RapidRAW: vanhemmat versiot ja versiohistoria

I am excited to bring you a new update that is all about image quality, precision color science, and complete workflow freedom. This release tackles core photography fundamentals from the ground up, introducing a camera-accurate Kelvin white balance engine with interactive area sampling alongside an edge-aware guided filter architecture. By replacing conventional blurs with this smarter system, adjustments like clarity, shadows, highlights, and a completely re-engineered whites slider now preserve delicate micro-textures without ever creating unnatural halos around high-contrast edges.
Beyond raw rendering quality, this update brings massive quality-of-life upgrades to your daily editing routine. You can now cull shoots in record time using dedicated Pick and Reject flags, tailor the sidebar to your exact habits with fully reorderable and collapsible panels, and take advantage of Apple’s Neural Engine-powered RAW 9 decoder on macOS. I'm also introducing RapidRAW Cloud for effortless, remote GPU generative cleanups without local hardware demands, balanced by a one-click AI-Free Mode for photographers who want a purely traditional, distraction-free editing workspace.
New Features
Kelvin White Balance with Area Sampling
This update completely overhauls how the app handles color temperature, turning white balance into a precise, camera-grade tool. In earlier versions, adjusting temperature and tint relied on rough guesswork sliders and a basic eyedropper that merely sampled a single screen pixel, often leading to uneven or unnatural color shifts.
RapidRAW now reads the white balance recorded by your camera in RAW files and lets you toggle into true Kelvin temperatures, ensuring that light adjustments behave just like real-world daylight or warm indoor lamps.
image
Alongside this, the eyedropper tool has been completely redesigned: as you move across the canvas, a floating preview card displays live color readings, and you can now click and drag a box over any neutral gray or white area to smooth out image noise and calculate the correct balance automatically. Together, these changes make neutralizing unwanted color casts and dialing in the perfect photographic mood both effortless and true to life.
image
Guided Filter for Edge-Aware Adjustments
Fine detail enhancements no longer produce distracting halos. In place of standard blurs, clarity, structure, dehaze, shadows, and highlights now run through an edge-aware filtering system that cleanly separates broad lighting changes from sharp object contours. When lifting dark shadows or taming highlights, the software captures original surface micro-textures and feeds them back into the picture. Textures like skin, fabric, and foliage stay crisp and authentic rather than muddying together.
──────────────┬──────────────────────┬──────────────────
Original │Before (Visible Halos)│After (Edge-Aware)
──────────────┼──────────────────────┼──────────────────
LC_None │LC_High_Old │LC_High_New
──────────────┴──────────────────────┴──────────────────
Rewritten Whites Slider
Previously, the whites slider simply boosted areas with a flat multiplier, which easily blew out highlights and erased delicate textures. Now, it applies a smooth, targeted curve that brightens the lightest tones while directly reinjecting fine surface details and mid-level textures back in. As a result, bright areas like clouds, snow, or white clothing gain extra brilliance and pop without turning into flat, featureless patches.
Pick and Reject Flags
Culling large shoots is now significantly faster thanks to a dedicated flagging workflow. You can mark favorites as "Picked" or bad takes as "Rejected" using quick keyboard shortcuts, visual badges, or bottom bar toggles. Rejected photos automatically dim in your library, making it easy to filter them out of view or delete all of them at once with a single confirmation.
image
Apple RAW 9 Decoding and Denoising Support
Mac users can now tap directly into Apple’s advanced RAW 9 en

