — full layer panel with thumbnails, visibility toggles, drag-to-reorder, blend modes, opacity, search, vector layers, 1-bit layers, layer masks (add / from selection / invert / apply), clipping masks, and layer effects (drop shadow / outer glow / stroke); divide-layer-by-colour, gradient-map presets
• Selection — Rect / Lasso / Wand / Quick-select, with Replace / Add / Subtract / Intersect modes and Feather; Quick Mask Mode (Q) for paint-the-mask workflows; Stroke Selection dialog
• Animation — frame timeline dock with snapshots, playback, onion skin overlay, and MP4/GIF export
• Manga tools — Panel Cutter · Tone Layers · Stamp Page Numbers · Speedlines (Radial / Parallel / Burst) · Action Flash · Speech Bubble tool
• Filters — Levels · Curves · Posterize · Threshold · Auto Color Balance · Film Grain · Halftone (each with a live-preview dialog)
• View aids — Pixel Grid · Snap to Pixel · Snap to Edges · Onion Skin · Bleed Guides · Canvas Rotation (Ctrl+Shift+H to rotate CCW)
• Right-side docks (10, tabbed into one column) — Color · Brush · Layer · Navigator · Material library · History · Swatch · Reference · Histogram · Animation. Each dock is movable / floatable; use Settings > Workspace Layouts to save and recall named arrangements
• File I/O — open / save PSD (Photoshop) with layer round-trip; export to PNG / JPEG / WebP, plus multi-page comic export to CBZ or PDF; autosave snapshots with restore-latest
• Other — Image Size dialog · Liquify · Healing / Clone Stamp · per-tab undo / redo (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y) with the History dock for non-linear jumps · multiple secondary view windows (mirror / tile preview)

Press E from Deep Zoom to send the current image straight into a new Paint tab.

Puppet Workspace

A Puppet tab — the fourth top-level tab, slotted after Paint — is a from-scratch 2D rigged-puppet animation system. It does what Live2D / Inochi2D do (mesh-deformation rigs, parameters, motions, physics, expressions, pose, lip-sync, webcam face tracking) but with no proprietary SDK, no live2d-py, and a fully open .puppet file format documented at plugins/puppet/FORMAT.md.

• Workflow — Import a PNG → auto-generate a triangulated grid mesh that respects alpha → add deformers (rotation / warp lattice) → add parameters → set key forms at slider extremes → save as .puppet zip
• .puppet format (v1) — Zip container with puppet.json manifest, PNG textures under textures/, plus optional motions/*.json, expressions/*.json, and physics.json sidecars. JSON-based, humanly diffable, no proprietary binary
• Renderer — QOpenGLWidget with textured-triangle drawing in draw_order, per-drawable blend modes (normal / additive / multiply), pose-group exclusivity, ortho projection in image-space, transparency-checker backdrop, wheel zoom + middle-drag pan
• Deformers (Phase 4) — RotationDeformer (anchor + angle) and WarpDeformer (rows × cols bezier lattice). Both pure-numpy, vectorised — a 5000-vertex puppet stays at 60 FPS on CPU
• Parameter rig (Phase 4–5) — Each parameter holds a key list mapping a slider value to a partial deformer-form snapshot; runtime samples the parameter, finds adjacent keys, and per-field-lerps. Right-dock slider panel with one row per parameter and a "Set key" button that snapshots current deformer forms
• Motion playback (Phase 6) — Bottom dock with motion list + Play / Pause / Stop / Loop / scrub. Curve sampler honours all four .puppet segment types: linear, stepped, inverse-stepped, cubic-bezier (Newton-iterated time→param solve)
• Expressions (Phase 7) — Stack of additive / multiply / overwrite parameter overlays applied on top of slider / motion values
• Pose groups (Phase 7) — Mutually-exclusive drawable visibility (weapon swaps, mouth-shape variants); the renderer hides every other member of the active group
• Physics (Phase 8) — Verlet pendulum chains for hair / cloth / ribbons. Input parameter moves chain anchor; gravity + damping + per-particle springs pull the chain back to rest; tip lateral displacement maps back to an output parameter
• Live input (Phase 9–10) — Cursor drag → head-angle parameters; auto-blink on a cosine open→close→open curve; mic lip-sync via sounddevice RMS → ParamMouthOpenY (optional dep); webcam face tracking via OpenCV + MediaPipe FaceMesh → head yaw / pitch / roll + eye / mouth open (optional deps)
• Editor authoring (Phase 5) — Add Rotation Deformer / Add Warp Deformer / Add Parameter toolbar actions, per-parameter Set key button, Save As… writes the whole rig to a .puppet zip
• Mesh editor (Phase 12) — Toggle Edit mesh to drag vertices on the canvas; clicks within 8 px snap to the nearest vertex, mouse drag updates the document immediately
• Custom motion recording (Phase 13) — Record motion captures parameter values at 30 Hz while you wiggle sliders / face the webcam / let physics run; on stop, bakes the take into a Motion with one linear-segment track per parameter that actually changed (flat tracks dropped) and adds it to the document. The new motion appears in the Motions dock immediately, ready to play / loop / save
• Capture / record (Phase 11) — Capture frame… saves a PNG of the current canvas via glReadPixels; Record… toggles a 30 FPS frame loop into a GIF / WebM / MP4 via imageio (an existing project dep)

