FerrumPix 0.9.32

What's new

• Put the time right when the camera clock was wrong. Set capture date under Metadata gives a picture a date and time, or shifts the time it already has by days, hours, minutes and seconds - forwards or back, over a whole selection at once. A raw file is never touched: its time goes in the sidecar next to it, and FerrumPix reads it back from there. The file's own date follows the capture time, so both say the same thing.

• See where the picture has nothing left. A new switch under Light marks blown highlights in red and blocked shadows in blue, on the picture itself and at full zoom. It only shows where all three colour channels are against the stop, so a bright red flower does not set it off.

• Put the image analysis where it helps. Histogram, waveform and RGB parade can now appear in the information sidebar, above the editor's adjustment controls, or in both places. The two locations can show different views at the same time, so you can keep the tonal distribution in sight while checking individual colour channels beside the controls. Click the compact chart to open its full-size view.

Fixes

• Objects follow the frame again in the adjustment tools. With Adjust, Colour, Details, Effects or Filters selected, moving, turning or resizing an object shifted only its selection frame while the object stayed where it was. It moves with the frame again.

• No more quitting when a folder is opened. On systems whose font setup does not name a usable standard font, FerrumPix closed itself without a message the moment a folder with pictures was opened. It now uses a font that is actually installed, and if the system has none at all, only the labels on the timeline and the rulers stay empty.

• Pictures with their own colour profile open a little quicker. Bringing them to sRGB no longer makes a second copy of the whole picture on the way, which also keeps memory use down with large files.

• Changing an analysis view is quicker. FerrumPix reuses the already calculated histogram, waveform or RGB parade while the picture has not changed, instead of decoding the image again for every switch.

• Raw files need less memory while they open. Developing a raw picture no longer builds the whole image a second time before handing it over, so opening a big raw leaves more room for everything else.

• Removing an object gets going quicker. Working out which part of the picture has to be filled no longer walks the whole photo point by point, so there is less waiting before the filling itself starts.

• Flatpak: pictures on a network share show up. Folders that your file manager mounts from a Samba, NFS or SFTP share used to look empty in the Flatpak version. They can now be opened like any other folder.

FerrumPix Latest

FerrumPix, latest build

This build is FerrumPix 0.9.32.
What is new in it: changes in 0.9.32

Linux

Package	For	Download
AppImage	Any distribution, runs without installing	FerrumPix-x86_64.AppImage
Flatpak	Any distribution with Flatpak, sandboxed	FerrumPix.flatpak
DEB	Debian, Ubuntu, Mint (amd64)	FerrumPix-amd64.deb
RPM	Fedora, openSUSE (x86_64)	FerrumPix-x86_64.rpm
ZIP	Portable, unpack and run (x64)	FerrumPix-linux-x64.zip
ZIP	Portable, unpack and run (ARM64)	FerrumPix-linux-arm64.zip

On Arch and its derivatives there is ferrumpix-bin in the AUR.

The AppImage carries built-in update information: tools that manage AppImages spot new
versions on their own and download only what changed.

Windows

Package	For	Download
Setup	Installs with start menu entry and file types (x64)	FerrumPix-win-x64-Setup.exe
ZIP	Portable, unpack and run (x64)	FerrumPix-win-x64.zip
ZIP	Portable, unpack and run (ARM64)	FerrumPix-win-arm64.zip

macOS

Package	For	Download
App bundle	Intel Macs	FerrumPix-osx-x64-unsigned.app.zip
App bundle	Apple Silicon	FerrumPix-osx-arm64-unsigned.app.zip

Experimental

The ARM64 and macOS builds are untested. If you try one, please let me know whether it works.

