CaraStudio 2026.07
Hello everyone,
A new version of CaraStudio has just been released. For those discovering the project,
CaraStudio is a free and open source RAW photo developer for Linux, a fork of RawStudio
brought back to life on today’s distributions and extended with creative tools. The original
idea has not changed: keep it simple so beginners are not overwhelmed, while still offering
real tools, and above all help you understand what you are doing.
This 2026.07 release is a big batch. Most of the work went into colour and recent camera
bodies, but there are also new tools and quite a few fixes.
The new tools
The most visible one is styles. You adjust a photo the way you like it, you save that
look, and you then apply it to another photo or to fifty at once. When saving as well as
when applying, you tick exactly what you want to keep. A style never touches the colour
profile, so you can safely apply it to a folder that mixes several cameras.
I also added DynaComp, a local dynamic range compressor that opens up the shadows and
holds back the highlights, per channel RGB curves with the ability to save your own
curves, an independent auto exposure and auto levels, a dedicated button for
exposure blending with Enfuse, a GIMP button that opens the photo with its
orientation and effects, and an exposure mask to spot blown or blocked areas at a glance.
Fujifilm X-Trans (.RAF) RAW files are now supported.
Colour and thumbnails
The camera white balance is now read directly for every brand, and it applies even when the
input colour space is unknown. The DCP profiles you import are offered for any camera, with
a default profile you can set per body. Thumbnails show your effects as soon as they open,
refresh live, and pull the embedded preview from RAW files on recent cameras.
The Color scalpel tool has been reworked: the per hue curves are now smooth, the result
is far more gradual, and the halos that used to appear in dense highlights, on sunsets for
instance, are greatly reduced.
The fixes
I fixed several things along the way. A red cast appeared on some 8 bit files carrying an
HDR profile, and a green cast when reopening some exported TIFF or JPEG files: both are
solved. Cropping did not commit properly with the OK button, the lens module crashed on
selection, portrait thumbnails sometimes came out lying down, and on small screens the window
now opens maximised so it no longer cuts off the bottom bar. AppImage users also get the
French interface back.
Finally, a big thank you to everyone who tested and reported installation issues over the
past few weeks. The install script has been seriously hardened thanks to your feedback, it
handles the main distributions better and takes care on its own of the compilation problem
that was blocking some of you.
Install or update
AppImage, the simplest option, on every distribution. A single file, nothing to install:
wget https://github.com/carafife/carastudio/releases/download/carastudio-2026.07/CaraStudio-2026.07-x86_64.AppImage
chmod +x CaraStudio-2026.07-x86_64.AppImage
./CaraStudio-2026.07-x86_64.AppImage
Fedora, through the COPR repository, with updates handled by dnf:
sudo dnf copr enable carafife/CaraStudio
sudo dnf install carastudio
If you already have it, update with:
sudo dnf upgrade --refresh carastudio
From source, the script detects your distribution, installs the dependencies, builds and
installs:
git clone --recursive https://github.com/carafife/carastudio.git
cd carastudio
./install.sh
presentation video:
Links
- Source code: GitHub - carafife/carastudio: CaraStudio: A lightweight RAW processor with CTL scripting support. Fork of RawStudio modernized for Linux with advanced color processing capabilities. · GitHub
- Downloads: Releases · carafife/carastudio · GitHub
- Report a bug: Issues · carafife/carastudio · GitHub
- Discussions, questions and help: carafife/carastudio · Discussions · GitHub
- License: GPL, fully free software
As always, your feedback is welcome. If you hit a bug, a ticket on GitHub Issues is the best
way for me to track it. For questions, ideas, or just to share your photos, come over to the
Discussions. All of it helps the project move forward. Happy developing.