I'm really excited to share this release, as it changes how every photo in RapidRAW looks. At its heart is Furka, a new rendering engine that reworks how RapidRAW turns a RAW file into a photo, from demosaicing all the way to the tone sliders. Your photos get cleaner fine detail, tone sliders that feel natural, and much more room to bring back bright skies and dark shadows. Next to it comes RapidRes, a 2x AI upscaler trained on RapidRAW's own RAW pipeline, which adds real detail to your photos. On top of that, you can now dock the filmstrip into the side panels, give each of your cameras its own default look, rotate a crop just by dragging around the frame, and enjoy many more improvements across the whole app.
Furka is RapidRAW's new rendering engine. RAW files are now demosaiced on the GPU with RCD for Bayer sensors and Markesteijn for Fujifilm X-Trans, which removes most of the false color, maze patterns and moiré in fine detail. Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, Clarity and Structure were rebuilt on a new, edge-aware base, so they no longer create halos around mountains, trees and buildings. Highlight and shadow recovery are much stronger, Contrast now works around each photo's own midtones, sharpening is halo-free and the color grading wheels now work in OKLab.
You can read everything about Furka, with lots of comparisons, in the blog post: Introducing the Furka Rendering Engine RapidRes is a new 2x AI upscaler that sits right next to AI Denoise in the Details panel. It is fine-tuned on RapidRAW's own Bayer and X-Trans pipeline, so it adds real detail without the plastic look of generic upscalers. A Detail slider controls how much fine detail it adds, and it works together with AI Denoise. Like AI Denoise, it is fully non-destructive and cached, so it only needs to run once per photo.
You can read more about how RapidRes was made, with comparisons, in the blog post: Introducing RapidRes The filmstrip can now be docked into the left or right side panel as a vertical grid. This gives you much more room to see your photos on wide screens. The docked filmstrip has its own header, a quick filter, a toggle to show file names, and you can change the thumbnail size with Ctrl + mouse wheel.
Dragging panels between the side panels was also reworked. You can now drop a panel at the top or bottom of a side to split it, with a live preview of where it will land. You can now choose what unedited photos start with in the new Default Adjustments settings.
Generative fill now blends much better into the photo. Fills use a hard mask with a soft blend at the edge, and cloud inpainting sends more of the surrounding image at up to 2048 px and matches the tone and grain of your photo. The feather sliders are gone, as they are no longer needed. With RapidRAW Cloud, you can remove objects, fill in empty areas and replace parts of your photo with high-quality AI, right inside RapidRAW. No powerful GPU or extra setup is needed if you don't want to self-host via ComfyUI.
RapidRAW is free and open source, and I work on it in my free time. Subscribing to RapidRAW Cloud is also the best way to support its development and keep new updates like this one coming. Thank you to everyone who already does!
In crop mode, you can now rotate the image by dragging anywhere around the crop frame or outside the image. The cursor turns into a curved arrow that faces your pointer. Hold Shift or Alt while rotating for fine adjustments. The crop handles also have bigger hit areas now, which makes them easier to grab, especially on touch screens. This is a significant rendering update. The Furka engine changes how every photo is rendered, so your existing edits will look different after updating. If you are in the middle of a project, I recommend finishing and exporting it before you upgrade.
Your edits and slider values are not changed. Only the way they are rendered has changed.
New Features
Furka Rendering Engine
RapidRes AI Super Resolution
Docked Filmstrip
Default Adjustments
Better Generative Fill & Cloud Inpainting
Rotate Crop By Dragging
Library Improvements
Core Improvements
Note for Upgrading Users
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 |
Download Tethering Builds & Setup Guide (macOS & Linux)
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.
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macOS (via Homebrew):
brew install libgphoto2 pkg-config
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Ubuntu / Debian:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y libgphoto2-dev pkg-config -
Arch Linux:
sudo pacman -S libgphoto2 pkgconf
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Fedora:
sudo dnf install libgphoto2-devel pkgconf-pkg-config
2. Download Tethering Build
| OS | Architecture | Format | Download Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| macOS (Apple Silicon) | ARM64 | .dmg
| RapidRAW for macOS ARM (Tethering) |
| macOS (Intel) | x64 | .dmg
| RapidRAW for macOS x64 (Tethering) |
| Ubuntu 22.04 | x86_64 | .deb
| RapidRAW for Ubuntu 22.04 (Tethering) |
| Ubuntu 24.04 | x86_64 | .deb
| RapidRAW for Ubuntu 24.04 (Tethering) |
(Note: Windows and Android are not supported for camera tethering due to OS driver limitations).
For other platforms and formats (ARM builds, RPM, AppImage, etc.), check the full asset list below.
Running on Windows and macOS
RapidRAW is not yet code-signed on Windows and not yet notarized by Apple on macOS, so both may show a warning when you open the app for the first time.
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Windows: You may see a Windows Defender SmartScreen warning.
- Click "More info" → "Run anyway" to proceed.
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macOS: macOS may block the app the first time you open it. You can allow it in one of two ways:
- Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down and click "Open Anyway" next to the RapidRAW message. Then open the app again and confirm.
- Or run this command in the Terminal:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/RapidRAW.app