RapidRAW has officially crossed 10,000 GitHub stars and over 610,000 downloads. What started as an empty project folder on my laptop has grown into an incredible global community of photographers and open-source contributors. To celebrate this milestone, I wrote a deep-dive reflection on the entire journey, covering the early prototypes, the late-night shader experiments, and the path forward. You can read the full retrospective on the blog.
Alongside this milestone, version 1.6.4 delivers one of the most technically challenging updates yet: rebuilt highlight recovery capable of reconstructing clipped color channels. This release also reworks the shader pipeline to introduce true exposure adjustments, adds a responsive masonry grid layout to the library, includes faster crop and pan canvas shortcuts, offers a neutral grey canvas mode, and squashes several backend bugs across export and EXIF handling.
New Features
Highlight Recovery
To be 100% honest with you: highlight recovery was always one of the weaker spots in RapidRAW. I spent so many hours trying to get it right in the past that I started telling myself it was just "too hard" to solve nicely. But over the last few days, I had a strong urge to finally crack it, and I'm honestly blown away by how well it works now. RapidRAW can now reconstruct clipped highlights (> 1.0) using the remaining color channel information.
The results speak for themselves:
Example 1 (Shot by Wojciech Wolas):
─────────────────────┬─────────────────────
Before │After
─────────────────────┼─────────────────────
highlights_old │highlights_new
─────────────────────┴─────────────────────
Example 2:
───────────────────────┬───────────────────────
Before │After
───────────────────────┼───────────────────────
highlights_old_2 │highlights_new_2
───────────────────────┴───────────────────────
Example 3:
───────────────────────┬───────────────────────
Before │After
───────────────────────┼───────────────────────
highlights_old_3 │highlights_new_3
───────────────────────┴───────────────────────
Alongside this, I reworked parts of the shader pipeline. To reflect how the math actually works now:
- The Exposure slider (previously EV Shift) is now a true Exposure slider that cleanly pulls down overexposed highlights.
- The old exposure slider has been renamed to Brightness. It runs after the tonemapper, letting you tweak perceived image brightness without introducing clipping.
New Crop, Pan & Zoom Shortcuts
It might seem like a small detail, but this is a massive workflow improvement. You no longer have to open the crop tool and drag the corner handles every single time:
- Ctrl + Mouse Wheel: Quick crop in/out
- Ctrl + Drag: Pan inside the crop frame
- Shift + Drag: Straighten / rotate (as before)
This makes reframing and checking compositions super fast and intuitive.
Library Navigation
The Sources panel now includes an active folder navigation header, letting you quickly move back and forth between directories.
image
Masonry Library Grid
Added a new thumbnail view mode that arranges photos into a clean masonry layout, utilizing all available screen space.
image
Alongside this change, the Original Ratio thumbnail mode is now enabled by default.
Neutral Grey Canvas
You can now toggle the canvas background to a neutral middle-grey in the settings. This helps avoid optical contrast illusions and color bias while editing.
image Core Improvements
- Export Subfolders: Added support for exporting to the original folder with a custom subfolder.
- Smoother Vibrance: Rewrote the vibrance algorithm to behave much more smoothly and predictably.
- 16-Bit TIFF Export: Added support for exporting images in 16-bit TIFF format.
- Quick Filter State: The expanded/collapsed state is now remembered across sessions.
- EXIF & Metadata Fixes: Fixed several bugs that caused EXIF data to go missing & metadata now shows up properly inside the Albums view.
- Under-the-Hood: Squashed a bunch of bugs for better overall stability.
What to D