The macOS builds are unsigned, so Gatekeeper may say the app is "damaged" or "can't be
opened". That does not mean the ZIP is broken. Please try this:

1. Download the right build: arm64 for Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3, M4), x64 for Intel Macs.

2. Unzip it.

3. Move FerrumPix to Applications.

4. Open Terminal and run:

   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/FerrumPix.app
   codesign --force --deep --sign - /Applications/FerrumPix.app
   

5. Then start it with:

   open /Applications/FerrumPix.app
   

Good to know

The packages are self-contained and bring the .NET runtime with them, so nothing has to be
installed for that.

libmpv (video) and libraw (RAW development) are needed rather than optional. The Linux
packages ask for both, the Windows downloads bring them along. The Flatpak has LibRaw built
in but no libmpv, so it plays no video, and on macOS libraw comes from Homebrew with
"brew install libraw".

libheif is optional: it opens HEIC, HEIF and AVIF. Without it those files
simply stay closed and everything else works. macOS reads them itself.

FerrumPix 0.9.31

What's new

• Photoshop files in CMYK open with their layers. Until now they came in flat, as one finished picture, and only RGB and greyscale files kept their layers.

Fixes

• Long retouch strokes stay responsive. Smudging, healing and cloning got slower the longer you drew. A stroke is now as quick at the end as at the start.

• Pictures with local corrections redraw much faster. A correction layer used to rebuild its mask and run over the whole picture on every redraw, however small the brushed or graduated area was. The result looks exactly as it did before.

• Thumbnails on a spinning hard disk no longer fight each other. Too many pictures were read at once, and on a drive with a moving head that makes it slower rather than faster. FerrumPix now asks what kind of drive your pictures live on. Pictures on a server are unaffected.

• Saving a large JPEG is quicker. Getting at the camera data, the keywords and the copyright notice no longer means reading the whole file first.

• A Photoshop file you have already edited opens with its layers again. The sidecar file next to it used to push the layers aside, and a rating alone was enough to create one. The layers now come from the file and your edits lie on top. Browsing to such a file shows the same document as opening it does.

• Objects can be made much smaller. Shapes, images and arrows were held to a size that made a small mark or a logo impossible on a large picture. The outline can now also be drawn twice as thick as before.

• Smaller things. The slideshow and adjust buttons in the viewer have a frame, so it is clear where they can be clicked, and browsing a folder whose pictures carry a copyright notice is quicker.

FerrumPix 0.9.30

What's new

• Your copyright can go into the pictures. "Set copyright" in the metadata menu writes a notice into the selected pictures, and every batch dialog carries a field for it as well, so pictures leave the house already marked. An empty field never changes anything. A JPEG gets the notice inside the file, where it travels with it; everything else gets it in the sidecar next to it, and a RAW file is never touched. Where a picture carries a notice, the info panel shows it.

• RAW development on Windows is three to four times faster. A picture that used to take a couple of seconds now takes well under one, and it looks exactly the same as before. RAW development also works on machines that never had the Microsoft Visual C++ runtime installed, where it used to fall back to the small preview stored inside the file without saying so. DNG files from an HDR merge open properly now as well.

• Windows on ARM develops RAW files at last. Those downloads never carried the RAW engine, so they quietly showed the small preview stored inside the file instead of the real picture. They now develop RAW like every other build.

• The file name at the top tells you whether a RAW is really developed. In the editor it is shown in the accent colour while you work on the developed picture, and stays plain when only the small preview stored inside the RAW is on screen.

• Stars, hearts and colour labels straight from the keyboard. The keys 1 to 5 set the rating and 0 takes it away; SHIFT together with 1 to 9 sets a colour label, SHIFT+0 removes it; the full stop or the comma marks a favourite, so the whole thing sits under one thumb on the number pad. All of it works on the selected pictures in the gallery and on the picture in front of you in the viewer and in the editor. The commands you reach for while working now answer to a bare letter as well, not only with CTRL held: in the gallery and the viewer R, D, T, W and P for resize, convert, export, filter and print, plus I for the info panel and E for the editor; in the editor R, T, B, M, I, K and E for the tools. Where you can type, a key is still just a key. Fitting the picture into the window has moved from 0 to F.

