RAWTHERAPEE 5.13 RELEASE NOTES

This is RawTherapee 5.13, released on 2026-07-26.



IN GENERAL

Start by reading the "Getting Started" article on RawPedia:
https://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/

RawTherapee supports most raw formats, including Pentax and Sony Pixel Shift, Canon Dual-Pixel, and those from Foveon and X-Trans sensors.
If you're wondering whether it supports your camera's raw format, first download RawTherapee and try for yourself. If a raw format is not supported it will either not open, or the preview in the Editor tab will appear black, white, or have a strong color cast - usually magenta. In that case, read the "Adding Support for New Raw Formats" RawPedia article.

In order to use RawTherapee efficiently you should know that:
- You can scroll all panels using the mouse scroll-wheel.
- You can right-click on a tool's name to automatically expand it while collapsing all others.
- To change slider values or drop-down list items with the mouse scroll-wheel, hold the Shift key. This is so that you can safely scroll the panels without accidentally changing a slider or other tool setting.
- All curves support the Shift and Ctrl keys while dragging a point. Shift+drag makes the point snap to a meaningful axis (top, bottom, diagonal, other), while Ctrl+drag makes your mouse movement super-fine for precise point positioning.
- There are many keyboard shortcuts which make working with RawTherapee much faster and give you greater control. Make sure you familiarize yourself with them on RawPedia's "Keyboard Shortcuts" page!
- All sliders support a fine-tuning mode which you can toggle by pressing the Shift key while dragging a slider.



NEW FEATURES SINCE 5.12

- The Gamut Compression tool received several enhancements:
    - The maximum values for the distance limits has been increased.
    - The distance limits can be set automatically.
    - The tool now shows the maximum red, green, blue, and achromatic values, as well as the estimated distance ratio between the working and target color spaces.
- The Abstract Profile tool in Color Management received several enhancements:
    - Highlight attenuation can be adjusted rather than simply being on or off.
    - There is a new custom destination primaries option that allows changing the primaries by hue and saturation.
    - The xy chromaticity diagram in the primaries adjustment shows the Rec2020 primaries for reference.
- The Color Appearance & Lighting tool received several enhancements.
- The Selective Editing's Equalization & Pre-Tone Mapping (formerly Shadows/Highlights, Equalizer & GHS) tool has a new simple tone mapper called Michaelis-Menten.
- The Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch (GHS) method in Selective Editing's Equalization & Pre-Tone Mapping (formerly Shadows/Highlights, Equalizer & GHS) tool received several enhancements:
    - The Black point and White point can be set automatically.
    - The Black point/White point section now shows the maximum red, green, and blue values and the dynamic range.
    - There is now a choice of matrix conversions that affect the color handling.
    - Several parameters can now be adjusted regardless of what the Stretch Factor (D) is set to.
    - The Symmetry point shows a recommended value and can be set automatically.
    - Middle gray, RGB maximum, and 3 sigma standard deviation are displayed.
- In Selective Editing's Color Appearance tool, the Source Data Adjustments section has a new TRC based tone mapper with per-channel TRC adjustment and a color inversion option. The RGB channel slope tone mapper also received the color inversion option.
- The Blur/Grain & Denoise tool in Selective Editing received several enhancements:
    - A new Recovery Based on Luminance Mask in Blur & Noise allows refining the blurred area.
    - Denoise has new options to reduce denoising of details.
- Selective Editing's Sharpening tool has a new Capture Deconvolution method which brings the benefits of Capture Sharpening to Selective Editing and works on both raw and non-raw images.
- The Crop tool guides has been revamped to allow multiple guides to be shown simultaneously, the guides' color to be changed, alternative aspect ratios to be shown, and a bleed area to be set.
- The Lens / Geometry tool can scale images horizontally or vertically.
- The Capture Sharpening tool has a new Presharpening denoise option which can improve the sharpening result on noisy images by creating a better contrast mask.
- The File Browser can show color labels from XMPs embedded in image files.
- In the Queue's Output Location template, a new "%e" format specifier is
available which expands to the file extension of the output file (for example, "jpg" or "png").
- HiDPI support is improved, most notably making the editor preview and thumbnails sharp.
- All profiles are now shown in the monitor profile selection in Preferences.
- Performance on ARM has been improved.
- All preferences can now be easily reset in Preferences.
- Adapted Olympus lens name detection is improved.
- Added new translations for Hebrew and Korean.
- Updated translations for Simplified Chinese, Dutch, and German.
- Added or improved support for cameras, raw formats, and color profiles (not an exhaustive list because unconfirmed support is excluded):
    - Canon EOS M50 (white level)
    - Canon EOS R5m2
    - Canon EOS R6 Mark III (black level)
    - Canon EOS R50 V (black level)
    - Canon EOS R100 (white level)
    - Canon PowerShot V1 (black level, white level)
    - Fujifilm GFX 50S II (color matrix)
    - Fujifilm GFX 50S II (color matrix)
    - Fujifilm GFX 100 II (color matrix)
    - Fujifilm X-M5 (color matrix, raw crop)
    - Fujifilm X-T30 III (raw crop)
    - Hasselblad CFV-100c (color matrix)
    - Nikon Z5_2 (color matrix)
    - Nikon Z50_2 (color matrix)
    - Nikon Z f (white level)
    - Olympus OM-3 (color matrix)
    - Olympus OM-5MarkII (color matrix)
    - Panasonic DC-G97 (color matrix)
    - Panasonic DC-S1M2ES (raw crop)
    - Panasonic DC-S1M2 (raw crop)
    - Panasonic DC-S1RM2 (raw crop)
    - Panasonic DC-S9 (raw crop)
    - Samsung DNGs (black level, white level)
    - Sony DSC-RX1RM3 (raw crop)
    - Sony ILCE-1M2 (color matrix, raw crop)
    - Sony ILCE-7M5 (black level, raw crop)
    - Sony ILCE-6400A (color matrix)



