Change Log - MergeRAW

Version 1.9.2

Tuesday, August 4, 2026

More dependable alignment when a burst is hard to track — when a frame gives up too few tracking points, MergeRAW re-tracks it with a looser threshold to find more. Those extra points were then counted toward the bar the alignment had to clear, so a rescued frame could be held to a standard it had no way to meet and be dropped — even one the steadiest-stretch check had already certified as still. The bar is now set by the confidently tracked points alone
New: Output compatibility, in the Plug-in Manager — merged DNGs use the newest DNG features by default, which makes the smallest files. If some other application refuses to open a merged file, set this to Common (DNG 1.7.0), or Compatible (DNG 1.4.0) for older software still. Lightroom reads all three and the image is identical either way — the lower settings only make the file larger. DXO PhotoLab in particular quits when it opens a merged raw file, and Common fixes it
Fixed: alerts after a merge that had nothing to report — routine chatter from Adobe DNG Converter could look like a MergeRAW warning and interrupt with an alert
Fixed: merges from folders whose names contain $ or a backtick (macOS) — those characters were interpreted before MergeRAW saw the path, so a merge could fail, hang, or write somewhere unexpected
Dark frames now say when they cannot be used — on Fujifilm X-Trans files, a merge asked to demosaic reported a hot pixel count while quietly not subtracting them. It now says so plainly

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.9.1

Monday, August 3, 2026

Fixed: a misaligned strip along the bottom of Night Align merges — frames were being aligned against a running average that still included the shaky start of the burst, the very frames Night Align then leaves out. On bursts with a rocky start the whole merge came out subtly rotated against its anchor frame, and along the edge where the anchor fills in alone, the scene visibly stepped sideways. Every frame now aligns only against frames that stay in the merge
Fewer spurious "photos did not line up" alerts from Night Align — when the steadiest-stretch check has already vetted the merged frames, alignment notices go to the merge log instead of interrupting with an alert

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.9.0

Sunday, August 2, 2026

Night Align now merges the steadiest stretch of your burst — camera motion is measured across the whole burst and only the stillest run of frames is merged, anchored on the sharpest frame in its middle. Near subjects come out dramatically sharper; when there is no distinctly still stretch (a tripod, or shake throughout) the whole burst merges as before. The merged file always keeps the capture time and identity of the photo you selected
Night Align leaves out frames that cannot be aligned — they would only smear the result. A night merge can now use noticeably fewer frames than you selected; the merge log says what was kept and why
The night radio is renamed — "Night Align - Skip Blurry Frames" is now "Night Align - Smart Frame Selection": sharpness, alignability, and steadiness all decide which frames merge
Night Align now honors the blend choices — the default (Median radio) is the outlier-rejecting smart average it has always used, its rejection now decided across all three color channels together and feathered at its edges so rejected areas blend in naturally. Normal - Blur Motion is a straight average of the kept frames, for when the motion is the picture (light trails, moving water). Deghost - Freeze Motion freezes anything that moved to how it looks in the merge's anchor frame — built for a distinct moving subject
Alignment messages in plain language — how far off the photos were and what to try, instead of technical jargon. For command-line users the new machinery is available directly: -quietWindow, -alignGate, -clipDeghost, -clipFeather, and -alignBicubic (experimental)

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.8.1

Saturday, August 1, 2026

More dependable Auto Align on high-contrast handheld scenes — tracking points are now spread across everything trackable, and a fitted correction is only trusted as far as its points actually reach, instead of a correction fitted in one narrow band being extended across the whole picture
Alignment now favors what you focused on — a handheld merge of a scene with depth can only be perfectly sharp for one plane; tracking is now weighted toward the in-focus parts so that plane is your subject

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.8.0

Friday, July 31, 2026

Experimental support for Fujifilm GFX cameras — the GFX's color grid starts on a different pixel than MergeRAW assumed, so aligned merges came out strongly magenta. The mosaic is now normalized on read and restored exactly on write, fixing every camera with an unusual color grid. Tested so far on the GFX 100S II and GFX 100RF — reports welcome
Demosaic Mode is now Auto, Sharper, and Safe — Auto, the new default, does the least interpolation it can: a merge that needs no demosaic stays a raw mosaic for Lightroom to develop normally. Sharper always writes a demosaiced file, so a single photo can use MergeRAW purely as an alternative demosaic. "Protect Grey" is gone, and all three choices are offered for every camera
Fixed: "Safe (Adobe DNG Converter)" now really uses Adobe DNG Converter — on Bayer cameras it quietly used MergeRAW's own demosaic instead, only ever reaching the Converter for Fujifilm X-Trans files
Automatic flat fields by aperture (experimental) — shoot flats at several f-stops and each merge is corrected with the flats matching its own aperture, with a nearest-f-stop fallback when nothing matches
Fixed: color of aligned tripod merges in Lightroom — a merge that needed no resampling was written back as a raw mosaic with its green channels described as perfectly matched, which could shift color slightly on sensors where the two greens differ. Adobe now reads these files identically to the original
Faster deghosting — the two slowest steps of building a deghost mask now use every core. Results are bit-for-bit identical

