Photoflare 1.7 brings Qt6, HiDPI support, new canvas engine, G’MIC integration, and more

Photoflare 1.7 is now available, marking its first major update in more than six years. This release brings a substantial shift to the open source cross-platform image editor by moving from Qt5 to Qt6. Through that change, Photoflare now offers built-in HiDPI scaling for better support on modern displays.

Building on this technology upgrade, the canvas rendering pipeline has been completely rewritten and now uses a dirty zone editing model. This results in a notable boost to painting and filter performance during image editing. Also, full integration of G’MIC (GREYC’s Magic for Image Computing) has been introduced, giving users access to hundreds of additional advanced image processing filters in a dedicated dialog.

Alongside these engine and filter enhancements, the selection tools have been overhauled. Selections are now per tab, offer movement via mouse or keyboard, include new shapes such as ellipse and lasso, and limit edits to selected areas. Following the workflow improvements, this release adds standalone filters like pixelate and vignette, drawing improvements, horizontal/vertical rulers, refreshed icons for dark mode, and EXIF data support.

Further changes encompass file and clipboard improvements, percentage-based resizing, true portable mode, an initial plugin system, better batch features, enhanced image panning while zoomed, persistent sessions and layout, toolbar updates, Korean language support, automated AppImage builds for Linux, and around 50 bug fixes.