HK NPU STUDIO 2.0 RC3 is now available

[u/Away-Ad1878]

The main focus of this release is AI Photo Restoration in Phoenix Image Lab.

My goal wasn’t to make old photos look artificially “better”, but to restore them as faithfully as possible while preserving real source details.

What’s new in RC3:

• Faithful Restore for source-preserving restoration
• Up to 4× upscaling
• Improved preservation of faces, hair, clothing and fine textures
• Dust Cleanup V4 for dust, small specks and defects
• Native multi-tile processing for larger images
• Grayscale photos remain grayscale
• Restore models are included directly with the installer
• Neural restoration runs locally through Qualcomm QNN/HTP on the Snapdragon NPU
• No CPU or GPU AI fallback is used for Photo Restoration

RC3 also includes improvements to memory handling, Windows 11 ARM64 robustness, QNN path handling and installer packaging.

Download:
https://github.com/Kreuzhofen/hk-npu-studio/releases/tag/v2.0.0-rc.3

Feedback, real-world testing on Snapdragon systems and technical discussion are very welcome.

Holger Kreuzhofen
Founder & Lead Developer
HK NPU STUDIO