Released 3 August 2026. The Python image-enhancement tool
reaches v2.0.0 with a unified
ProcessingConfig dataclass shared across the
CLI, API, presets, and batch runner. Quality assessment
gains two perceptual metrics: CIEDE2000 color difference,
and LPIPS similarity through the optional
chiaroscuro-forge[perceptual] extra. The
bilateral denoising mode now applies true edge-preserving
bilateral filtering. Tiling accumulates output in float32
to avoid truncation artifacts in overlapping regions, and
RGBA images no longer crash color conversion.
Two breaking changes: Python 3.9 is now the minimum
supported version, and Pillow becomes a required
dependency. API deployments must also provision a key
through the CHIAROSCURO_API_KEY environment
variable, since no default key ships in the source. The
same security pass restricts CORS to localhost origins,
adds response security headers, hardens bootstrap
authorization with timing-safe comparison, sanitizes error
messages, and rejects oversized uploads before memory
exhaustion. CI runs black, flake8, and pip-audit across
Python 3.9 to 3.13.