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.7.3

Thursday, July 30, 2026

"Directory on Disk" calibration picker — point the dark or flat picker at a whole folder of calibration frames anywhere on disk; MergeRAW reads every raw file, adds any missing from your catalog (asking first), and averages them into one calibration frame
Clearer calibration pickers — the in-selection options now read "Filter by Filename / Directory / Color / Stars", grouped apart from the two "on Disk" options, and a Clear button in the Plug-in Manager forgets both pickers' remembered choices
Fixed: on-disk calibration choices are remembered right away, not only after a merge has finished
Better choices when no flat field matches your aperture — Use Nearest corrects with the closest f-stop, alongside Average All and Cancel
Fixed: flat field correction was ignored by several blend modes — a flat field had no effect at all on Median, Night Mode, Sky Tracking, and Focus Stack merges: the correction was computed, then discarded while assembling the final image
Fixed: deghosting on pixel shift merges — in the highest-contrast places, most often motion in front of a blown highlight, the deghost test could keep the moved pixel instead of rejecting it
Fixed: deghosting artifacts along the frame edge — on aligned merges, the strip outside the two frames' overlap was compared against uninitialized memory, which could leave a band of stray artifacts
Failures explain themselves — "not enough stars to track" and several other failures now arrive with an explanation instead of a bare error code, and a missing sky-mask file is reported immediately rather than after the whole merge has run

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.7.2

Wednesday, July 29, 2026

Performance improvements for large sky and focus stacks — aligned merges no longer resample a full-frame coverage mask for every frame, and sky stacking stopped re-accumulating a constant weight across the whole image. Results are bit-for-bit identical — just faster
Improved workflow in advanced batching — "Merge Each Stack" now asks what you want when the selection mixes stacks with loose photos, instead of quietly writing a one-frame "merge" for each stray. Flat fields shot at several apertures are matched to each merge's f-stop, so a folder of flats can cover a whole shoot
Easier bug reports — a Troubleshooting section in the Plug-in Manager opens or reveals MergeRAW's log file, so you can attach it when something goes wrong

Thanks to the tester whose careful bug reports drove the batching changes — if MergeRAW misbehaves for you, an email is always welcome.

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.7.1

Friday, July 24, 2026

Deghosting for camera-original Pentax DNGs — multi-frame composites straight out of the camera (Pentax K-1 II in-camera HDR and Pixel Shift) carry no noise-profile tag, so the Deghost blend silently switched itself off. MergeRAW now measures the sensor's noise from the frames themselves and deghosts these files like any other — this applies to camera-original DNGs from any camera that omits the tag
Deghost no longer fights highlight recovery — in bracketed HDR merges, highlight detail recovered from the darker frames could be mistaken for motion and discarded by the Deghost blend, on all cameras. Recovered highlights now pass through in full, so Deghost + brackets keeps both the ghost protection and the extra highlight range
Cleaner ghosts around blown highlights and in moving scenes — subjects that moved in front of a blown highlight now resolve to clean white instead of leaving hard-edged dark patches, and scenes where everything moves (wind through foliage) reject ghosts decisively instead of averaging them in

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.7.0

Tuesday, July 21, 2026

Native Fujifilm X-Trans demosaic — a new Demosaic Mode group in the Advanced dialog lets X-Trans merges skip the round-trip through Adobe's DNG Converter and demosaic on MergeRAW's own engine. Two new choices sit alongside the default Safe (Adobe DNG Converter):
- Sharper — MergeRAW's native X-Trans demosaic, resolving finer detail than the Adobe conversion
- Protect Grey — the same native demosaic with extra conditioning that suppresses false color (green/magenta speckle) on fine neutral textures, at a slight cost in bite
Both apply per merge and leave the default untouched, so nothing changes unless you choose them
Reliable very-large night stacks — night-mode merges of 100+ frames no longer risk failing when the scratch disk runs low: MergeRAW now re-reads frames instead of spilling them all to disk when space is tight (a little slower, identical result), and warns you when the scratch disk is nearly full. A dropped blurry frame can no longer leave a thin bright edge on the result