A drop-in demo lives at examples/puppet/puppet_procedural.puppet (build script: examples/puppet/puppet_procedural_example.py). Each body part is drawn procedurally with PIL primitives on its own transparent canvas — no source image, no chroma-key, no segmentation — so rotations stay artefact-free. Open it via the Puppet tab's Open Puppet… action to see a six-part chibi rig with six parameters and five motions (idle / wave / curtsy / cheer / step_right) already wired up.

System Integration

• Windows right-click "Open with Imervue" context menu (file association via registry)
• Folder monitoring with QFileSystemWatcher (auto-refresh on changes)
• Multi-language support (5 built-in languages)
• Plugin system with online plugin downloader
• Toast notification system (info, success, warning, error levels)

Recent UX Refinements

A long sweep of UX-quality work covering the Paint workspace, the image browser, and the Develop / dialog surfaces:

• Paint visual feedback — Medibang-style brush-size cursor that scales with zoom, distinct cursor icons per tool, transparency checker pattern under the canvas, drag-drop highlight overlay, per-tab modified asterisk, undo / redo toast confirmations, autosave status segment in the status bar, autosave-recovery prompt on launch surfacing snapshots from the previous session.
• Paint power-user hotkeys — Tab toggles all docks for distraction-free painting, Ctrl+Tab cycles tabs, , / . cycles brush kinds, 0–9 set brush opacity in 10% steps, Alt+[ / Alt+] step the active layer, right-click on the canvas opens a quick Undo / Redo / Select All / Deselect / Fit / 100% menu.
• Paint colour controls — transparent / no colour slot in the colour dock (default BG = transparent), proper alpha-aware fill + magic-wand so erased pixels stop bleeding into a re-paint.
• Image browser — empty-state hint on the file list, breadcrumb segments now carry full-path tooltips, Ctrl+C copies selected paths, right-click context menu (Open / Copy path / Reveal), filename label shows position (i/n) in the folder, status-bar zoom indicator click toggles between Fit and 100%.
• Tooltip coverage sweep — every interactive control on the brush / colour / fill / navigator / animation / page / pose / stamp / reference / histogram docks, the brush options bar, and the Levels / Tone Curve / Channel Mixer / AI Upscale / Batch Convert / Contact Sheet / Slideshow MP4 dialogs now carries a descriptive tooltip explaining each control's role and shortcut.
• Window-level safety — closing the Paint window with unsaved tabs prompts before discarding; tab middle-click closes (with the same dirty protection); tab tooltips show the full title, canvas size, and modified state.

---

Supported Image Formats

Raster Formats

Format	Extensions
PNG	.png
JPEG	.jpg, .jpeg
BMP	.bmp
TIFF	.tiff, .tif
WebP	.webp
GIF	.gif (animated)
APNG	.apng (animated)

Vector Formats

Format	Extensions
SVG	.svg (rendered via QSvgRenderer, thumbnails downscaled to max 512px)

RAW Camera Formats

Format	Extensions	Camera
CR2	.cr2	Canon
NEF	.nef	Nikon
ARW	.arw	Sony
DNG	.dng	Adobe Digital Negative
RAF	.raf	Fujifilm
ORF	.orf	Olympus

RAW files support embedded preview extraction with fallback to half-size processing.