• A batch job can be stopped, and it says where it is. Enlarging or denoising with a model takes minutes per picture, and until now all you got was a still screen. The wait panel counts the pictures and the tiles inside the one it is working on, and it carries a button to stop the run. The picture it was working on is not written, so nothing half done ends up in the target folder.

Fixes

• The selection brush shows what it really paints. While you were painting, the marching ants ran around the outside of the stroke, so a loop or a curved sweep looked like a filled area and the selection changed shape the moment you let go. The preview now follows the painted band itself, holes included, and looks the same before and after you release.

• Converting now gives you the same picture as exporting. Converting was the one batch job that threw away an edit you had already made and always developed a RAW at full strength, whatever you had set. A developed RAW came back out of it plain, and on a phone DNG it came out far too dark. It now follows the same rules as "export to", including the question about denoising and object removal.

• A picture from Immich or Nextcloud keeps its name in the editor. It used to arrive under the name of the working copy, which is the asset id on Immich and the file id in front of the name on Nextcloud. That name sat in the footer, in the info panel and in the suggestion when you saved. Going back to the viewer also left you with that one picture instead of the album you came from.

• A rating or a keyword that the server refuses no longer looks saved. Stars, hearts and keywords on an Immich picture were sent off without ever being checked, so the panel showed them as stored even when nothing arrived. They now go back to the value the server has, and the footer says what went wrong.

• An Immich picture edited elsewhere gets a fresh thumbnail. Its tile kept the old image for good, because the cached file was named after the picture alone and never after its version.

• The quick preview shows the picture you asked for. Open one, close it, open the next quickly, and the first one could still appear over the second once it had finished loading. It now stays on the picture you last asked for, gives the loaded image back to memory when you close it, and shows Immich and Nextcloud pictures at full size in the gallery as well, not just in the filmstrip.

• Double-clicking a slider takes it back to its starting value, not to its lowest one. On sliders whose range does not pass through zero the gesture used to drop them to the bottom of the scale: JPEG quality to 1, thumbnails to their smallest size, the slideshow to one second. They now return to the value they began with.

• Smaller things. A lens you pick by hand now says so when the choice cannot be stored, an enlargement that falls back to another model writes it into the log, hiding a mask component no longer leaves an empty undo step, and a saved denoise pass with an unknown model is left alone instead of being redone with the wrong one.

FerrumPix 0.9.29

What's new

• Photos with their own colour profile now look right. A picture in Adobe RGB or Display P3 used to arrive as if it were sRGB, which left it flat and shifted the colours. It is now converted when it opens, in the gallery, the viewer and the editor alike. What you save is sRGB and says so, so the next program reads it the same way.

• Waveform and RGB parade. Two new ways to read a picture next to the histogram in the info panel: the waveform keeps the left-to-right position, so you can see whether the sky burns out on one side while the other still holds detail, and the parade puts the three colour channels side by side, which is how you spot a colour cast. A click opens the diagram large, and it follows your edits.

• Select by colour or by brightness. Click a colour in the picture and everything close to it is selected, or take a range of lightness instead: only the deep shadows, or everything above a certain brightness. Both are in the selection tool and in the mask tool, and both can be refined with the brush afterwards.

• The selection tool can do much more. The brush and the object selection are in it as well, a selection can be copied and pasted the way a mask already could, and holding CTRL while you drag keeps a rectangle square and an ellipse round.

• The gallery and the viewer feel quick again, and FerrumPix starts leaner. The diagram is only worked out for the panel you actually have in front of you, and the symbol list is put together the first time you reach for it.

Fixes

• Masks and selections keep what you gave them. A selection that belongs to a layer stays where you moved it, a mask you have already painted is quick to pick up again, and pressing "new mask layer" a second time makes an independent copy of the shape instead of doing nothing. The range sliders work in both tools, and pulling one back makes the selection smaller again.

