I've gone a bit overboard for Tessera's 1.1.0 update. I began with modest intent, but then one wild idea led to another, and then another, and here we are.
Custom presets
Custom presets snapshot your current editor settings so that you can recall them later.
Presets also snapshot your custom shapes, and will apply those settings even if those shapes are deleted.
Remove saved presets from the Preferences page.
Custom shape constraints
When creating custom shapes, you can now scope them specific ranges using Hue, Saturation and Luma constraints. Use the HSL sliders to assert greater control over the distribution of shapes.
For example, in these reconstructions, you can clearly see that hexagons have been limited to the yellow range, while I've inverted those same settings to force the cat to be composed of triangles.
New custom shapes: Circle, Ellipse, Glyph
Use new shapes -- Circle, Ellipse, and Glyph -- open new creative possibilities.
Using the new Glyph shapes, here's a girl comprised entirely of hearts, a snowy landscape incorporating snowflake glyphs, and cherry blossoms composed of hexagons and three separate flower glyphs.
Color separations
Use color separations to divide your images into separate color plates for screen printing, offset printing, or whatever other purpose you might have.
Here's an image, following by its C-M-Y-K plates, and then those plates composited back together in software.
Take your plates to a screen printer to make t-shirts!
You can also use the Tonal Zone Separation UI to to split-tone your images, using 2-to-10 separate color channels.
And more ...
In additional to these major features, this update also brings various interface and functional improvements. Full changelog below.
Installing the update
Tessera updates automatically.
- On Web, reload the page.
- On mobile, kill the app if open, then relaunch. Wait a few seconds, then kill and relaunch the app again. Your app should be up-to-date, but repeat if on a slow network until the updates appear.
- On desktop, Mac and Linux users should receive the update automatically. Open the app, and a popup will appear when the update has been downloaded. Windows users will need to download the updated ZIP file from Gumroad.
1.1.0 — 2026-05-21
Features
- Color separations — new Separations button in the Export modal opens four separation export flows:
- CMYK — RGB→CMYK channel separation for offset/digital print; exports 4 grayscale channel PNGs + composite in a ZIP
- Process color — simulated separation for screenprinting; 2–12 user-editable inks with auto color extraction, Light/Dark substrate presets, custom named presets, and SVG + PNG plate export
- RGB channels — splits image into R, G, B, and gray channels; exports grayscale channel PNGs + SVG plates in a ZIP
- Tonal zones — divides image into 2–10 luminance zones; each zone has a user-editable ink color with custom presets; exports PNG plates + SVG in a ZIP
- Custom shape types —
makeCircle,makeEllipse, andmakeGlyphwith tonal range support - Custom shape constraints — saturation and hue constraints for controlling shape placement, with an Invert toggle to exclude rather than include matching pixels
- Custom presets — save the current config (including custom shapes) as a named preset with a chosen icon; manage from Preferences
- Canvas fill — background color control for reconstruction: auto (dominant color from image), transparent, white, black, or custom; persisted as a preference
- Mobile sharing — JPEG and PNG share via the system share sheet on mobile (AirDrop, Files, Messages, etc.); separation plate ZIPs also share via share sheet
Fixes
- Fixed custom color picker on mobile
- Fixed mobile share to include background when sharing from vector
Other improvements
- Active location indicator in the app rail and navigation menu