---

Installation

Requirements

• Python >= 3.10
• GPU with OpenGL support (software rendering fallback available)

Install from source

git clone https://github.com/JeffreyChen-s-Utils/Imervue.git
cd Imervue
pip install -r requirements.txt

Install as package

pip install .

Dependencies

Package	Purpose
PySide6	Qt6 GUI framework
qt-material	Material Design theme
Pillow	Image processing
PyOpenGL	OpenGL bindings
PyOpenGL_accelerate	OpenGL performance optimization
numpy	Array operations and thumbnail cache
rawpy	RAW image decoding
imageio	Image I/O
imageio-ffmpeg	Slideshow MP4 export (H.264 via ffmpeg)

Optional (feature-gated; omit to disable the feature cleanly):

Package	Purpose
open_clip_torch + torch	CLIP semantic search (natural-language image queries)
onnxruntime	Real-ESRGAN AI upscale / CLIP ONNX auto-tag

---

Usage

Basic Launch

python -m Imervue

Open a specific image

python -m Imervue /path/to/image.jpg

Open a folder

python -m Imervue /path/to/folder

Command-Line Options

Option	Description
--debug	Enable debug mode
--software_opengl	Use software OpenGL rendering (sets QT_OPENGL=software and QT_ANGLE_PLATFORM=warp). Useful when GPU drivers are unavailable or problematic.
file	(positional) Image file or folder to open at startup

---

Browsing Modes

Grid Mode (Tile Grid)

When opening a folder, images are displayed in a virtualized thumbnail grid:

• Lazy loading — Only visible thumbnails are rendered and loaded
• Dynamic thumbnail size — Configurable at 128×128, 256×256, 512×512, 1024×1024, or auto
• Scroll and zoom — Navigate large collections smoothly
• Multi-select — Click-drag rectangle selection or long-press to enter selection mode
• Batch operations — Rename, move/copy, rotate, or delete selected images
• Disk cache — Thumbnails cached as .npy files with MD5-based invalidation

Single Image Mode (Deep Zoom)

When opening a single image or double-clicking a thumbnail:

• Multi-level image pyramid — Tiles at 512×512 pixels with LANCZOS downsampling
• LRU tile cache — Up to 256 tiles cached on GPU (1.5 GB VRAM limit)
• Smooth pan and zoom — GPU-accelerated with anisotropic filtering (up to 8x)
• Minimap overlay — Shows current viewport position
• RGB histogram — Toggle with H key
• Pixel view (Shift+P) — at ≥ 400 % zoom shows pixel grid and per-pixel RGB / HEX under the cursor
• Color modes (Shift+M) — Normal / Grayscale / Invert / Sepia (GLSL, non-destructive)
• Centered on load — Fit-to-window by default
• Adjacent image prefetch — Preloads ±3 neighboring images

List Mode (Detail)

Toggle with Ctrl+L. Replaces the tile grid with a sortable table:

• Columns: Preview · Label · Name · Resolution · Size · Type · Modified
• Sortable by any column (including colour label)
• Double-click a row to open deep zoom; Esc returns to the list
• Thumbnail / metadata loaded lazily off the UI thread

Split View & Dual-Page Reading

• Split View (Shift+S) — displays two images side by side in the main window
• Dual Page (Shift+D) — shows consecutive images as facing pages; arrow keys advance by 2
• Manga (RTL) (Ctrl+Shift+D) — dual-page with right-to-left reading order
• Esc returns to the previous mode (Grid or List)

Multi-Monitor Window

Ctrl+Shift+M opens a frameless second top-level window that maximizes onto your secondary screen and mirrors whichever image the main viewer is showing. The main window keeps browsing independently.

