Week highlights: new releases of Kdenlive, Mixxx, and Giada; new features in GIMP and FreeCAD.

GIMP

CmykStudent implemented a simple palette exporter to KPL, Krita’s palette file format.

The other file format support they added is Over the Air Bitmap. Not sure how to comment on that. I guess if we all die in a nuclear holocaust, cockroaches will be exchanging those with each other on Nokia 3310, and they’ll need a way to open and export those? Well, that’s one way to future-proof GIMP then!

FreeCAD

Dave Carter finished adding initial support for external materials databases. The plan is to make it possible using external web services, for both downloading and uploading material definitions. The feature doesn’t seem to be built by default in weeklies yet, which is fine, as there are no external databases hooked up to the functionality yet.

In other news, the FPA’s general assembly approved spending earmarked EUR 5000 on grants towards various small fixes and improvements in TechDraw and PartDesign. The CAD Working Group will be distributing the bounties. Here is the full list of pre-approved issues to fix and features to implement.

Kdenlive 25.04

The new version comes with a major new feature: automatically creating masks to separate objects from their background. On the inside, the feature uses Meta’s Segment Anything Model 2.

Among other changes:

• Faster and more precise audio thumbnails
• Completely rewritten OpenTimelineIO import/exporting, should be more robust now
• You can now change the duration of multiple selected clips (right-click on the selection, choose Edit Duration, keep “Apply duration to all items” checked)
• Vertical zooming in audio tracks, with x1, x2, x4, and x8 presets
• Shift+Click now expands/collapses all effects in the stack

See here for full release notes.

Mixxx 2.5.1

The new version of Mixxx brings controller mappings for DJ TechTools MIDI Fighter Spectra, Numark NS6II, Numark Platinum FX, M-Vave SMC-Mixer, Hercules DJControl Inpulse 500, and Reloop Digital Jockey 2 IE controllers. It also adds a mapping for the M-Vave SMK-25 II controller (see here for how its controls are mapped).

The Hercules DJControl Inpulse 300 controller now supports toneplay, slicer, and beatmatch. Other mappings got updates, too. The full list of changes is here.

Giada 1.2.0

Missed this release of Giada a couple of weeks ago. The new version of the loop station allows MIDI input from multiple devices and ships various small fixes. For the downloads and the full list of changes, please see here.

Disflux

This is a new, barely tested free (AGPL 3.0) plugin for smearing transients. Comes in LV2, VST3, and CLAP.

Here is what the developer says:

Disflux is a wild audio effect plugin that takes your transients and smears them through time, adding serious punch and weight. If you’re creating Hard Techno or Rawstyle and need your kicks to hit like a freaking train, Disflux is your new best friend. We’re talking aggressive, distorted, gated kicks that smack like no tomorrow.

Here is my extremely quick demo:

Artworks

The Silence Atlas by IM_FreD, made with Blender and Photoshop:

Ancient Ruined Temple by RunBobFun, made with Blender:

Temple of the Goldenbeard by Olga Rozova, made with Blender and Photoshop:

The City of Others by Deltakosh, made with Blender and Photoshop:

Stylized Fantasy Victorian Environment by Daniel Peres, made with Blender, Photoshop, and ProCreate:

Google Summer of Code 2025 projects have just been announced. As is usual in the last 20 years or so, Google is paying a reward to students for improving free and open-source software.

I went ahead and harvested the list of all the relevant projects so you don’t have to. Let’s take a look at what’s likely coming later this year. I’m intentionally keeping this list concise and linking to project pages so you can explore details when you feel like it.

Graphics and design

Both GIMP, Inkscape, Krita (via KDE), and OpenPrinting (via The Linux Foundation) are long-time participants that gained a lot from the program. For Graphite, this is their second time.

GIMP

• Gabriele Barbero will design and implement a GEGL filter browser for GIMP.
• Ondřej Míchal will enhance the plug-in/filter development experience by developing a new browser for discovering which GEGL filters are available and how they can be used from a plug-in/filter.
• SamIsTheFBI will develop an initial online extensions registry. This would be a mostly static website with essential dynamic components.

Graphite

• epestr will implement marquee selection masking.
• Firestar99 will develop GPU-accelerated raster operations for Graphite (think adjusting hue, saturation, blurs, etc.)
• hawkeye will add advanced vector editing tool modes.
• indierusty will develop an efficient API for accessing, manipulating, and performing operations on vector data.
• PratyushGovind will enhance the Polygon Tool by introducing a variety of predefined shape nodes—such as Trapezoid, Star, Donut, Pie, Crescent, and more, all with dedicated gizmos.

Inkscape

• Aarav Oswal will integrate real-time, on-canvas spell checking.
• aayush01x will make it possible to run Inkscape headless for use in automated environments.
• Anunay will improve Inkscape’s support for Adobe Illustrator native (non-PDF) file format.
• Fatma Omara will develop an easy way to recolor artworks, with live preview.
• Muhammad Rafay Irfan will enhance the accuracy and reliability of geometric intersection routines in Inkscape’s lib2geom library.

Krita

Ross Rosales will add a floating action bar for layers to access commonly used actions, especially for non-keyboard users (think running Krita on touch devices).

