Hi everyone,
If you tried RapidRAW before, you probably noticed that highlight recovery was a major weak point. Partially blown areas often turned gray, shifted colors, or clipped harshly. I spent the last few days completely rewriting how the app handles highlights, and v1.6.4 is now live.
The Highlights slider now reconstructs clipped color channels using data from the unclipped channels. Instead of just dimming blown pixels to gray, it actually recovers color and texture in bright areas like skies and clouds. Alongside this, the Exposure slider now works before the tonemapper to bring back real headroom, while a separate Brightness slider lets you adjust the look afterward without clipping.
Here are a few quick comparisons:
Before (Shot by Wojciech Wolas):
After:
Before:
After:
If you have overexposed RAW files with recoverable skies or sunsets, I would love for you to give v1.6.4 a test run. Please let me know how it compares to your usual tools, and feel free to share any files where the recovery breaks or creates weird artifacts.
(Note: Please keep this thread focused purely on highlight recovery and color results. For general bugs, or Linux-specific issues, please open an issue directly on GitHub so we can keep this thread on topic).
You can download the new version here:
Thanks for all the support!
Timon