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.6.2

Friday, July 17, 2026

Fixed: Lightroom masks now survive the merge — brush mask data (stored by Lightroom in DNG "big tables") was silently dropped from merged DNGs, so masked corrections copied from the source photo could lose their brush components
Faster pixel shift with a flat field — flat-field correction now runs on the native super-resolution path, cutting merge time and memory use
"File on Disk" calibration picker — choose a dark or flat frame directly from disk in the Advanced dialog, with a list of recently used files
Merge Each Directory batch mode, and focus stacks now use the nearest-focus frame as the base for cleaner out-of-focus areas

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.6.0 / 1.6.1

Wednesday, July 15, 2026 (1.6.1 bugfix: July 16)

New "Merge Raw Files (Advanced)" menu item — the merge dialog split in two. The basic dialog is now just alignment and blend; the Advanced dialog adds a second column with batch mode, hot pixel removal, and the calibration frame pickers. Both are also available as export presets
Batch Mode — choose Merge All Photos, Merge Each Stack, or Process Each Photo right in the dialog (the popup question is gone). Merge Each Stack runs one merge per selected Lightroom stack; Process Each Photo applies your corrections to every photo individually and produces one DNG each — perfect for fixing up a whole shoot with a dark frame and flat field
Flat field frames come from your selection — mark them by file, folder, color label, or star rating, exactly like dark frames. When several flats match, MergeRAW automatically averages them into a single calibration frame first
Calibration frames are shared across a batch — photos marked as darks or flats are never batch members; every merge in the batch uses them
Thanks to the users whose testing and feature requests shaped this release!

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.5.4

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Fixed: Fujifilm X-Trans merges could fail on macOS — Adobe DNG Converter refuses to write into a symlinked folder, and the default macOS temporary folder is one (/tmp). MergeRAW now resolves the scratch folder's real path before handing it to the converter, so X-Trans conversion works with the default scratch setting again
Photoshop location setting — "Edit Raw File in Photoshop" users can now point the plugin at their Photoshop installation from the Plug-in Manager's Settings section (next to the scratch folder) instead of editing a file inside the plugin; auto-detection remains the default
Merges into folders with accented or non-Latin names now finish with an instant rename instead of an extra file copy, and the DNG SDK was updated to Adobe's latest hardening release (1.7.1 build 2652)

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.5.3

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

The 100-photo limit is gone — merge as many frames as you like: deep frame-averaging, median, or night stacks are no longer capped. Selections over 1000 photos ask for a quick confirmation first, and any merge can be canceled from its progress dialog
Big merges respect your scratch folder — the temporary working files a large merge writes (stacking spill, converted DNGs) now go to the scratch folder chosen in the Plug-in Manager instead of next to the merged photo, so a photo library on a NAS or slow drive no longer carries the scratch traffic

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.5.2

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

Accented and non-Latin file paths fixed on Windows — photos stored under folder or file names with accents or non-Latin characters (Fotografía, München, фото, 写真) failed to merge on Windows. Merges now work regardless of what your folders and files are called, on both platforms

Thanks to the user who reported this one — if MergeRAW misbehaves for you, an email is always welcome.

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.5.1

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

Merge several stacks in one pass — select any number of Lightroom stacks and MergeRAW asks whether to merge each stack into its own DNG or combine the whole selection. "Merge Each Stack" runs one merge per stack with the settings you choose once — batch bracket sets, burst stacks, or flat-field runs without repeating the dialog — and unstacked photos in the selection are processed individually. Since each stack merges on its own, the stacks don't even need to come from the same camera
Choose your scratch folder — a new Settings section in Lightroom's Plug-in Manager lets you pick the folder MergeRAW uses for its temporary DNG exports, so on multi-drive systems the heavy export traffic can move to a fast drive or off the system disk. If the folder ever goes missing, MergeRAW quietly falls back to the system default

Both improvements come from a user's workflow suggestions — thank you, and keep them coming.

