Week highlights: new releases of ShineStacker, OurPaint, Mixxx, and LSP plugins; new features in Inkscape and FreeCAD.
ShineStacker 1.3
It’s a relatively unknown free/libre program for focus-stacking by Luca Lista. The workflow is fairly straightforward: point it to a folder with source photos, let it analyze them and merge stacks, use a brush to tweak masks if you like, save to JPEG or TIFF.
(The sample files on the screenshot are by Helicon Focus)
The last couple of releases focus (ahem) on parallel processing, but also ship with the following changes:
- Automatic subsample option for alignment, balancing and vignetting (on by default).
- HLS and HSV corrections now supported for 16-bit images.
- Luminosity correction in the LAB color space now available.
- CPU and memory usage monitor widget for running jobs.
- Job input can now specify a list of files, not only a folder.
- Various GUI improvements.
See here for all recent release notes and builds are available for major operating systems. You can also install the program with pip install shinestacker.
OurPaint 0.5
Yiming Wu recently released a major update of OurPaint, his quite underrated node-based painting program.
The major new feature is spectral blending (some technical background is here) for realistic color mixing. Several other new features have been built on top of that, namely, the Accumulation and the Depletion Speed brush properties, as well as a couple new brushes, Oil and Gouache, specifically designed for the new pigment canvas.
Spectral blending is computationally intensive by design. Brian Dieterle, who introduced this feature to MyPaint about 5-6 years ago, ran into system resource limitations fairly easily and had to find a trade-off between performance and realism (he later left MyPaint to work on FocalPoint, a proprietary macOS/iOS program built on the knowledge he had acquired).
The Krita team did similar work in the late 2000s with Kubelka-Munk’s model for diffuse reflection and eventually dropped the code entirely. There have been two newer patches (MR#1783 and MR#1997) floating around since 2023, neither have been applied yet.
Then there’s Mixbox under CC BY-NC 4.0 that is incompatible with GPL software (yet FlipFluids devs seem to have found a workaround).
What I’m saying here is that there is still interest in this feature. So having another player taking a stab at spectral blending is exciting. I haven’t yet tried mixing colors other than the blue/yellow pair, so I’m curious to see people with actual painting skills putting the new release to the test!
Here are some of the other new features:
- Undo support in brush nodes.
- Support for custom CMYK profiles for soft proofing.
- RGBA canvas now uses non-associated (or non-premultiplied, if you will) alpha to record color values.
- EDID data reading to adjust for RGB chromaticity coordinates, white point, and gamma (Linux-only).
For the full list of changes, please see here.
Inkscape
The team recently asked users to test and provide feedback on a new feature: recoloring artwork. Here is the workflow: select a group of objects, click Recolor Selection in the Fill and Stroke dock, then choose a recoloring pair and tweak the new color:
Downloads and the feedback page are here.
Another upcoming change is the updated gradient editor. The changes are somewhat cosmetic:
You will also note that color slider widgets have changed recently.
FreeCAD
A massive patch by David Kaufman has landed to the CAM workbench, with improvements for LeadInOut.
Another major new feature are the newly added gizmos for PartDesign commands, such as Pad, Pocket, Hole, and Fillet. You can now change the values of such commands directly in the viewport, and the corresponding numeric values in the Task panel will change accordingly.
Here you have two controls for the Pad command: Length (drag up/down) and Taper Angle (drag left/right along the arc).
Here is a quick demo for Fillet and Chamfer:
There is an ongoing discussion on Discord about adding on-view parameters so you can use numeric input in the viewport as well, just like in Sketcher.
Mixxx 2.5.3
This new version comes with bugfixes, improvements to the Digital Vinyl System (DVS) support, and updated mappings for Icon P1-Nano MIDI 1, Traktor Kontrol S4 Mk3, Traktor Kontrol S3, and Numark NS6II. All the downloads are here.
LSP Plugins 1.2.23
There are no new plugins this time, but a whole lot of improvements all around. Here are just some of them:
- Experimental support of UI for macOS.
- Better UI for preset management.
- AHDBSSR (Attack, Hold, Decay, Break, Slope, Sustain, Release) envelope control in Sampler and Multisampler.
- DC offset control in Clipper and Multiband Clipper.
- Frequency inspection mode in the Spectrum Analyzer (click Inspect).
- An extended collection of built-in rooms for Room Builder
Downloads and the full list of changes are here on GitHub.
Artworks
Santa Elena Canyon by Elixiah, made with Krita:
Dragon Valley by Philipp Urlich, made with Krita:
Cosmic Church by Quentin Mabille, made with Blender and Photoshop:
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