v2.1.20 - 8 January 2026
Happy New Year, everyone! We’re starting 2026 with a big batch of quality-of-life improvements and fixes. At Narrative, we don’t just focus on headline features. We also pay close attention to the everyday requests photographers send us. As photographers who spend hours in software ourselves, we know that lots of small details add up and can be the difference between a frictionless experience and a frustrating one. So if there’s anything we could do to make Narrative better for you, no matter how minor it may seem, we’d love to hear it!
🏋️♀️ Improvements
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Faster Face and Image Assessment scanning.
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Changing the photo renaming formula inside a project now updates your default formula.
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Added an Original filename option when renaming images.
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After moving or copying photos, you can open the destination folder directly in Finder or Explorer.
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You can now see which folder a photo lives in from the Shot Info panel.
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Hover over truncated text in Shot Info to see the full content.
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Partially open and barely open eyes now have a less harsh color-coding.
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The account you are signed into now appears in the account menu and on major paywall pages.
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When applying multiple AI Presets in a single Ship, we now point you to the Snapshots panel in Lightroom so you can switch between them.
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Removed the Choose Your Project Type screen. To start editing immediately, click SHIP + EDIT as soon as you enter a project.
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Pressing Return now confirms primary actions in modals.
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Cleaned up some outdated modals.
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Added text cursor and hover states to Personal AI Preset names on the Preview screen.
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Removed the ‘waiting room’ for slower machines.
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Preferences are now accessible from the account menu in the top right.
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AI Preset nomination text is clearer and easier to understand.
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Improved guidance when Shipping photos to a Lightroom catalog that already contains those images.
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Switching to a new sort order now automatically moves you into that view.
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White text links on colored backgrounds now have hover states.
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The number bar has been visually polished.
🔧 Fixes
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Right clicking with multiple images selected in Grid View no longer clears the selection.
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Removed duplicate Undo and Redo entries from the Edit menu.
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Plugging in a memory card on the ingest screen no longer triggers the ingest suggestion pop up.
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The ingest suggestion pop up no longer appears when removing a memory card.
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Fixed an issue where scene skipping shortcuts stopped working during metadata scanning.
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You can now use + and - when naming a Lightroom catalog in the Ship modal.
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Fixed a filter clearing issue that could leave no image selected.
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Selecting an Image Focus score filter no longer deselects Images with no Focus Score.
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Clearing the blue highlight from the AI Preset dropdown is easier. Viewing the Preview page now clears it.
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Fixed an issue where selecting all AI First Pass filters could only be cleared via the ‘All’ checkbox.
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The onboarding tutorial now animates more smoothly.
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Fixed issues where Image Assessments could become inconsistent when switching projects.
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Resolved a conflict with some editing apps related to XMP sidecar formatting.
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You can now apply multiple AI Presets with the same name when Shipping to Lightroom.
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AI Preset application is more resilient when one or more files have issues.
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Portrait aspect ratio images are now much less likely to be chosen as project cover images.