RapidRAW v1.6.2 brings major new capabilities to your creative workflow. This release adds native Camera Tethering for remote studio shooting, an intelligent Focus Stacking engine, built-in Analog Film Emulations in a scene-referred color pipeline, and a rewritten deconvolution-based sharpening engine alongside numerous stability and usability fixes.
New Features
Focus Stacking
RapidRAW now includes an intelligent Focus Stacking tool alongside the panorama stitcher and HDR merge features. Focus stacking lets you combine multiple exposures captured at varying focus distances into a single image with incredible front-to-back sharpness and extended depth of field. This is essential for macro, product, and landscape photography, where physical optical limits prevent keeping the entire scene in focus.
────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────
Reorganized Context Menu│Focus Stacking
────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────
Context Menu │Focus Stacking Dialog
────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────
Camera Tethering (macOS & Linux)
RapidRAW now supports native Camera Tethering for studio, portrait, and product photography workflows. Connect your camera over USB to shoot directly into your workspace.
tethering
What you can do:
- Real-time Live View: Stream live view with composition guide overlays, 90° rotation, and horizontal flipping.
- Camera Controls: Adjust Shutter Speed, Aperture, ISO, White Balance, and more directly from the sidebar.
- Automatic Color Grading: Automatically apply a chosen preset to incoming shots the moment they are captured.
- Ghost Overlay: Overlay your previous shot on top of the live view to keep framing and perspective consistent across shots.
- Instant Ingestion: Captured photos automatically save into your current library folder and can open straight in the editor.
Important: System Requirements & Dedicated Builds
Because tethering relies on the system library libgphoto2, it is provided as a separate build (_tethering) for macOS and Linux.
To use tethering, you must install libgphoto2 on your system first, then download the corresponding _tethering package from the tethering release downloads table below.
Built-in Analog Film Emulations
RapidRAW now comes with built-in, scientifically modeled analog film emulations out of the box, powered by the open-source spektrafilm project by Andrea Volpato.
image
Highlights & Color Pipeline:
- True Scene-Referred Pipeline: Unlike standard display-space LUTs that clip highlights and crush shadows, these emulations run in a scene-referred V-Log color pipeline directly inside the GPU shader. This ensures natural highlight roll-off, rich organic color response, and deep tonal transitions.
- Non-Destructive & Adjustable: Fine-tune the look with the intensity slider, combine it with tone curves, or stack it with film grain and halation for an authentic analog aesthetic.
Special thanks to Andrea Volpato for creating spektrafilm and making these spectrally accurate film profiles available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
Rewritten Sharpening Algorithm
The sharpening tool now uses a multi-scale deconvolution algorithm with built-in halo suppression and directional edge smoothing. It enhances fine micro-details cleanly across the frame without creating harsh ringing artifacts or amplifying shadow noise.
Drag & Drop Image Move System
You can now easily organize your library by selecting multiple images and dragging them directly into folders or albums.
image Core Improvements
- Full EXIF Metadata Preservation on Export: Exported images now preserve and embed full camera capture and EXIF metadata.
- Tablet & Touch Interface Restoration: Restored side panel layouts and controls on tablet and touch screen devices.
- Inpainting Auto-Cropping: Added automatic canvas cropping for generative AI inpainting workflows.
- Stability & Bug Fixes: Resolved various issues and refined overall application performance.
What to Download
─────────────────────

