julyx10/lap v0.3.3

on GitHub

Lap v0.3.3 adds Photo Collage, tag groups, offline album browsing, and arbitrary-angle straightening. It also brings more RAW preview controls, faster startup and RAW browsing, simpler view switching and multi-select, and six new languages.

Highlights

• Photo Collage — Compose selected photos into a single shareable image with grid, justified-mosaic, and Picasa-style picture-pile layouts. Move, layer, rotate, and scale photos on the pile, randomize a layout, then export at full resolution from the originals or print to A4 or photo paper at 300 dpi, with customizable page size, orientation, background, spacing, borders, and optional drop shadows. (#358, #387)
• Tag Groups — Organize tags into collapsible, reorderable groups with inline editors for creating tags and groups, move tags between groups, and show the group name in content titles. A protected Default group keeps every tag categorized. (#304)
• Offline Album Browsing — Albums on disconnected or network storage stay visible across the library with a warning indicator, so you can browse cached thumbnails and metadata without the volumes mounted. Actions that need the original file are clearly gated. (#351)
• Arbitrary-Angle Straighten — Fine-tune horizons in crop mode with a ruler slider that snaps to zero, supports keyboard stepping, and live-previews the straightened, cropped result before saving. (#318)
• RAW Preview Controls — Choose the preview source (rendered or embedded), adjust render brightness, and control RAW+JPEG pair display, and switch between RAW modes and the paired JPEG/HEIC directly in the viewer. (#331, #369)
• Six New Languages — Lap is now available in Hungarian, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Ukrainian, and Traditional Chinese, bringing the total to fifteen languages. (#330, #336, #343, #364)

New Features and Improvements

• Added native file drag-out: drag photos and videos from the grid or the viewer straight into Finder, Explorer, or other apps as real files, with a thumbnail drag preview and support for up to 1,000 files at once. (#339)
• Added a thumbnail navigator to the File Info preview, showing the whole image with a draggable viewport box for quick navigation, scroll-to-zoom, double-click to fit, and rotation-aware positioning.
• Added in-view sorting and sidebar search, letting you reorder and filter results without leaving the current view. (#396)
• Unified grid, filmstrip, and map into mutually exclusive view modes with a single switch. (#315)
• Added configurable map photo marker size, and improved map clustering and transitions. (#307)
• Added per-album exclusions with a scan preview, replacing the global small-image filter with per-album file-type, small-image, and folder exclusions. (#322, #332)
• Added importing files directly into an album folder, respecting the album's exclusions and scan safety.
• Added "Refresh file info" for multi-selections to re-read metadata for several files at once. (#368)
• The image viewer now bidirectionally syncs the current photo with the main-window selection. (#328)
• Added per-library thumbnail cache cleanup in Manage Libraries, with cache sizes shown per library.
• Main-window dialog positions are now remembered across sessions.
• Added an optional navigator sharpness grid to compare focus across shots.
• Consolidated multi-select actions into the selection panel and removed the separate thumbnail double-click action setting. (#347)
• Reworked multi-select so the mode is independent of the selection panel: selecting no longer forces the panel open, and a floating count button opens it on demand, showing the selected count and total size alongside up to 15 selected thumbnails. (#407)
• Added an optional build against the system libheif (LAP_SYSTEM_LIBHEIF=1) for distribution packaging. (#359)
• Improved management dialogs, folder actions, and the shared splitter indicator with a delayed hover fade-in.
• Date and time now format according to the system region by default, independent of the UI language. (#390)
• Bundled third-party license notices with the app for easier attribution and compliance.
• Faster startup: heavy background work is deferred until after the first content paints, and languages and sidebar views are now lazy-loaded.
• Faster RAW browsing with reduced-resolution previews and on-demand full-size rendering when zooming in. Distinct icons identify embedded, rendered, and brightened RAW previews.
• Collage page, layout, and style preferences now persist between sessions. Image editor preferences now sync between windows. (#358)