OTHER IMPORTANT CHANGES SINCE 5.12
- The default working profile is now Rec2020 instead of ProPhoto.
    - Why it changed: ProPhoto has a very large gamut. While it is useful for preventing loss of color information during editing, it also allows colors that cannot exist in the real world. Some tools work best when there are only real colors. Rec2020 also has a large gamut, but only allows real colors.
    - What it means for you: ProPhoto is still available. Use of Rec2020 is completely optional. If you previously used ProPhoto and decide to switch to Rec2020, be aware that some tools are dependent on the working profile and may behave differently. Examples include, but are not limited to, Exposure, Channel Mixer, HSV Equalizer, Soft Light, RGB Curves, and Color Toning.


NEWS RELEVANT TO PACKAGE MAINTAINERS

New since 5.12:
- RawTherapee may be built to use LunaSVG instead of librsvg.
- RawTherapee may be compiled with SIMDe to improve performance on ARM architectures.
- The USE_OLD_CXX_ABI option has been removed.
- RawTherapee depends on the fmt library. By default, it will download the source code and build it. To use the system fmt library, use -DWITH_SYSTEM_FMT="ON".

In general:
- To get the source code, either clone from git or use the tarball from https://rawtherapee.com/shared/source/. Do not use the auto-generated GitHub release tarballs.
- Requires GTK+ version >= 3.24.3.
- GTK+ versions 3.24.3 - 3.24.6 have an issue where combobox menu scroll-arrows are missing when the combobox list does not fit vertically on the screen. As a result, users would not be able to scroll in the following comboboxes: Processing Profiles, Film Simulation, and the camera and lens profiles in Profiled Lens Correction.
- JPEG XL read support depends on libjxl. By default, RawTherapee builds with JPEG XL support if and only if libjxl is present. Use -DWITH_JXL="ON" or DWITH_JXL="OFF" to explicitly enable or disable, respectively, JPEG XL support.
- RawTherapee builds with a custom version of LibRaw by default. To use the system LibRaw, use -DWITH_SYSTEM_LIBRAW="ON". Requires LibRaw >= 0.21.
- To avoid Rust dependencies, build using the LunaSVG rendering backend with -DSVG_BACKEND="lunasvg". Use -DWITH_SYSTEM_LUNASVG="ON" to use the system LunaSVG.
- RawTherapee has hand-optimized code for most x86_64 architectures. SIMDe is an optional compile-time dependency that allows most of the optimizations to be used on arm64. Enable it with -DWITH_SIMDE="ON".
- RawTherapee 5 requires GCC-4.9 or higher, or Clang.
- Do not use -ffast-math, it will not make RawTherapee faster but will introduce artifacts.
- Use -O3, it will make RawTherapee faster with no known side-effects.
- For stable releases use -DCACHE_NAME_SUFFIX=""
- For development builds and release-candidates use -DCACHE_NAME_SUFFIX="5-dev"



NEWS RELEVANT TO DEVELOPERS

See CONTRIBUTING.md



DOCUMENTATION

https://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/



REPORTING BUGS

If you found a problem, don't keep it to yourself. Read the "How to write useful bug reports" article to get the problem fixed:
https://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/How_to_write_useful_bug_reports



FORUM

RawTherapee shares a forum with users and developers of other Free/Libre/Open Source Software:
https://discuss.pixls.us/c/software/rawtherapee



REVISION HISTORY

The complete changelog is available at:
https://github.com/RawTherapee/RawTherapee/commits/
