Photon

Simple image editor for people who want to get things done.

Photon is a local-first editor for macOS and iPadOS. Open a folder of photos, adjust and crop them, and keep the originals untouched. Everything runs on your device: no account, no cloud.

Features

• Open a folder directly, with no library import
• Browse with a quick name filter and keyboard navigation
• Color adjustments: saturation, vibrance, cast, and per-color HSL
• Crop with aspect ratios and rotation
• Per-photo undo and redo
• Export to JPEG, HEIC, AVIF, PNG, or TIFF at full resolution
• Non-destructive exports: metadata preserved, GPS optional, collisions renamed, and originals never touched
• RAW support through Core Image
• GPU-backed previews

Status and roadmap

Photon is in early development. Everything related to photo editing, including the tools, layout, and workflow, is subject to change. Light and Presets are placeholder placeholders for future Implementations.

Film-emulation filters that can be created, imported, and applied are next; they are still being designed, and the details may change.

Requirements

• macOS 27+ or iPadOS 27+
• Xcode 27 and XcodeGen to build from source

Build

xcodegen generate
open Photon.xcodeproj

Run the Photon scheme on My Mac or an iPad simulator.

Feedback

Bug reports are welcome in the issue tracker.

Photon is a personal project. It is not mature enough for outside code contributions yet, and I'm not accepting them for security reasons. Please report bugs instead of opening pull requests.

License

A license hasn't been chosen yet.