Bug Fixes

• Aligned video capture times with photos so images and videos from the same shoot sort together correctly. (#400)
• Fixed rotated NEF previews by matching embedded JPEG previews by long/short edge, and extracted embedded JPEGs independently of the RAW decoder. (#360, #361)
• Resolved the HEIF primary image for tiled-grid thumbnails and sizes, and added a robust HEIF decode fallback on Windows and Linux using FFmpeg with a format sniffer. (#349, #355)
• Fixed HEIC decoding on macOS by falling back to native ImageIO. (#321)
• Fixed grouped JPEG previews not fitting their geometry grid cells. (#398)
• Fixed the full image being replaced by the thumbnail when navigating quickly. (#367)
• Centered small RAW previews using explicit layout dimensions, and preserved the RAW preview mode across source changes.
• Restored RAW preview fallbacks: try rendering when an embedded preview is unavailable, and try the embedded preview when rendering fails. If neither works, attempt general image decoding, including JPEG content saved with a RAW extension.
• Fixed RAW+JPEG/HEIC badge highlighting and made switching from the paired image select the current RAW mode before cycling modes. Removed the default focus outline from RAW preview badges on Windows.
• Fixed Live Photo previews not restarting, and made fullscreen backgrounds opaque. (#347)
• Guarded video hover previews against a missing GStreamer sink. (#313)
• Detect database corruption per library and prompt you to switch libraries, preserving the original database file instead of silently rebuilding it. (#326)
• Made database storage migration safe, reporting cleanup failures rather than losing data. (#354)
• Fixed a crash on exit when Aptabase analytics is not enabled. (#372)
• Reloaded visible thumbnails after deletion in grouped view. (#325)
• Fixed inline rename losing focus and Enter unexpectedly opening the dialog.
• Refreshed the current album view after changing exclusions and avoided duplicate default names when creating tags.
• Stopped thumbnail drag from File Info previews and simplified album and preview fields.
• Tracked the satellite map theme separately for the map view and the info panel.
• Showed a duplicate-name warning on drag and drop. (#386)
• Clarified paired files in album scan status. (#392)
• Persisted the preview toolbar pinned position.
• Fixed Windows builds by compiling libde265 at /O1 on MSVC. (#389, #393)
• Excluded bundled libsystemd and libudev from the AppImage to fix runtime conflicts. (#311)
• Refreshed file info in place without resetting the viewport or scroll position.
• Restored grouping when returning from filmstrip view.
• Stopped "Refresh file info" from downloading unchanged cloud-only files (OneDrive Files On-Demand and macOS dataless files) by detecting them from metadata instead of opening them. (#394, #411)

Downloads

Choose the correct package for your platform:

Auto Update

Existing macOS and Windows installations can use Lap’s built-in auto-update feature.

For Linux AppImage installations, download the new AppImage from the table above instead of using the built-in updater. This release includes update information and .zsync files for future delta updates through compatible external AppImage update tools.

Linux DEB installations can also be updated by downloading and installing the matching DEB package.

Contributors

This release includes community contributions across features, platform fixes, and translations. Many thanks to:

• ddcdk — the Photo Collage studio (grid, justified-mosaic, and picture-pile layouts) (#358, #387), the cloud-only file refresh fixes (#394, #411), and the MSVC libde265 /O1 Windows build fix (#389, #393).
• beneedict — the Fedora COPR release build (#370) and the optional system-libheif build flag (LAP_SYSTEM_LIBHEIF=1) (#359).
• yi111 — the robust HEIF decode fallback on Windows and Linux using FFmpeg with a format sniffer (#349, #355).
• Daniel Benner — keeping the full image from being replaced by its thumbnail when navigating quickly (#367).
• Philip de Bruin — fixing the crash on exit when Aptabase analytics is not enabled (#372).
• Tomasz Gospodarczyk — the Polish locale and README translation (#343).
• OPGERUIMD97 — the Dutch translation (#364).
• Dmitry Yerokhin — Russian translation updates (#320).
• bakos-andras — the Hungarian translation (#330).

And thanks to everyone who reported issues and tested development builds.

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