This release introduces several new editing tools and workflow refinements to help make your photo editing and library management a bit smoother. I have focused on expanding the creative options with a preset intensity slider and a global hue adjustment, alongside adding helpful navigation features like quick bottombar filters and folder sorting. Behind the scenes, I worked on addressing background indexing issues and ensuring folder image counts update correctly. Finally, I am glad to make RapidRAW accessible to more users by adding support for Korean and Traditional Chinese.
New Features
Preset Intensity Slider
Sometimes a preset is a bit too strong or too subtle. To give you better control, I have added an intensity slider that appears when you select a preset, allowing you to fine-tune its overall strength to better fit your photo:
image
Hue Slider
There's a new global hue slider in the color adjustments panel. This new control allows you to shift the overall color tones in your image for quick color corrections or creative adjustments:
image
Quick Bottombar Filters
To save you from constantly switching screens, I added quick filter options directly to the bottombar. Now you can easily filter your current image list without needing to navigate back to the main library settings:
image
Folder Sorting
To help keep your workspace organized, you can now customize how the folder tree sorts your directories. You can choose the ordering option that works best for your library structure:
image
New Languages
To make RapidRAW more accessible to photographers worldwide, I have added translation support for two new languages:
- Korean
- Traditional Chinese
Core Improvements
- Improved the reliability of folder and album image counts so they remain accurate.
- Resolved an issue where background indexing could get stuck in an infinite loop.
- New cameras are supported.
What to Download
─────────────────────┬────────────┬──────┬───────────────────────────────────────
OS │Architecture│Format│Download Link
─────────────────────┼────────────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────
Windows │x64 │.exe │RapidRAW for Windows
─────────────────────┼────────────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────
macOS (Apple Silicon)│ARM64 │.dmg │RapidRAW for macOS ARM
─────────────────────┼────────────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────
macOS (Intel) │x64 │.dmg │RapidRAW for macOS x64
─────────────────────┼────────────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────
Ubuntu 22.04 │x86_64 │.deb │RapidRAW for Ubuntu 22.04
─────────────────────┼────────────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────
Ubuntu 24.04 │x86_64 │.deb │RapidRAW for Ubuntu 24.04
─────────────────────┼────────────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────
Android │ARM64 │.apk │RapidRAW for Android ^{(Experimental)}
─────────────────────┴────────────┴──────┴───────────────────────────────────────
For other platforms and formats (ARM builds, RPM, AppImage, etc.), check the full asset list below.
Running on Windows, macOS, Linux and Android
RapidRAW is not yet code-signed, so Windows and macOS may show warnings when launching the app. On Linux, GPU driver differences require a default compatibility mode.
- Windows: When launching the app, you may see a Windows Defender SmartScreen warning.
- Click "More info" → "Run anyway" to proceed.
- macOS: You'll need to remove the quarantine flag after installation, otherwise macOS may report the app as corrupted:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/RapidRAW.app
- Linux: The app starts in compatibility mode by default to ensure stability across different GPU drivers and distributions.
- Disable compatibility mode in Settings to enable GPU acceleration.

This update serves as a direct follow-up to the core architectural migration I implemented in v1.5.6. While moving to a more modular state management system was a huge step forward for the stability and future-proofing of RapidRAW, it inevitably introduced some edge cases and regressions in the library and editing pipelines. In this release, I have focused on smoothing out these new wrinkles, most notably by completely overhauling the library performance to ensure that browsing remains snappy after the refactoring. I have also resolved inconsistencies in the copy-paste workflow and am excited to expand our international reach by adding support for eight additional languages.
New Features
Expanded Multilingual Support
Following up on the initial German translation I introduced in v1.5.6, I have expanded the app's language support. RapidRAW now supports eight additional languages, which you can select directly within the settings menu:
- Spanish
- French
- Italian
- Japanese
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Chinese (Simplified)
Core Improvements
- Library Performance Enhancements: I have focused heavily on optimizing library navigation and thumbnail loading. These adjustments reduce rendering overhead and resource spikes, making scrolling and browsing through large folders feel noticeably smoother.
- Copy-Paste Fixes: I resolved an issue where copying and pasting adjustments or lens correction parameters between images would occasionally fail to apply or behave inconsistently. The copy-paste system should now work reliably again.
What to Download
─────────────────────┬────────────┬──────┬───────────────────────────────────────
OS │Architecture│Format│Download Link
─────────────────────┼────────────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────
Windows │x64 │.exe │RapidRAW for Windows
─────────────────────┼────────────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────
macOS (Apple Silicon)│ARM64 │.dmg │RapidRAW for macOS ARM
─────────────────────┼────────────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────
macOS (Intel) │x64 │.dmg │RapidRAW for macOS x64
─────────────────────┼────────────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────
Ubuntu 22.04 │x86_64 │.deb │RapidRAW for Ubuntu 22.04
─────────────────────┼────────────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────
Ubuntu 24.04 │x86_64 │.deb │RapidRAW for Ubuntu 24.04
─────────────────────┼────────────┼──────┼───────────────────────────────────────
Android │ARM64 │.apk │RapidRAW for Android ^{(Experimental)}
─────────────────────┴────────────┴──────┴───────────────────────────────────────
For other platforms and formats (ARM builds, RPM, AppImage, etc.), check the full asset list below.
Running on Windows, macOS, Linux and Android
RapidRAW is not yet code-signed, so Windows and macOS may show warnings when launching the app. On Linux, GPU driver differences require a default compatibility mode.
- Windows: When launching the app, you may see a Windows Defender SmartScreen warning.
- Click "More info" → "Run anyway" to proceed.
- macOS: You'll need to remove the quarantine flag after installation, otherwise macOS may report the app as corrupted:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/RapidRAW.app
- Linux: The app starts in compatibility mode by default to ensure stability across different GPU drivers and distributions.
- Disable compatibility mode in Settings to enable GPU acceleration.

