Hi everyone,
Another substantial update is here! FerrumPix 0.9.77 brings quite a few improvements to everyday photo management, metadata handling, importing, searching and the viewer. There are also several fixes for RAW+JPEG workflows, PSD compatibility and exporting.
On the first start, FerrumPix now guides you through a short setup:
- Choose your language.
- Select the appearance of the application.
- Choose which AI models you want to download.
- Select your graphics card, if you have one.
Everything takes effect immediately, and you can change these choices later in Settings. You can also run the setup again whenever you want.
Existing installations will see this setup once after updating.
This is one of the bigger additions in this release.
There is now a new Title and Description dialog in the Metadata menu. It lets you edit the following fields for one picture or an entire selection:
- Title
- Headline
- Description
- Creator
- Credit line
JPEG, PNG and WebP store this information directly in the image file. JPEG also gets the corresponding IPTC fields. Other formats, including RAW, use XMP sidecars.
These fields are also searchable in the gallery, can be used as conditions in saved searches, and can be displayed in the information sidebar (disabled by default).
When exporting a developed RAW file, its title and description are now carried over from the sidecar into the exported image.
There is also a new File and Catalog comparison dialog. It displays the metadata stored in the image file and in the FerrumPix catalog side by side. You can copy or remove individual values in either direction.
You can also synchronise ratings, colour labels, pick/reject marks and keywords between files, sidecars and the catalog.
The metadata removal dialog has been improved as well. Instead of simply removing everything, you can now choose exactly what to remove – for example keywords, title and description, copyright or location – and where to remove it: from the file, sidecar or catalog.
The gallery search and saved searches now support more metadata fields.
You can search for:
- Place names and copyright notices.
- Copyright as a condition in saved searches.
- Keep and reject marks.
- Colour labels and ratings.
- Fields that are empty or not empty.
The rating selector now displays stars, and colour labels use the same visual representation as in the information sidebar.
The search dialog has also been made wider.
Importing from memory cards is a little easier now.
The list of shooting days has buttons to select all days, none, or just the most recent day. This should save quite a bit of time when working with cards that contain many days of photos.
Adding keywords in the information sidebar is quicker too: press Enter to add a keyword, and the field is immediately cleared and ready for the next one.
A few improvements make everyday browsing more convenient:
- Kept pictures now show a green thumbs-up symbol on their gallery thumbnails, just like rejected pictures already have their own mark.
- Clicking the thumbs-up removes the keep mark.
- Both indicators can be disabled in the gallery settings.
- Rating stars, hearts and metadata symbols now have stronger shadows to remain readable on bright images.
- The gallery’s left sidebar with sources and folder tree can now be collapsed, giving you more room for the pictures.
- Both gallery sidebars can be resized, and their widths are remembered.
The information sidebar has also been moved to the far right in the editor, next to the layers panel.
In fullscreen mode, you can now show or hide it using a new button in the control bar or the I key. The image makes room for the sidebar instead of simply being covered by it.
There are settings to keep both the information sidebar and filmstrip visible in fullscreen mode. The control bar also remembers your choices.
The rating bar at the top of fullscreen mode and the slideshow can now be switched off in the viewer settings.
The filmstrip gets two new optional settings:
- Show the edited mark from the gallery thumbnails.
- Keep the selected picture centred, so the filmstrip moves instead of the selection.
A new feature for checking focus without constantly zooming in:
Focus peaking highlights sharp edges in red , making it easier to see which areas of an image are in focus.
Press K to toggle it. The setting stays enabled when moving to the next pictures.
The colour mixer now has an eyedropper. Click a colour directly in the image, and the mixer automatically selects the corresponding colour range. This also works with black and white images, where the selection is based on the original colour beneath the grey tones.
Gradient masks have also received an improvement: the brush now works in Intersect mode with both linear and radial gradients. It keeps only the part of the gradient you paint over, and you can subsequently add more areas or remove them again.
The text tool now has an All Caps button next to Bold and Italic. It displays the text in capital letters without changing what you actually typed. This formatting is also preserved when importing and exporting PSD files.
The watermark settings in the export dialog are now more flexible.
You can adjust the margin from the image corner and the opacity for each export individually, without changing the saved watermark itself.
The exported watermark also retains its blend mode, outline and shadow.
There is a fix for the watermark size as well: when resizing an image, the option to preserve the watermark size is now available whenever resizing is enabled. This prevents the watermark from unexpectedly shrinking to just a few pixels on smaller exports.
Similar pictures are now grouped more strictly. Every picture in a group must resemble all the others in that group. Two different pictures will no longer end up together simply because both resemble a third picture.
The portable Windows ARM package now supports video playback and opening HEIC and JPEG XL files, just like the x64 package.
Lens correction also knows two additional Nikon lenses, including the Nikkor Z 24-70mm f/2.8 S II.
There are quite a few additional fixes:
- RAW files open faster in the editor and are no longer developed twice in certain situations.
- Film-negative conversion no longer briefly turns converted images pale after activation.
- RAW+JPEG pairs now behave consistently when setting keep/reject marks, ratings, hearts and colour labels in the viewer.
- The “Kept only” filter includes the entire RAW+JPEG pair, even if only one file was previously marked.
- PSD text using OpenType fonts with CFF outlines retains its font when opened in Photoshop.
- PSD selections, layer masks and vector masks are preserved more reliably.
- Mixed formatting in PSD text layers retains fonts, sizes and positions more accurately.
- Settings now open immediately, with the remaining sections in the background.
- Display profiles are now available for monitors whose Windows drivers do not report a display name.
- Printing from the Flatpak now opens the PDF viewer correctly.
- Several camera models now have better-matched initial RAW brightness, including the Canon EOS 350D and EOS R5 Mark II, Fujifilm X-H2, Nikon Z5 II and Sony A7 V.
Your feedback is always welcome!