---

Keyboard & Mouse Shortcuts

Navigation (Both Modes)

Shortcut	Action
Arrow Keys	Scroll grid / Switch images (Left/Right in deep zoom)
Shift + Arrow	Fine-grained scrolling (half step)
Ctrl+Shift+←/→	Jump to previous / next sibling folder with images
Alt+← / Alt+→	History back / forward (browser-style)
Ctrl+G	Go to image by index
X	Jump to a random image
Home	Reset zoom and pan to origin
Ctrl+F or /	Open fuzzy search dialog
Ctrl+Shift+P	Open Command Palette (fuzzy-search menu actions)
Alt+M	Replay last macro on current selection
S	Open slideshow dialog
Ctrl+Z	Undo
Ctrl+Shift+Z / Ctrl+Y	Redo

Deep Zoom / Single Image Mode

Shortcut	Action
F	Toggle fullscreen
Shift+Tab	Toggle theater mode (hide all chrome)
R	Rotate clockwise
Shift+R	Rotate counter-clockwise
E	Open image editor
W	Fit to width
Shift+W	Fit to height
H	Toggle RGB histogram overlay
F8	Toggle OSD info overlay (filename / size / type)
Ctrl+F8	Toggle debug HUD (VRAM / cache / threads)
Shift+P	Toggle pixel view (≥ 400 % zoom shows grid + RGB)
Shift+M	Cycle color modes (Normal / Grayscale / Invert / Sepia)
B	Toggle bookmark for current image
Ctrl+C	Copy image to clipboard
Ctrl+V	Paste image from clipboard
0	Toggle favorite (heart)
1–5	Quick rating (1–5 stars)
F1–F5	Quick color label (red / yellow / green / blue / purple)
P	Cull: Pick (flag for keep)
Shift+X	Cull: Reject
U	Cull: Unflag
Shift+S	Open split view (two images side-by-side)
Shift+D	Open dual-page reading (manga/comic)
Ctrl+Shift+D	Open dual-page reading in right-to-left order
Ctrl+Shift+M	Toggle secondary-display mirror window
Delete	Move current image to trash (undoable)
Escape	Exit deep zoom / Exit fullscreen / Close dual/list mode

Animation Playback (GIF / APNG)

Shortcut	Action
Space	Play / Pause
, (comma)	Previous frame
. (period)	Next frame
[	Decrease playback speed
]	Increase playback speed

Tile Grid Mode

Shortcut	Action
Arrow Keys	Scroll grid
Ctrl+L	Toggle Grid ↔ List (detail) browse mode
Hover (500 ms)	Show larger hover preview popup
Delete	Delete selected tiles
Escape	Deselect all

Mouse Controls

Action	Behavior
Left Click	Select tile or open image
Left Drag	Rectangle multi-select in grid
Long Press (500ms)	Enter tile selection mode
Middle Mouse Drag	Pan/scroll in deep zoom
Scroll Wheel	Zoom in/out or scroll
Right Click	Open context menu

Touchpad Gestures

Gesture	Action
Pinch	Zoom in / out in deep zoom (anchored at pinch centre)
Horizontal Swipe	Previous / next image

---

Menu Structure

File

• New Window
• Open Image
• Open Folder
• Recent (submenu: recent folders and images)
• Bookmarks (manage bookmarked images)
• Tags & Albums
• Commit Pending Deletions (finalize undo stack)
• Paste from Clipboard / Auto-annotate Clipboard Images
• File Association (Windows only — register/unregister right-click context menu)
• Session (submenu: Save Session… / Load Session…)
• Workspaces… — save / load / rename / delete named window layouts
• External Editors… — configure executables (name, path, arguments)
• Open in External Editor — submenu listing configured editors
• Keyboard Shortcuts (customizable key bindings)
• Exit

Extra Tools

Organised into 8 function-grouped submenus:

• Batch — Batch Format Conversion · Batch EXIF Strip · Image Sanitizer · Image Organizer · Token Batch Rename
• Library & Metadata — Library Search (SQLite multi-root index) · Smart Albums · Find Similar Images (pHash) · Find Duplicate Images · Auto-Tag Images (heuristic + optional CLIP ONNX) · Hierarchical Tags · Export Metadata (CSV / JSON) · XMP Sidecars · GPS Geotag
• Views — Timeline View ▸ (by day / month / year) · Calendar View · Map View
• Workflow — Culling · Staging Tray · Virtual Copies · Dual-Pane File Manager · Macros
• Export — Contact Sheet PDF · Web Gallery · Slideshow Video (MP4) · Print Layout
• Develop (Non-Destructive) — Tone Curve · Apply .cube LUT · Split Toning · Local Adjustment Masks · Soft Proof
• Retouch & Transform — AI Image Upscale · Noise Reduction / Sharpening · Healing Brush · Clone Stamp · Face Detection · Sky / Background · Crop / Straighten · Auto-Straighten · Lens Correction
• Multi-Image — HDR Merge · Panorama Stitch · Focus Stacking