This update brings a boost in rendering speed, a reworked preset system, and the first steps onto Android. I've built a direct WGPU renderer that skips the usual webview overhead, making the app feel incredibly fast. I've also rewritten the presets system so you can now create "Tool" presets that stack on top of your edits, and you can finally save masks and crops into them. On top of that, there's a new mask intersect mode alongside new flow masks, and several highly requested workflow improvements like batch denoising or keeping EXIF data for stitched and denoised files.
New Features
Direct WGPU Renderer
I've implemented a direct WGPU renderer that bypasses Tauri's standard communication and browser decoding. It essentially draws a native window behind the webview, making the editing experience noticeably smoother.
Note for especially Linux users: This new renderer is currently experimental and not available on Linux. Tauri uses GTK for webviews on Linux, which conflicts with WGPU on the same screen surface and causes flickering. To keep things stable, Linux versions will safely default to the standard webview renderer for now. For more informations, check this issue: tauri-apps/tauri#9220.
Reworked Presets System
The presets system has been completely rebuilt to give you more flexibility in your workflow.
- Style vs. Tool Presets: You can now set a preset to be a "Style" (which overwrites the entire image's settings) or a "Tool" (which acts additively, blending new changes on top of your current edit).
- Mask & Crop Support: You can now save your masks and crops directly into your presets.
image
Experimental Android Support
I'm excited to officially bring RapidRAW to Android! This is an early, experimental build, so you might run into a few bugs. Currently, the UI is specifically optimized for tablets (it will not display properly on phones yet). General editing and masking are working nicely.
The AI tools require a lot of memory, so I highly recommend testing this on an Android device with at least 8 GB of RAM.
Many thanks to @Duecki1 for the support in releasing RapidRAW for Android.
Intersecting Masks
You can now easily intersect masks, making complex masking workflows simpler and more precise.
image
Flow Masks
The new Flow Mask type works like an additive brush. It builds up strength when you paint over the same area multiple times, which is perfect for dodge and burn adjustments.
image
Copy/Paste Upgrades
You can now copy and paste masks and crops between images! This is turned off by default to prevent accidental overwrites, but you can easily enable it in the copy/paste settings.
image
Fluid Canvas Navigation
I've completely rewritten the engine for zooming, panning, and pinching on the canvas. Trackpad users on macOS will notice it finally feels completely native and smooth.
Windows users: There is currently a minor gesture quirk on Windows, so you will need to hold down CTRL while using a two-finger scroll to zoom. A more seamless fix is planned for a future update!
Retaining EXIF Data
Denoised and stitched images now keep their original EXIF data (saved using the new .rrexif format). This means you will no longer lose your lens correction profiles, capture dates, or export data when running these intensive processes.
Core Improvements
- Better Auto-Adjust: The auto-adjustment algorithm has been greatly improved to deliver faster, more accurate results.
- Redesigned Color Wheels: The color grading wheels have been redesigned for a clean, consistent look and now feature dynamic sliders.
- Batch Processing Upgrades: I've added batch denoising and a new option to preserve your exact folder structure when exporting in batches.
- AVIF Export: Added support for AVIF export.
- Removed mask limits.
- Improved the downscaling algorithm so you feel less of a difference when dragging sliders.
- Fixed bugs that occurred when rapidly switching between images.
- General UI polish, bug fixes & usability improvements.
What to Down

