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
─────────────────────┬────────────┬──────┬───────────────────────────────────────
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)}
─────────────────────┴────────────┴──────┴───────────────────────────────────────
Download Tethering Builds & Setup Guide (macOS & Linux)
- 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
- 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, so Windows and macOS may show warnings when launching the app.
- 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