View

• Tile Size: 128×128 / 256×256 / 512×512 / 1024×1024 / Auto
• Browse Mode: Grid / List (toggle with Ctrl+L)
• Thumbnail Density: Compact / Standard / Relaxed

Sort

• By Name / By Modified Date / By Created Date / By File Size / By Resolution
• Ascending / Descending

Filter

• By Extension: All, JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, SVG, RAW
• By Color Label: All / Any label / No label / Red / Yellow / Green / Blue / Purple
• By Rating: All, Favorited, 1–5 stars
• By Tag (single) / By Album (single)
• Multi-Tag Filter… — multi-select tags or albums with AND / OR boolean logic
• Advanced Filter… — resolution / file size / orientation / modified-date range
• By Cull State: All / Picks only / Rejects only / Unflagged only
• Stack RAW+JPEG pairs (toggle) — collapse same-stem RAW/preview captures into one tile
• Clear Filter

Language

• English / 繁體中文 / 简体中文 / 한국어 / 日本語

Plugins

• Loaded Plugins (shows each plugin name and version)
• Download Plugins (opens online plugin downloader)
• Open Plugin Folder

Instructions

• Keyboard & Mouse Shortcuts (detailed shortcut reference dialog)

Right-Click Context Menu

• Navigation (parent folder, next/previous image)
• Quick actions (show in explorer, copy path, copy image)
• Transformations (rotate CW/CCW, edit image)
• Batch operations (batch rename, move/copy, rotate all)
• Deletion (delete current/selected)
• Set as wallpaper
• Compare / Slideshow
• Export (Save As with format selection)
• Lossless JPEG rotate
• Extra Tools (batch convert, AI upscale, duplicate detection, image organizer, EXIF strip, image sanitizer)
• Bookmarks (add/remove)
• Image info
• Recent menu
• Plugin-contributed items

---

Plugin System

Imervue supports a plugin system for extending functionality. See the full Plugin Development Guide for details.

Quick Start

1. Create a folder inside plugins/ at the project root
2. Define a class extending ImervuePlugin
3. Register it in __init__.py with plugin_class = YourPlugin
4. Restart Imervue

Available Hooks

Hook	Trigger
on_plugin_loaded()	After plugin is instantiated
on_plugin_unloaded()	At app shutdown
on_build_menu_bar(menu_bar)	After default menu bar is built
on_build_context_menu(menu, viewer)	When right-click menu opens
on_image_loaded(path, viewer)	After image loads in deep zoom
on_folder_opened(path, images, viewer)	After folder opens in grid
on_image_switched(path, viewer)	When navigating between images
on_image_deleted(paths, viewer)	After image(s) are soft-deleted
on_key_press(key, modifiers, viewer)	On key press (return True to consume)
on_app_closing(main_window)	Before application closes
get_translations()	Provide i18n strings

Plugin Downloader

Plugins can be downloaded from the official repository via Plugins > Download Plugins. The downloader fetches from Jeffrey-Plugin-Repos/Imervue_Plugins on GitHub.

---

MCP Server

Imervue ships with a built-in Model Context Protocol server so AI assistants (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cline, …) can call into the project's pure-logic helpers without a running GUI. The server is Qt-free and starts with one command:

python -m Imervue.mcp_server

Available Tools

Tool	Purpose
list_images	List image files in a folder (path, size, mtime) — supports recursion
read_image_metadata	Dimensions, format, EXIF, and XMP sidecar for one image
read_xmp_tags	XMP-only fast path: rating, label, keywords, title, description
convert_format	Convert between PNG / JPEG / WebP / TIFF / BMP
puppet_from_png	Build a .puppet rig from a PNG (auto-mesh + standard parameters)
puppet_inspect	Open a .puppet and return its inventory (drawables, deformers, parameters, motions, expressions, hit areas, parts, blends, physics)

Wiring it up

Claude Code (project-level) — the repository ships a .mcp.json at the root. Opening any directory under the repo with Claude Code auto-discovers the server:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "imervue": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "Imervue.mcp_server"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop / other MCP clients — add the same entry to your client's claude_desktop_config.json (or equivalent). On macOS that lives at ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json; on Windows it's %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json. Use an absolute working directory or activate the venv where Imervue is installed.