This update is packed with new editing tools and smarter processing. I've added AI-powered denoising based on nind-denoise, a full image analytics panel with waveforms and scopes, and new parametric masking options for targeting specific colors or luminance zones. Subject masking has also been upgraded with SAM-2 models and single-click selection. On the export side, there's now support for JPEG XL, WebP, and CUBE LUTs - the last one being great if you want to bring color grades from RapidRAW into a video editor. Under the hood, I've added an LRU cache for instant image switching and region-of-interest rendering, which makes editing while zoomed in significantly faster.
New Features
NIND Denoising
Previously, RapidRAW only had a traditional BM3D denoiser. It produced decent results, but it was never really competitive with the newer AI-based denoising methods found in other software.
So I'm excited to introduce a new denoising method based on nind-denoise. It can be applied directly to RAW images to naturally remove noise while preserving detail.
The results speak for themselves:
───────────────┬───────────┬───────────
Original │BM3D │NIND
───────────────┼───────────┼───────────
Original │BM3D │NIND
───────────────┴───────────┴───────────
Due to dependency limitations, NIND denoise is not yet GPU accelerated, so it will take some time to process each image. In future versions, once things have matured, I plan to support batch denoising and move the processing over to the RapidRAW AI Connector, which supports GPU acceleration.
Credits for this denoising method go to @trougnouf's nind-denoise.
Image Analytics Panel
RapidRAW now features a switchable image analytics panel, giving you multiple ways to exactly visualize what's going on with your edit in real time.
Supported modes:
- Luma Waveform
- RGB Waveform
- RGB Parade
- Vectorscope
- RGB Histogram
Parametric Color & Luminance Masks
I've added two new mask types that let you quickly target specific color ranges or luminance zones in your image.
Parametric Masks
Single Point Subject Masks
This release ships with updated, more accurate, and higher resolution AI subject detection models based on SAM-2. On top of that, I've implemented single point masking - just click on your subject and it gets selected. No need to draw a bounding box around it first.
Single Point Subject Mask
JPEG XL, WebP, and Additional Format Support
This update adds support for a bunch of new export formats, including JPEG XL, WebP, and CUBE LUTs. The LUT export is something I'm particularly happy about: You can screenshot a frame from your video editor, color grade it in RapidRAW, export the result as a LUT, and then apply that same color grade back in the video editor at full quality.
Export formats
LRU Cache
RapidRAW now keeps recently viewed images in a cache, so switching between them is instant and seamless. This is especially useful when you're culling and need to quickly flip back and forth to check focus.
ROI Rendering
Previously, dragging sliders while zoomed in would lag and stutter because the entire image was being reprocessed on every change. Now RapidRAW only processes the region that's actually visible in the viewport, which gives a huge speedup when editing zoomed in.
Core Improvements
- Improved tonemapper & shader, particularly how it behaves within masked regions
- Refined keybinds across the app for a smoother editing workflow
- Various UI polish and visual tweaks
- A ton of bug fixes under the hood - too many to list individually ;)
What to Download
─────────────────────┬────────────┬──────┬──────────────────────────────
OS │Architecture│Format│Download Link
─────────────────────┼────────────┼──────┼──────────────────────────────
Windows │x64 │.exe │RapidRAW for Windows
─────────────────────┼────────────┼──────┼──────────────────────────────
macOS (Apple Silicon)│ARM64 │.dmg │RapidRAW for macOS ARM
─────────────────────┼────────────┼──────┼──────────────────────────────
macOS (Intel) │

Changes in version v1.4.3

New Features
- Pin Folders: Tired of constantly navigating between folders on different drives? Now you can right click any folder to pin it to a dedicated section in the sidebar for quick access.
- Apply Presets To Masks: Apply any saved preset directly to a mask. This is a huge time saver for applying targeted adjustments like a "Clarity Boost" to a subject mask.
- Centré Adjustment: A new slider that acts like an inverted vignette, subtly boosting clarity, brightness, and contrast in the middle of the frame to draw attention to your subject.
- Whole Image Mask Type: Added a new mask type that covers the entire image, useful as a base for subtracting or inverting other mask components. This also lays the groundwork for future mask types without cluttering the UI.

