CyberTimon/RapidRAW v1.6.2

RapidRAW v1.6.2 - Camera Tethering, Focus Stacking, Film Emulations & Much More!

on GitHub

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

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.

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.

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.

• 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.

1. Install libgphoto2 on your machine

RapidRAW uses libgphoto2 to communicate directly with connected cameras over USB. Because the tethering binary links dynamically against this library to stream live view and control camera settings, the driver must be present on your system for the app to detect and control your camera.

• macOS (via Homebrew):

  brew install libgphoto2 pkg-config

• Ubuntu / Debian:

  sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y libgphoto2-dev pkg-config

• Arch Linux:

  sudo pacman -S libgphoto2 pkgconf

• Fedora:

  sudo dnf install libgphoto2-devel pkgconf-pkg-config

2. Download Tethering Build

(Note: Windows and Android are not supported for camera tethering due to OS driver limitations).