• Presets arrive complete. A preset with a sky, subject or brush mask no longer darkens the whole picture, a crop is imported without wiping the edges the preset does not mention, the colour fringe correction comes along, and a look you had loaded before is properly replaced rather than left on top.

• Copying a path or a file copies what you pointed at. From the context menu the copy could end up empty or take a different picture than the one under the pointer.

• Thumbnails are made again for the colour conversion. Tiles written before still carried the colours of their own profile and would have kept them.

• Smaller fixes. Switching in the tree drops the person, place and keyword filters again; the metadata badges answer in the list view too; the sort button shows the direction as an arrow; text fields in the drop-down menus no longer sit on a grey block; clicking the empty layer list drops the selection; a second picture cannot be started while one is still loading; and the colour space entry is now corrected in files that carry an extra marker in front of their shot data.

FerrumPix 0.9.28

What's new

• Nine more languages. Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Polish, Czech, Russian and Japanese join the seven that were there, so FerrumPix now speaks sixteen. As before it follows your system language on its own.

• The symbol search speaks your language too. Looking for a shape or a symbol in the editor meant typing English words before, in every language. Now the search vocabulary is translated as well, in all sixteen - and the six older languages, which only had a handful of words, are complete for the first time.

• Nextcloud no longer needs the Memories app. Without it FerrumPix builds the timeline from the server itself, and albums, keywords, favourites, the trash and the search work just the same. Only people need Memories; that branch simply stays away.

• The adjustment panel can move to the left. In the settings you can put it right next to the tool bar, so the tool and its settings sit together instead of at opposite edges of the screen. It stays on the right until you say otherwise.

• The bottom bar can be switched off. Separately for the gallery, the viewer and the editor, so the picture gets more of the window where you want it and the bar stays where you need it. The filmstrip has its own switch as before and is not affected.

• Photoshop files bring much more with them. Layer masks and groups now travel in both directions and stay editable on either side instead of being flattened into the picture. Files in 16 bit or greyscale open with their layers as well, and files packed the way other programs prefer open at all - some of them would not open before, even though the picture was there.

Fixes

• A double click on the window bar counts again. It switches between a maximised and a normal window, just like the button next to it.

• A picture opened from your file manager comes up straight away. FerrumPix read the whole folder before showing it, which made a big collection feel slow to start. The picture is there at once now and its neighbours follow a moment later.

• The arrows in the viewer sit evenly. They stood a little closer to the picture on one side than on the other, and they are now the same size as the swap button in the comparison view.

• Tidying up really tidies up. Cleaning the database always said there was nothing to find, and removing catalogue data for a folder took the thumbnails but left the entries behind. Both do their work again.

FerrumPix 0.9.27

What's new

• The gallery can show your photos in groups. A third view next to grid and list puts a heading with a date and a count above each block of pictures. The groups follow whatever you sort by: a date gives you one block per day, and months or years if you prefer, and sorting by name, camera, file type or rating groups by that instead. The circle in front of a heading selects the whole block at once, and picking the pictures by hand fills it in just the same.

• FerrumPix can watch your folders. Name them once in the settings and they are read into the catalogue in the background, subfolders included, so search and filters cover the whole collection instead of only the folders you happened to open. Later runs only look at what has changed, the run can be stopped at any time, and nothing is created next to your photos.

• The people search can be sent over those folders in one go. It skips the pictures it has already been through, and what it found stays saved when you stop it.

• The Metadata menu is in the viewer and the editor too. Setting, copying, pasting and removing a location works there just as it does in the gallery, on the picture in front of you.

• Sharpening shows you what it protects. Put the pointer on the Masking slider and tap ALT: the picture turns into a grey map of where the sharpening lands, bright is sharpened, dark stays calm. It stays while you drag the slider, and another tap of ALT takes it away.

Fixes

• The trash stays out of the way. It no longer shows up as a folder in the gallery and the filmstrip, and nothing inside it goes into the catalogue.

• Clearing catalogue data really clears it. A face search running alongside could write its rows back right after the delete, leaving the catalogue half full.

