In a pre-holiday rush, developers made a lot of releases, so this is going to be a longer recap.
Week highlights: new release of darktable, HDRView, Tahoma2D, Flowblade, Kdenlive, Qtractor, FamiStudio, Libre Graphics Meeting 2025 announced.
LGM 2025
The Libre Graphics Meeting 2025 is scheduled to take place in Nuremberg, Germany, from May 28 to May 31. This is the annual event that brings together developers of GIMP, Krita, Inkscape, Blender, and other FOSS projects. If you are interested in actively participating, please submit a talk proposal.
darktable 5.0.0
I know I’ve been critical of how the team treated UX/UI issues in the past. From the changelog alone, the new version of the famous FOSS digital photography application sounds like a bolder step in the right direction usability-wise.
- The UX/UI has been improved to indicate when the program is busy performing certain bulk operations, which means less wondering if it froze.
- There’s a dark high-contrast theme available now.
- The speed of sidecar writes has been increased to make bulk image operations faster.
- The color equalizer module is now hardware-accelerated.
- The program now ships over 500 camera-specific styles to match (or approximate, if you will) the out-of-camera JPEG rendering.
For details, please see here.
Fast Sketch Plugin for Krita
The team collaborated with Intel on an experimental plugin that uses neural networks to quickly ink sketches.
A Windows build is available for Krita 5.2.6, You can also download Krita 5.3.0 pre-alpha builds for Windows and Linux. A macOS version will take a while, and there will be no Android version for technical reasons.
You can also discuss the plugin on the forum.
HDRView 2.0
Wojciech Jarosz released a major new version of HDRview. He ported the entire UI to Dear ImGui and created a fully functional web version:
While porting, Wojciech also removed the program’s basic editing tools. They could be restored at some point, but the developer seems uninterested in that idea.
Release highlights apart from the Dear ImGui port:
- Full support for multi-part and multi-channel EXR files.
- Display and data window support in EXR images.
- Proper support for luminance-chroma images and chroma subsampling
- Better support for whitepoint and colorspaces stored in EXR files.
- More statistics available in the Info panel.
Windows and macOS builds are available here.
Tahoma2D 1.5
This is a fork of OpenToonz, a 2D animation program, with changes generally flowing in both directions. I completely missed this release a few weeks ago (thanks to Tobias for setting me on the straight path).
New version highlights:
- Folders and nested folders in the Xsheet for organization
- Various onion skin updates
- New dockable panels: Output/Preview Settings, Fx Browser, Locator, Align and Distribute
- New Viewer toolbar buttons to easily toggle Symmetry and Perspective Grids on/off.
- Looping animation backward and forward with the new Ping Pong play mode.
There’s a quick illustrated guide to new features. For the full list of changes, please see here.
Kdenlive 24.12.0
The new version of this advanced FOSS video editor brings new features and fixes:
- Advanced SubStation Alpha (ASS) subtitles support
- New subtitle manager and new subtitle style editor to go with ASS support
- Animated subtitles support
- More polished speech-to-text feature
- Effect Stack redesign
- New internal effects: HSL Primaries, HSL Range, GPS Effects (useful for sports videos)
See here for more information. Downloads are here.
Flowblade 2.18
This is an MLT-based non-linear video editor that typically stays in the shadow of Kdenlive and Shotcut. Release highlights:
- Timeline clips can now be converted directly into slow-motion or reversed clips. There is no longer a need to insert new media items.
- A new Credits Scroll generator has been added.
- The program can now render VP9 WebM videos with alpha channel.
- A new Project Info and Data dialog is now available.
For a full list of changes, please see here. The project’s preferred way to distribute builds is Flatpak.
Qtractor 1.5.0
Just look at home more confident Rui got with the release numbering of his DAW once he released v1.0! Coming in this new version:
- You can now apply Clip/Cross Fade to multiple selected clips.
- The MIDI clip editor now has new Transport/Step /Note/Backward and Forward menu actions, to move the play-head to previous and next note events
- Adding a brand new audio clip via the Clip/New… dialog is now finally fixed and functional.
- Mixer: reduced track names up to the first line break.
- To reset a slider to its default value, you can now double-click in addition to middle-clicking.
Please see the project’s website for the full list of changes.
FamiStudio 4.3.0
For all of you chiptune composers, FamiStudio 4.3.0 is out. Release highlights:
- Support for custom tuning per project.
- N163 wave auto position assignment.
- Improved conflict resolution when copy-pasting between songs/projects.
- Noto Sans is now the in-app font.
- More UI unification between the desktop and the mobile version.
- The mobile version now supports shy mode, MIDI import/export, and the import of songs, instruments, and DPCM samples from storage.
- SDAS/GBDK support.
The full list of changes, along with downloads, is here.
If you are new to this project, here is a nice introduction to an earlier version:
LSP Plugins 1.22.0
Vladimir Sadovnikov released a new version of LSP plugins. The main new feature is a family of Referencer plugins (mono and stereo versions) that help bring your mix to a reference track you have.
There’s a video available:
Among other changes:
- A new “Automatically load files when navigating file list” feature allows to automatically load files when navigating the file list around the loaded sample.
- The A/B Tester plugin series got shared memory returns, the Mixer plugin series got shared memory sends and returns.
- The Spectrum Analyzer series now tracks maximum values
- All plugins that can load audio files (e.g. impulse responses) now have a Stop button for file preview.
- Even more SIMD and AVX-512 optimizations in the DSP library.
- The DSP library now supports building for macOS on Apple M1 and later chips.
A full list of changes and downloads are here.
Artworks
June’s Journey - Alley by Barabara Langa, made with Blender and Photoshop:
Happy Holidays by Rutger van de Steeg, made with Blender and Photoshop.
Speedpainting 20122024 by Sylvia Ritter, made with Krita:
The Twist by Samet Dereli, environment made in Blender (the building was modeled in Grasshopper, there’s a Grasshopper-to-Blender tutorial available):
Some practice and personal work by Boris Turano, made with ZBrush, Blender, and Photoshop:
Museo de Ciencas Naturales by Enzo MInarro, made with Blender, Photoshop, and Rebelle:
Balloon City by Bill Zhang, made with Blender and Photoshop:
Happy holidays!
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