Changelog

What's new in Ritchie Bros. Creative Automation.

    • Added Proof-point creatives. When a proof point (date, dollar figure, or named auction) is set for a row, the headline demotes to a small all-caps label and the proof point becomes the dominant line — Edmonton-style.
    • Added Status badge + CTA pill. Two new copy slots: a short ≤8-char badge (top-left, e.g. SOLD / NEW) and a ≤16-char CTA pill rendered under the copy.
    • Added Per-pair dark backdrop. Each headline row can opt into a dimmed canvas with a feathered spotlight on the equipment — same Edmonton-style treatment, picked per row. Auto-falls-back to photo with a reason chip in Review when the source image's bbox isn't usable.
    • Added Event-campaign A/B. When the campaign type is event (or any proof point looks like a date), each pair fans out a dark_hero + photo_bright variant so Meta data can pick the winner. Operators can override the A/B by typing an explicit dark or photo for a row.
    • Added Hero auto-pick. Single-unit hero photos historically out-perform fleet shots ~2× on the same audience — uploads now classify each image and the system prefers single-unit shots in the sample pipeline when both are available.
    • Added Specificity warnings. Review surfaces a "warned" filter for creatives whose copy lacks specificity (no $, year, month, state/province, or auction+place phrasing) so you can prioritize the actionable subset.
    • Improved Composition rules. On tall canvases (1080×1920, 300×600, 160×600) the lockup + copy block never overflows the lower 1/3 — auto-shrinks type before reducing the logo so the brand stays readable at every step.
    • Improved Full wordmark on every size. The 970×100 and 320×50 banners no longer fall back to the orange RB monogram — the full "Ritchie Bros." lockup now renders at every approved size for brand consistency.
    • Improved Tighter top inset. The padding above the lockup (between the orange top bar and the logo) is now half a RB monogram instead of a full monogram, so the headline sits higher on top-anchored layouts. Logo↔text breathing room and the scrim taper below the copy are unchanged.
    • Fixed Status badge no longer silently drops. The layout now reserves vertical space above the logo for the badge, so it renders cleanly on every size that supports it instead of being hidden when the headline starts close to the orange ribbon.
    • Fixed Backdrop input respected on event campaigns. Typing an explicit dark or photo for a row on an event campaign now renders that single variant for the row instead of being overridden by the auto dark_hero + photo_bright fan-out. Blank entries still get the full A/B.
    • Fixed Dark-backdrop spotlight is rectangular. The dark-mode spotlight cutout was an ellipse inscribed in the bbox, leaving the four corners dark — long dozers and trailers got clipped by the multiply layer. Swapped to a rounded-rectangle spotlight that fully contains the bbox while keeping the existing feathered edge.
    • Fixed Dark mode auto-falls-back to photo when the spotlight would overlap the headline. Tall portrait sources cropped to a short banner used to render white-on-black-on-lit-photo and lose contrast. The renderer now demotes to photo with a reason logged into Review's backdrop chip tooltip.
    • Fixed Backdrop chip honesty. When a dark variant auto-fell-back to photo, Review used to show "dark" on a file that actually shipped as photo. The chip now reflects the resolved mode and a tooltip exposes the requested mode plus the fallback reason.
    • Improved Text readability, round 3. Dropped stroke outlines in favor of a lighter, longer scrim taper that fades cleanly into the background image.
    • Improved Full-canvas scrim on tight banners. When the safe text zone is small, the gradient now spans the full canvas so headlines stay legible.
    • Improved Brand feedback, round 2. Refined the orange-RB lockup clear-space, polished the gradient treatment, and reduced logo height by 30% across all canvases.
    • Improved Smarter text placement. Headlines now route around the hero subject — not just away from canvas edges — using a normalized safe-bbox and pre-projection padding.
    • Fixed Equipment occlusion veto. Text zones that would cover equipment in the source image are now rejected outright.
    • Improved Brand feedback, round 1. Logo crops are now tighter with sub-pixel padding so anti-aliasing isn't clipped on small renders.
    • Fixed Logo / headline alignment in the cutout-mode fallback path.
    • Fixed Email casing. Login, signup, and forgot-password now lowercase the email so capitalization can't lock you out.
    • Added Library page. Every past Generate run is now persisted and browsable from the top nav — open any run straight in Review.
    • Added Auth, end-to-end. Invite-only signup via PocketBase, email-verification gate, self-serve password reset, and verification emails wired through the deploy.
    • Improved Rebrand to Ritchie Bros. 2026 guidelines. The whole UI now matches the new brand foundation — typography, color ramp, and orange as a 10–15% accent.
    • Improved Generate → Review hand-off. Generate output now flows straight into Review, and the "Download as zip" action moved to Review where it belongs.
    • Improved Faster image generation. Parallel rendering across canvases with bounded concurrency cuts large runs down dramatically.
    • Added Bbox-fit cropping, text placement, and text treatment across all approved sizes.
    • Added Rich VLM metadata. Source-image metadata is now extracted at upload time and used by both the renderer and MagicFix.
    • Fixed Unreadable black text on dark or mixed-luminance backgrounds.
    • Fixed Cross-plan logo-variant axis picking the wrong variant in some canvases.
    • Added Generate UI is live. Upload source images, pick sizes, and render branded banners straight from the browser — followed by a post-review bug-fix pass.
    • Added MagicFix. Gemini-powered regeneration in the review viewer, with a glassmorphic UI and cache-busted thumbnails so the new render shows up immediately.
    • Added Local review viewer for sample_output renders — the foundation for the Review page.
    • Fixed MagicFix prompt context and aspect-mismatch cropping when the model returned an unexpected aspect ratio.
    • Added Initial release. The first version of the creative automation pipeline, aligned with the Ritchie Bros. 2026 brand guidelines and using per-image logo variants chosen from per-zone luminance analysis.