OpenPrinting

• Hubert Guan will port OpenPrinting’s stack to the Zephyr OS. That includes CUPS, libcupsfilters, etc.
• Kaushik Vishwakarma will add support for driverless printers to GNOME via the IPP Everywhere architecture in CUPS 3.x.
• VididVidid will modernize the printing dialog in GTK with built-in preview in main view.
• Tarun Srivastava will update the KDE Print Manager to support various new features in CUPS 3.x, mainly support for IPP print destinations.
• Mintu Gogoi and Titiksha Bansal will create Rust bindings for libcups2/3.
• Mohammed Imaduddin and Zixuan Liu will add fuzz testing to various OpenPrinting projects.
• Rudra Pratap Singh will modernize the OpenPrinting website with Next.js.
• Sanskar2303 will implement an image output verification framework based on OpenCV.
• Soumyadeep Ghosh will port pyCUPS and system-config-printer to CUPS 3.x API.

3D and animation

This year, there are no rendering engines like Appleseed in the roster.

Blender

• Benjamin Beilharz will improve sampling in the compositor.
• Ian Yoo will improve regression test coverage for the compositor.
• Mohamed-Hassan will enhance Blender’s Glare node by addressing UX and technical limitations, improving usability, and performance.
• Namit Bhutani will optimize mesh and multires sculpting performance in Blender, especially for artists working with high-res meshes.
• Ramón_1 will make it possible to create keyframes directly in the VSE preview by using the “I” or “K” keys.
• Tariq will address Blender’s edit-mode mirror limitations by enhancing its functionality to support multiple axes and operators.
• TheKaceFiles will implement pitch correction for sound playback in VSE.
• vivz753 will add various features and UI improvements to Flamenco: configuration editor page, mass deletion of render jobs, UI-related bug fixes.

Synfig

• Abdelhadi Wael will develop a brush tool and a basic prush profile editor.
• Nitish Itankar will create a new macOS app bundle built automatically, to replace the old error-prone Bash script.

CAD

Just like the last year, FreeCAD applied separately from the BRL-CAD umbrella organization. That seems to work for everybody.

BRL-CAD

• Andrea Braghin will improve the interoperability between LS‑DYNA and BRL‑CAD by creating converters between k-File and BRL-CAD databases.
• Lorenzo Pegorari will improve Arbalest, newer BRL-CAD’s Qt-based GUI.
• Simarjot will port the online geomery viewer to Next.js.

FreeCAD

• Sayantan Deb (captain0xff) will implement interactive controls in the 3D View, primarily for PartDesign.
• chiragsingh1711 will add support for 3D PDF exporting in TechDraw.
• theo-vt will make it possible to edit multiple documents in parallel without completing a task in one of them.

IfcOpenShell

Sayan Jyoti Das will develop a web application to create and check BIM project exchange requirements. This will simplify writing Information Delivery Specification (IDS) data.

Manifold

Trzeth will enhance 3D mesh offset for Manifold.

OpenSCAD

Sparsh N will add a modern MSVC build support for Windows.

Video

All three relevant organizations are long-time participants at GSoC. As usual, Kdenlive applied through KDE.

Kdenlive

Ajay Chauhan will improve Kdenlive timeline markers by introducing duration-based markers that define a clear start and end time.

FFmpeg

• averne and Geo Ster will develop a ProRes decoder using Vulkan compute shaders.
• Jack Lau will implement WHIP (WebRTC-HTTP Ingestion Protocol) support in FFmpeg.

VideoLAN

• Abdulrahman Saber will create LibVLC Wayland API so that developers can embed the media player in their programs.
• Ahmed Hamed Gaber will improve the libNDI project (add support for sending NDI streams, expand protocol support for NDI-HX2 and a UDP-based NDI variant, improve performance, stability, and security) and integrate it in VLC.
• Akhilesh Kumar Yadav will improve the VideoLAN crash reporter in Go and Vue.js.
• Arthur Norat will implement parental control in VLC for iOS.
• Benny Perumalla will add advanced audio filters, including 3D audio effects, Prologic-II upmixing, audio track mixing and transitions, Lua scripting for custom filters, and LADSPA integration.
• Bhargavvz will develop an AI-powered smart media recommendation engine for VLC.
• Bob Moriasi will redesign VLC for macOS to modernize the user interface. That includes getting rid of Carbon-era controls and rebuilding the media library with Core Data.
• Fahri will develop VLC for Apple Watch, both a standalone app and companion functionality.
• GlaucousGlaucus will redesign the Qt interface with QML.
• Kartik Dua will enhance Lua integration for VLC Extensions.
• Maksym Yemelianenko will make cloud storage services easily accessible using libcloudstorage.
• Saifelden ismail will add DVD-Audio support to VLC by implementing a module that decrypts and plays back CPPM-protected audio streams.
• Sungjoon Moon will optimize the open-source AV1 decoder, dav1d, for the RISC-V Vector (RVV) ISA by implementing Vector-Length Agnostic (VLA) intrinsics.
• Yue (Zelda) Zhang will enhance the user experience of VLC on iOS by improving playback controls and resolving persistent subtitle issues.
• Zyad M. Ayad will integrate Radio-Browser.info into VLC to allow users browse and play internet radio stations directly.

Audio / Mixxx

• Antonio Giordano will add autocompletion for the Genre track metadata.
• Armaan_Chowfin develop more accurate resampling options for Mixxx.
• dhunstack will make the Demucs v4 source separation model available in Mixxx for separating mixed audio into stems.

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Overall, a very nice selection of projects! Thoughts?