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.5.0

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

Fujifilm Pixel Shift Multi-Shot — the Pixel Shift merge now assembles Fujifilm's 20-shot X-Trans sequences (X-T5 / X-H2 family) natively from the raw sensor mosaics: every pixel gets true measured color plus double the resolution — a 160-megapixel DNG from the X-T5's 40-megapixel sensor — matching Fujifilm's own Pixel Shift Combiner output without leaving Lightroom. Select the 20 photos, choose Pixel Shift, merge — and because the merge works on the raw mosaics directly, this mode doesn't need Adobe's DNG Converter
Native-resolution merges from the same capture — Fujifilm cameras always record pixel shift as 20 frames, so MergeRAW lets you choose the result at merge time: merge all 20 for the 160-megapixel file, or merge just the first 5 (one full color cycle) for a standard-resolution DNG where every pixel still gets true measured color with no demosaicing — a much smaller file with the full color benefit, which also rescues sequences where motion spoiled the later frames
Sequence quality checks included — every frame is verified against the commanded sensor-shift grid, so a bumped tripod or wind gets a clear warning instead of a silently soft merge, and small frame-to-frame exposure flicker is measured on the raw mosaics and compensated

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.4.0 / 1.4.1

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

Focus stacking (experimental) — the new "Blend Sharpest - Focus Stacking" blend merges a focus-bracketed stack into one front-to-back sharp DNG: every part of the image comes from the frames where it is actually in focus, guided by a depth map built from the stack itself. Works with in-camera focus bracketing and manual focus rails, handheld or tripod; slices can run near-to-far or far-to-near
Alignment built for focus stacks — frames align neighbor-to-neighbor, so the focus breathing and progressive blur that break ordinary all-against-one alignment stay small at every step; the merged result is trimmed a few edge pixels where the frames stop overlapping, just like dedicated stacking tools
Focus stacking is marked experimental while it is tuned against dedicated stacking software — try it on your stacks and report anything that merges worse than your current tool

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.3.0

Monday, July 13, 2026

Night mode catches subtle blur — "Skip Blurry Frames" now detects the small motion smear image stabilization leaves behind (a few pixels wide — enough to soften fine detail, but invisible to the old detector), drops those frames, and delivers a composite as sharp as the best shots in your burst
Night mode picks the best alignment anchor — if the photo you selected is one of the shaken ones, a sharp, centrally-positioned frame from the burst anchors the alignment instead; the merged file still takes its name, capture time, and develop settings from your most-selected photo
Automatic hot pixel maps — on merges of 8 or more frames, the Automatic and Night Sky hot pixel modes now also build a map of the sensor's persistently warm pixels from the shoot itself and remove them: dark-frame-style cleanup for long exposures without shooting dark frames (real dark frames still take precedence when you provide them)
Honest exposure metadata — the merged DNG's exposure time and ISO now count only the frames actually stacked, not frames dropped for blur or failed alignment

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.2.0 / 1.2.1

Saturday, July 11, 2026 (1.2.1 bugfix: July 12)

Fujifilm X-Trans support — X-Trans raw files now merge: MergeRAW converts them to demosaiced (linear) DNGs automatically, so frame averaging, HDR brackets, Deghost, Auto Align, night mode, median blends, and dark frames all work. Requires Adobe's free DNG Converter to be installed. Pixel Shift and Sky Tracking need true Bayer sensor data and now say so clearly instead of failing
Linear DNG input — already-demosaiced (linear) DNGs from any source now merge through every core path
Tripod stacks stay true raw — when Auto Align finds that nothing actually moved (every frame lands on whole sensor pixels), the merged DNG is now written as a genuine raw mosaic with lossless compression instead of a demosaiced linear file: Lightroom demosaics real sensor data, and the file is about a third the size
Merges that fail now report the reason in the error dialog instead of failing silently
HDR bracket highlights fixed (1.2.1) — merged brackets now keep the highlight detail recovered from the darker exposures: the output gets just enough extra highlight headroom (with baseline exposure raised to match, so it renders at the same brightness) instead of clipping recovered highlights to solid white

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.1.2

Saturday, July 11, 2026

Night mode — the new "Auto Align - Skip Blurry Frames" alignment stacks a handheld burst into one clean low-light shot: blurred frames are detected and dropped, and a smart average rejects anything that moved through the scene
Better handheld alignment for everyone — Auto Align now corrects the skew electronic shutters add to fast handheld sequences, and recovers frames that motion blur or close-focus parallax used to knock out
Pentax pixel shift and HDR files merge in one step — select the camera's single multi-frame DNG and merge; no more extracting frames with Pentax's software first
Smarter Deghost blend — motion detection now measures each pair of frames' actual noise instead of trusting the camera's (consistently optimistic) noise metadata: masks trace what really moved, and shadow motion no longer slips through
Merged DNGs record how much the merge reduced noise, so Lightroom's denoise tools see honest values instead of single-frame ones
Clearer names for the alignment and blend choices in the merge dialog
Fixed: exposure-bracket merges without alignment could show strong green/magenta color fringing and magenta highlight blobs; bright highlights recovered from the darker frames now clip cleanly to white
Fixed: very large stacks launched from Lightroom could fail at the end of the merge, and failed merges on macOS could report success
The merge dialog shows the plugin version in its title

