A free, open-source alternative to Lightroom
LightPhotos is for photographers who want to get through a shoot fast, make good edits, and export, without a subscription or a cloud account. It is not a full Lightroom replacement yet.
Side by side
| LightPhotos | Adobe Lightroom | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Paid subscription |
| Account | None | Adobe account required |
| Where photos live | Your own folders. Nothing is uploaded. | A catalog (Classic) or Adobe’s cloud |
| Source code | Open source | Closed |
| Download size | Under 12MB on macOS, under 30MB on Windows and Linux | Gigabytes |
| Platforms | macOS, Windows, Linux, and Chrome with no install | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, web. No Linux app. |
| Culling | Stars, flags, colour labels, stacks | Stars, flags, colour labels, stacks |
| Global edits | Exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, white balance, texture, clarity, dehaze, vibrance, saturation, a colour mixer, colour grading, sharpening, denoise, vignette, grain, black & white, Auto Adjust, and a point tone curve | All of these, plus camera profiles, a parametric curve, point colour and calibration |
| Presets | Your own presets, plus Lightroom .xmp presets imported or read from their folders | Presets, profiles and premium presets |
| Crop and rotate | Crop to an aspect ratio, straighten up to 45° or by drawing a level line, rotate in 90° steps | All of these, plus Upright perspective correction |
| Lens corrections | Chromatic aberration. Lens distortion correction coming soon. | Lens profiles for distortion and vignetting, chromatic aberration, defringe |
| Masks and local edits | Linear and radial gradients, subject and sky masks, spot removal | All of these, plus brushes, range masks and more AI selections |
| Export | Various formats at the size you choose, or straight to Immich | JPEG, TIFF, PNG, DNG and more, plus print and web publishing |
Where LightPhotos wins
- Lightweight and fast. Opens instantly, with GPU-accelerated previews and no import step. Folder browsing is smooth and immediate.
- No accounts, no registration, fully local. There’s nothing to sign up for. Your photos and edits stay on your computer unless you export them to your own Immich server.
- Free to use. Download and go, or use the web app in Chrome. No cost, no nags, no subscriptions.
- Streamlined culling and rating. Use number keys and arrow keys for fast selection. Instantly compare frames in a burst to pick the best shot. See Compare a stack.
- Your Lightroom presets. Point LightPhotos at a folder of Lightroom
.xmppresets and apply them in one click, with no copying. See Presets. - Quick edits for every photo. Auto Adjust analyzes each photo’s histogram, and Black & White or color toggles are one-click for batches or singles.
- Native Linux support. Runs on macOS, Windows and Linux, on ARM and x86. See LightPhotos on Linux.
What LightPhotos does not do yet
- No brushes or range masks. Masks are linear and radial gradients, plus subject and sky, with nine sliders each. Subject masks only work in the Mac app.
- The tone curve is a point curve only, with no parametric sliders.
- Chromatic aberration is the only lens correction. No lens profiles, distortion or vignetting correction, and no perspective correction.
- No keywords, collections, maps, face recognition or print module.
- Some cameras are limited outside macOS. See tested cameras.
Try it
Download LightPhotos for macOS, Windows or Linux. Or open the web app. The web app is not available in your current browser. Use Chrome instead. The help pages walk through a whole shoot in five short steps.
Adobe and Lightroom are trademarks of Adobe Inc. LightPhotos is not affiliated with or endorsed by Adobe.