Core Improvements
- Library thumbnail updating is now much smoother.
- Rawler is now a submodule, thanks to @william-sy.
- The logger has been improved to output the full traceback for better debugging.

Performance Hotfix
Version 1.4.1 addresses critical performance issues introduced in v1.4.0, where using local contrast tools could cause severe slowdowns and even crashes.
I strongly recommend skipping v1.4.0 and upgrading directly to v1.4.1.
Since many users haven’t updated yet, the full v1.4.0 release notes are included below for reference:
RapidRAW v1.4.0 is finally available. This update introduces several new tools and foundational improvements to the software. Here’s a breakdown of what’s new:
New Features
Auto Culling
Culling is tedious. The new Auto Culling feature is designed to speed this up. It scans your selection for duplicates and blurry photos, then lets you flag or delete them in a batch:
image
Collage Maker
A collage maker has been integrated into the app. It provides multiple layouts and allows you to control spacing, border radius, and background color for creating custom compositions:
─────────────┬──────────────
Collage Maker│Example Output
─────────────┼──────────────
UI 1 │UI 2
─────────────┴──────────────
Color Calibration
For more fundamental control over color, I've added a Color Calibration panel. Unlike HSL, this tool lets you directly modify the hue and saturation of the primary RGB channels, enabling more significant and stylized color shifts:
image
Universal Preset Importer
To improve workflow flexibility, you can now import presets from other common photo editors. Note that due to different processing engines, the conversion is not 1:1, but it provides a solid starting point for your edits.
image
Adjustments Visibility
I'm committed to keeping the UI clean. As more niche tools are added, they can clutter the workspace. A new setting now lets you hide advanced adjustments you don't use, allowing you to maintain a simpler interface:
image
Sort Library by EXIF Data
You can now sort the photo library by EXIF data. Once enabled in the settings, you can organize your view by ISO, aperture, focal length, and other tags:
image Core Improvements
Reworked Local Contrast Tools
The previous implementation of local contrast tools (Sharpness, Clarity, Structure) was not up to my standard (affected exposure too much). I've re-engineered them to provide higher quality results and interact more predictably with other adjustments like exposure.
Other Fixes & Enhancements
- Improved performance when loading library folders (thanks to @riccio8)
- Various shader optimizations and bug fixes
- General improvements to application stability and logging
- Brand new app icons & dark theme wallpaper
- New logger
Special Thanks
A thank you to everyone who contributed between these versions. In particular:
- @william-sy - for support with release planning and managing GitHub issues and discussions
- @riccio8 - for improvements to folder loading performance
- @RayJW - for implementing Flatpak support
Important: Action Required for Upgrading Users
In this update, I've had to change the application's internal identifier from com.rapidraw.app to io.github.CyberTimon.RapidRAW. This is a technical but important change that helps with long-term maintenance and ensures better compatibility going forward.
Unfortunately, this means that when you first launch v1.4.0, it won't be able to find your existing user data. As a result:
- Your AI models will need to be redownloaded.
- Your library thumbnails will be regenerated.
- Crucially, all of your saved presets will be gone.
- Edits aren't effected, as they are stored in seperate sidecars.
To avoid losing your data, I've outlined two migration options below. Please choose one before you launch the new version for the first time. Keep in mind that edits are stored in sidecars and aren't affected by this migration.
Option A: Full Migration (Recommended)
This method is the best option as it migrates everything: your settings, presets, and cached data. To do this, you'll need to manually rename the application's data folder.
- Windows: Navigate to both %APPDATA% (in Roaming) and %LOCALAPPDA