The full protocol surface and per-tool argument reference is in the MCP Server section of docs/en/index.rst.

---

Multi-Language Support

Built-In Languages

Language	Code
English	English
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)	Traditional_Chinese
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)	Chinese
한국어 (Korean)	Korean
日本語 (Japanese)	Japanese

Language can be changed from the Language menu. A restart is required for the change to take effect.

Adding Languages via Plugins

Plugins can register entirely new languages using language_wrapper.register_language(), or add translations for existing languages via get_translations(). See the Plugin Development Guide for details.

---

User Settings

Settings are stored in user_setting.json in the working directory.

Setting	Type	Description
language	string	Current language code
user_recent_folders	list	Recently opened folders
user_recent_images	list	Recently opened images
user_last_folder	string	Last opened folder (auto-restored on startup)
bookmarks	list	Bookmarked image paths (max 5000)
sort_by	string	Sort method (name/modified/created/size/resolution)
sort_ascending	bool	Sort order
image_ratings	dict	Image path → rating (1–5) mapping
image_favorites	set	Favorited image paths
image_color_labels	dict	Image path → color name (red/yellow/green/blue/purple)
thumbnail_size	int/null	Grid thumbnail size (128/256/512/1024/null for auto)
tile_padding	int	Thumbnail grid padding in px (0 compact / 8 standard / 16 relaxed)
navigation_auto_loop	bool	Wrap around when pressing Right/Left at folder ends (default true)
keyboard_shortcuts	dict	Custom action_id → [key, modifiers] overrides
window_geometry	string	Base64-encoded window geometry (saved on close)
window_state	string	Base64-encoded window state (dock / toolbar layout)
window_maximized	bool	Whether the window was maximized on last close
stack_raw_jpeg_pairs	bool	Collapse RAW+JPEG pairs sharing a filename stem into one tile
external_editors	list	Configured editors ([{name, executable, arguments}])
macros	list	Saved macros ([{name, steps[], created_at}])
macro_last_name	string	Name of the most recently saved macro (used by Alt+M)

