I am excited to bring you a new update that significantly expands your retouching toolkit and refines how your images are processed under the hood. This release focuses heavily on local adjustments and HDR merging, introducing highly requested manual clone and heal tools for precise control, alongside major updates to AI inpainting, shadow shaders, and HDR alignment.
While AI is fantastic for many tasks, there are specific scenarios where you just need pixel-perfect, algorithmic manual control that operates at your image's full resolution. To give you that control, I have implemented dedicated Clone and Heal tools. They work beautifully: simply set your source point, and you can seamlessly heal blemishes or copy exact pixels over to your target area.
Here is a look at the new tools in action:
While building out the manual clone and heal tools, I took the opportunity to improve the AI inpainting engine. I spent time optimizing its performance, resolving color space issues, and ensuring the generated patches blend much more coherently with the surrounding pixels. I'm very happy with the new results.
Here is a quick comparison showing how the blocky quantization artifacts from previous versions have been eliminated:
I noticed that the previous approach for lifting shadows and blacks could sometimes result in a plastic, unrealistic, or overbaked look. To fix this, I have rewritten and optimized the underlying shader algorithm, resulting in a much more natural and pleasing roll-off in the darker areas of your images.
This version introduces robust deghosting and auto-alignment capabilities for merging HDR brackets. This means that even if your handheld source images aren't perfectly aligned, the final merged result will remain sharp and free of distracting ghost edges. Additionally, this update resolves several color space issues during the HDR merge process that were previously causing merged files to appear drastically underexposed
New Features
Manual Clone & Heal Inpainting
Before
After Clone & Heal
Using the Tools
New Inpainting Tools
Refined AI Inpainting
Original Image
V1.5.8 (Blocky Artifacts)
V1.5.9 (Clean & Coherent)
Improved Shadows & Blacks Shader
Original
Previous Algorithm
New & Improved Shader
HDR Merge Improvements
Core Improvements
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.