• Tidying up waits for the other window. Cleaning catalogue data or thumbnails while a second window was indexing could bring entries back or mix up the thumbnail index; it now says so and asks you to try again afterwards.

• A folder link that points back at itself no longer stalls the indexing run. Linked folders are still read, each one once.

• Network drives are there right after installing on Windows. The setup ran FerrumPix with administrator rights, and Windows keeps the drives you connected in Explorer away from a program started that way, so the folder tree showed nothing but C:. The setup now hands the start over to your own account.

• A model you download works right away, without restarting FerrumPix.

• A greyed-out tool says why. The hint about the missing model file now appears on the tool itself.

• Warping works on a cropped picture. Its handles sat on the edges of the uncropped image and were out of reach; they now sit on the picture you see.

FerrumPix 0.9.26

What's new

• Your own adjustment presets work over a whole selection. A set of sliders you saved in the Adjust tool can now be picked in Apply filter and in Export to, right next to the built-in filters, LUTs and XMP presets.

• You can give your photos a place. Right-click a picture and pick Metadata, Set location: type a coordinate or simply a town name and it is written to the photos you selected. JPEG files get it inside the file, everything else gets it in a sidecar file next to the original, and RAW files are never touched. The town search runs on your own machine and sends nothing anywhere.

• One photo can hand its place to the others. If one picture of a trip has a location and the rest do not, copy it from that one and paste it onto the whole selection.

• A location can be taken off again. Remove location clears it from the image file, from a sidecar next to it and from the catalogue, and it asks first. The coordinates are overwritten in the file, not just hidden, so they do not travel along when you pass the picture on.

• A picture's location can be opened on the map. Metadata, Show location in OpenStreetMap opens the spot in your browser.

• Nextcloud takes uploads. Drag local pictures onto a Nextcloud entry, paste them, or pick them from the right-click menu; they go to the folder you set in Settings, and a name that is already taken is numbered instead of overwritten.

• Nextcloud can replace the original. With the new setting, saving writes the edit into the file on the server - it keeps its identity, its albums and its shares. Left off, only a sidecar file with the edit is created next to the original, and RAW and PSD files are never overwritten either way.

• Delete for good on Nextcloud. A second switch next to Allow deleting sends deleted photos past the trash, and the confirmation says so.

• The filter buttons know your Nextcloud. The people, places and keywords of the server now stand in the same lists as the local ones, under a heading with the name of the source, and a click opens that view. The buttons also appear when only a server knows people or places.

• Keywords reach the Nextcloud server. A keyword given in gallery, viewer or editor is written to the photo on the server instead of into a local catalogue entry nobody sees again.

• Searching works the same everywhere. Immich and Nextcloud now have their own Search area above the tree, with saved searches just like folders have. The dialog no longer asks where to search - that follows from the area you started in - and it is split into what you can always search for and what comes from the catalogue.

• A server search asks the server first. Nextcloud looks up names, people, places, keywords and favourites on the server itself; Immich adds its own ratings and camera data. Only ratings and colour labels come from the catalogue, because no server keeps them. Text finds a keyword as well as a file name.

• Grain can be colored. A new slider next to strength, size and roughness lets the three colour channels drift apart, from plain grey grain to the coloured speckles of a fast colour film. At zero the grain looks exactly as it did before.

Fixes

• Search no longer shows pictures you threw away. The folder search walked into the system trash, so deleted pictures turned up in the results - and nothing happened when you tried to delete them there. The trash is now left out, and if a delete is refused you get told why instead of silence.

• Cleaning up the catalogue no longer forgets your server photos. Removing orphaned entries checked every path for a file on disk. Server photos have none, so their ratings, keywords and people were thrown out with them.

• Replacing a photo on Immich no longer loses metadata. If the server refused the description, the rating or a keyword, that went unnoticed and the original was moved to the bin anyway. Now the original stays and says why.