---

Architecture

Imervue/
├── __main__.py              # Application entry point
├── Imervue_main_window.py   # Main window (QMainWindow)
├── gpu_image_view/          # GPU-accelerated viewer
│   ├── gpu_image_view.py    # Main viewer widget (QOpenGLWidget)
│   ├── gl_renderer.py       # OpenGL shader-based renderer
│   ├── actions/             # Viewer actions (zoom, pan, rotate, etc.)
│   └── images/              # Image loading, pyramid, tile management
├── gui/                     # UI components
│   ├── ai_upscale_dialog.py # AI super-resolution (Real-ESRGAN)
│   ├── annotation_dialog.py # Annotation canvas + crop tool
│   ├── batch_convert_dialog.py # Batch format conversion
│   ├── bookmark_dialog.py   # Bookmark manager dialog
│   ├── command_palette.py   # Ctrl+Shift+P fuzzy action finder
│   ├── contact_sheet_dialog.py # Contact sheet PDF export dialog
│   ├── develop_panel.py     # Edit/develop panel
│   ├── duplicate_detection_dialog.py # Duplicate image finder
│   ├── exif_editor.py       # EXIF metadata editor
│   ├── exif_sidebar.py      # Collapsible EXIF sidebar
│   ├── exif_strip_dialog.py # Batch EXIF strip
│   ├── export_dialog.py     # Export/Save As dialog
│   ├── external_editors_settings.py # External editor config dialog
│   ├── image_editor.py      # Image editor (crop, adjust, rotate)
│   ├── image_organizer_dialog.py # Image sorter/organizer
│   ├── image_sanitize_dialog.py  # Image sanitizer + AI upscale
│   ├── macro_manager_dialog.py # Macro record/compose/replay dialog
│   ├── shortcut_settings_dialog.py # Custom keyboard shortcuts
│   ├── slideshow_mp4_dialog.py # Slideshow MP4 export dialog
│   ├── web_gallery_dialog.py # Web gallery HTML export dialog
│   └── toast.py             # Toast notification system
├── external/                # External tool integration
│   └── editors.py           # Editor config + subprocess launcher
├── export/                  # Export generators (non-Qt logic)
│   ├── contact_sheet.py     # PDF contact sheet (QPdfWriter + QPainter)
│   ├── web_gallery.py       # Static HTML gallery + thumbnails
│   └── slideshow_mp4.py     # MP4 slideshow via imageio-ffmpeg
├── macros/                  # Macro record / replay
│   └── macro_manager.py     # Singleton manager + action registry
├── sessions/                # Workspace serialization
│   └── session_manager.py   # Capture / save / restore session snapshot
├── library/                 # Library helpers
│   └── stacks.py            # RAW+JPEG stack grouping
├── image/                   # Image utilities
│   ├── info.py              # Image info extraction
│   ├── pyramid.py           # Deep zoom image pyramid
│   ├── thumbnail_disk_cache.py  # Thumbnail cache (MD5 + .npy)
│   └── tile_manager.py      # Tile grid management
├── menu/                    # Menu definitions
│   ├── extra_tools_menu.py  # Extra Tools menu
│   ├── file_menu.py         # File menu
│   ├── filter_menu.py       # Filter menu
│   ├── language_menu.py     # Language menu
│   ├── plugin_menu.py       # Plugins menu
│   ├── recent_menu.py       # Recent items submenu
│   ├── right_click_menu.py  # Context menu
│   ├── sort_menu.py         # Sort menu
│   └── tip_menu.py          # Instructions menu
├── multi_language/          # i18n
│   ├── language_wrapper.py  # Language singleton manager
│   ├── english.py           # English translations
│   ├── chinese.py           # Simplified Chinese
│   ├── traditional_chinese.py  # Traditional Chinese
│   ├── korean.py            # Korean
│   └── japanese.py          # Japanese
├── paint/                   # Paint workspace (MediBang-style editor)
│   ├── paint_workspace.py   # Embedded QMainWindow assembling tools + docks
│   ├── canvas.py            # PaintCanvas (QOpenGLWidget) — pan / zoom / pointer dispatch
│   ├── document.py          # PaintDocument — layers, selection, composite
│   ├── tool_dispatcher.py   # Routes pointer events to the active tool
│   ├── brush_engine.py      # Brush dab synthesis (pressure / dynamics / random)
│   ├── layers.py            # Layer model + blend modes + masks
│   ├── undo_stack.py        # Per-tab undo / redo (snapshot on gesture commit)
│   ├── dock_panels.py       # Color / Brush / Layer / Navigator / Material / History
│   ├── animation_dock.py    # Frame timeline with playback transport
│   ├── manga_menu.py        # Panel cutter, speedlines, tone layers, action flash
│   ├── filter_menu.py       # Levels / Curves / Posterize / Threshold / Halftone
│   ├── document_io.py       # PSD load / save (Photoshop interop)
│   └── …                    # 80+ submodules: tools, dialogs, helpers
├── plugin/                  # Plugin system
│   ├── plugin_base.py       # ImervuePlugin base class
│   ├── plugin_manager.py    # Plugin discovery and lifecycle
│   └── plugin_downloader.py # Online plugin downloader
├── system/                  # System integration
│   └── file_association.py  # Windows file association (registry)
└── user_settings/           # User configuration
    ├── user_setting_dict.py # Settings I/O (thread-safe)
    ├── bookmark.py          # Bookmark management
    └── recent_image.py      # Recent images tracking

Rendering Pipeline

1. OpenGL Context — GPUImageView extends QOpenGLWidget
2. Shader Programs — Two GLSL 1.20 programs (textured quads + solid color rectangles)
3. Texture Management — LRU cache with 256-tile limit and 1.5 GB VRAM budget
4. Deep Zoom Pyramid — Multi-level tile pyramid built with LANCZOS resampling at 512×512 tile size
5. Anisotropic Filtering — Up to 8x when hardware supports it
6. Fallback — Immediate mode rendering if shader compilation fails

Thumbnail Cache

• Key: MD5 hash of {path}|{mtime_ns}|{file_size}|{thumbnail_size}
• Format: Compressed PNG (compress_level=1 — fast write, small footprint, migrated from legacy .npy which is cleaned up on first access)
• Location: %LOCALAPPDATA%/Imervue/cache/thumbnails (Windows) or ~/.cache/imervue/thumbnails (Linux/macOS)
• Invalidation: Automatic when file metadata changes

---

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Copyright (c) 2026 JE-Chen