Community Presets Sharing
I wanted to create a place where people can share presets with each other, so I've added a new Community Presets page. To get things started, I've already shared 7 of my own. I'm looking forward to seeing what you all come up with.
To submit your own preset, please follow the submission guide located at the bottom of the Community Presets page.
Here is the direct link to the submission issue: Submit Your Preset (you need to have this version installed)
Generative AI Improvements
This release includes a new ComfyUI workflow that handles high-quality inpainting much better. The results should now be nearly the same resolution as the original image. The installation for the workflow is also simpler, now requiring only one custom ComfyUI node.
I've also adjusted the UI to better align with the project's AI Roadmap. This includes a placeholder for a planned future cloud service, which would be an option for those who don't have the hardware to self-host or prefer not to set it up themselves (not paywalling features).
If you have any ideas or feedback on the AI roadmap, feel free to let me know.
- Upgrading to this version will reset the app’s settings & comfyui config (your edits will not be affected).

Clipping Warnings
You can now toggle clipping warnings in the Curves tool to highlight overexposed areas in red and underexposed areas in blue.

Update Notifier
With the new update notifier, you’ll never miss an update.

Other Improvements
- Updated all dependencies and migrated from Rust 2021 to Rust 2024 (thanks @RayJW).
- Improved performance through updated dependencies.
- Enhanced accuracy in the HSL panel.
- Fixed the inverted tint slider (you may need to readjust existing edits).

ComfyUI Integration
ComfyUI integration has been significantly improved to make it more accessible and user-friendly. You can now:
- Select a custom inpainting workflow or use the built-in default workflow.
- Define and map which models should be loaded.
- See which custom nodes you need to install, in order to use the default workflow.
image
Model Configuration Example:
image
RapidRAW automatically handles downscaling, mask generation, patch layer composition, and saving. These enhancements make ComfyUI integration practical for everyday use.
Note: Some bugs and unfinished elements may still be present. Please report any issues you encounter. Also, if you have a better & easier inpainting workflow, please share it with me as I'm not satisfied with the current one.
Chromatic Aberration Correction
A new tool for chromatic aberration correction has been added.
image
Other Improvements
- Changing folders now cancels previous thumbnail generation and folder indexing jobs, preventing performance slowdowns on many machines.
- LUT's parser is more robust / less error prone now.
- Mask grow / feather parameter now correctly applies on the final image.

LUTs
You can now apply LUTs directly to your images, with support for .cube, .3dl, .png, .jpg, .jpeg, and .tiff files. This makes it easy to add color grading or use a LUT as a creative starting point.
Estimated File Size
Before exporting, you’ll now see an estimated file size, helping you balance image quality with file size for the best results.

AI Sky Masks
RapidRAW now supports one click sky masks. Just hit the sky mask button and RapidRAW will take care of masking the sky for you.
The pretrained model I’m using comes from this repo and shares the same architecture as the AI foreground model (u2net).
From my testing, the results are looking really solid:
ai_sky_mask
Optimised Image Editing
One of the biggest bottlenecks in RapidRAW used to be the slow base64 bridge between the backend and frontend. Encoding/decoding large images added a ton of overhead when applying adjustments or just opening files.
That’s now fixed. I switched over to Tauri’s IPC response, which avoids the whole base64 step. The result: editing feels way smoother, and fullscreen zoom actually loads the full res image so you can check every pixel.
Full res zoom in action:
On top of that, I polished a bunch of animations (such as the curves etc) - the whole app should feel more fluid now:
animations
Big thanks to @tobiaskuntzsch for the full res zoom and the new relative zoom slider: #223

Running on Windows
You may see a Windows Defender SmartScreen warning when launching the app.
- Click "More info" → "Run anyway"
This happens because the app is not yet signed with a code certificate