• Search results are no longer lost while a search is still running. Saving happened in the background on a list the search kept adding to, which could fail outright or let an older save overwrite newer hits.

• Copy folder path works reliably. It reached for the clipboard from a background thread, so depending on the system it silently did nothing.

FerrumPix 0.9.25

What's new

• The pen. Draw a curve point by point, pull it into shape at its handles, and change it at its points afterwards. Click on the curve to add a point, hold ALT to take one away or to break a smooth point, and hold SHIFT to collect several points and move them together.

• A path becomes a selection. One button, and the cut-out stays correctable: move a point and press again. Two open paths can also be joined into one, and text can follow a path.

• A path draws nothing on its own. It is geometry first, so a fresh path stays invisible until you give it a stroke or a fill.

• A group counts as one layer. Opacity, blend mode and a mask of its own apply to the whole group, an adjustment inside a group stays inside it, and groups can go inside groups.

Fixes

• Removing an object works on the layer you picked, including when you picked the object by clicking it, and it shows that it is working.

• A group holds together: picking one marks everything inside it, a group can be dragged into another group, and opacity and blend mode set on the group itself take effect.

• A mask for a group covers what is inside it, the layers in its subgroups included, and hiding a group hides them with it.

• Two grouped adjustments with the same settings keep each one's restriction to the layer below.

• A selection can be emptied with Delete wherever you clicked last.

• A batch shows that it is working while it writes, which matters when enlarging with a model.

• Key names are set in capitals in the help texts and the shortcut list, so a key stands out from the sentence around it.

FerrumPix 0.9.24

What's new

• Empty layers to paint on. A button under the layer list adds a blank layer that covers the picture; brush, eraser and retouching work on it, and it moves, hides and blends like any other layer.

• Retouching works on the layer you picked. The clone stamp, smudge, healing brush and removing something all work inside the image of a marked layer, the way the brush and the eraser already do, and you watch the result while you drag.

• Removing something on a layer shows that it is working. The picture dims while the model runs, the cancel button stops it, and the footer says afterwards that the layer was hit and not the photo underneath.

• Transparent pixels can be locked from a layer's context menu, so a stroke, a retouch or a removal stays inside the shape the layer already has.

• The shape of a layer as a selection. Ctrl-click its thumbnail; on a mask thumbnail the same click loads the mask.

• Locking a layer is one click on its row, next to the eye, instead of a trip to the toolbar under the list.

• A layer says when it carries its own adjustments. Its row shows a mark you can switch off to see the layer without them, and the context menu discards them for good.

• Erasing on a layer is undoable by hand. On an inserted picture, a text or a shape it now takes the coverage away through a layer mask instead of cutting pixels out, so you can paint it back, soften it or drop it altogether and it works on text and shapes at all, which have no pixels to cut. On a paint layer it stays what it was: the paint is gone.

• Enter applies a crop, just like the button under the crop sliders.

• Searching for a person finds pictures on your Immich server as well, not only the ones on your own machine.

Fixes

• Removing an object works on the marked layer when you picked the object by clicking it. That click makes a mask, and a mask never reached the layer: nothing happened, and the footer claimed the selection was somewhere else.

• Saving twice no longer crops twice. Once you had saved, saving again cut the same piece off the picture a second time, and it was easy to miss.

• A crop only happens when you confirm it. Pulling the frame and leaving the crop tool used to be enough to crop a RAW file or a project.

• The eraser no longer promises a checkerboard while you drag it across a layer: what appears there is the picture underneath, not transparency.

• The mask of a correction layer opens again from the layers panel. On a row that was already selected the button did nothing, and the mask looked as if it could no longer be edited.

• A distorted object comes out of the export the way it looks on screen: curved edges keep their shape instead of showing a faint seam, and a distortion is worked out as finely when saving as while you drag it.

• Small things: Select all works in the drawing tool too, and the model that compares faces is now fetched from its publisher, because its licence does not allow passing it on with the others.