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 1.0.1

Friday, July 10, 2026

MergeRAW 1.0! Six and a half years and one pandemic after the first commit, the toolbox feels complete enough to drop the zero
Sky Tracking rides through clouds — frames whose stars are hidden are now aligned from the sequence's capture times instead of being dropped, so every selected frame contributes to the stack. This also removes the old limit of roughly ±35 minutes of sky drift per stack
Live merge progress — the progress bar now tracks every stage of a merge, with captions like "Restacking the sky (satellite removal)...", instead of stalling near the end of big stacks
Pixel Shift merges verify the shift grid — a frame knocked off the sensor-shift pattern (bumped tripod, wind) is flagged with a warning instead of silently degrading the merge
Windows catches up — merges run without the pop-up console window, show live progress in Lightroom, and can be canceled
Merges that drop frames or find off-grid Pixel Shift frames now show a warning dialog after the merge
Sky Tracking merges are about 10% faster
Small fixes to dialog text and layout

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 0.12.0

Thursday, July 9, 2026

New macOS installer — a signed, notarized package with the standard macOS Installer wizard, replacing the old AppleScript helper app
New Windows installer — a proper setup wizard installs the plugin for you, replacing the manual folder copy
Separate, smaller per-platform downloads (macOS .pkg and Windows .exe) instead of one combined zip
Refreshed MergeRAW branding and a new logo

Download: macOS (.pkg) · Windows (.exe)

Version 0.11.0

Wednesday, July 8, 2026

Median blend supports Auto Align, including rotation correction — remove moving objects from a handheld stack
Hot pixel removal is dramatically more thorough, and Transient Hot Pixel Removal now works with Sky Tracking and aligned merges
Freeze Foreground saves its sky/foreground mask as a TIFF that pastes 1:1 over the rendered photo in Photoshop, and the automatic boundary is much cleaner
Deghost blend works with Pixel Shift
All progress dialogs can be canceled
Faster: Sky Tracking about 20%, 16/32-shot pixel shift about a third with gigabytes less memory
Merged DNGs embed fast-load previews, so they open faster in Lightroom
Remove Built-in Profile also clears the lens profile from the develop metadata

Download version 0.11.0

Version 0.10.0

Monday, July 6, 2026

New Sky Tracking alignment stacks untracked night-sky exposures on the moving stars — pinpoint stars with the noise reduction of the full stack, no tracking mount needed, satellite trails removed automatically
Freeze Foreground blend keeps the landscape sharp while the stars align, with an automatic (and hand-editable) sky/foreground mask
New Transient Hot Pixel Removal repairs cosmic ray strikes and other one-frame sensor events; automatic mode leaves normal photos untouched
Dark frame subtraction ignores cosmic ray hits within the dark frames themselves
Sky Tracking output carries the capture time of the photo you selected first, so it sorts next to its source

Download version 0.10.0

Version 0.9.0

Sunday, July 5, 2026

Auto Align now corrects camera rotation and perspective shift (keystone) with sub-pixel accuracy, not just translation
Dark frame subtraction rebuilt: only genuine hot pixels are corrected, so shadows keep full detail even with a single dark frame, and corrections can no longer leave dark pits in bright sky

Download version 0.9.0

Version 0.8.0

Thursday, June 11, 2026

Median blend uses a fraction of the memory

Download version 0.8.0

Version 0.7.0

Monday, June 8, 2026

New "Fix IR PDAF Banding" plugin removes periodic row banding from full-spectrum/IR-converted cameras
Smaller DNG output using JPEG XL compression
Updated to Adobe DNG SDK 1.7.1 and libjxl 0.11.2
Improvements to Windows installer

Download version 0.7.0

Version 0.6.0

Saturday, November 23, 2025

Add dark frame subtraction option

Download version 0.6.0

Version 0.5.0

Monday, November 17, 2025

Add flat field correction option
Add new plugin to Edit Raw File in Photoshop
New multi-pass MHC/VNG demosaic algorithm removes dependency on Adobe DNG Converter for demosaicing

Download version 0.5.0