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2,214 photos this year across 3 folders. Your Sony α7 IV did most of the work.
Cameras
Your Sony α7 IV does most of the work.
Lenses
Your 24-70mm stays on the camera most.
Your signature settings
Shallow focus, everyday shutter speeds.
Focal lengths
When you shoot
An early riser: busiest around 7:00, most on Saturdays.
Milestones
Times measured on my M2 Pro.
What's in it
Light and colour
Exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites and blacks.
Temperature and tint, or press W and click something that should be grey.
A master curve, and one each for red, green and blue.
Change the hue, saturation or brightness of one colour and leave the rest alone.
Tint the shadows, midtones and highlights from a single wheel.
Press V. The colour mixer then decides how light or dark each colour turns.
Bring out texture, or cut through the haze on a grey day.
For when a photo wants to look a bit more like film.
Detail and masks
Crisper detail without the bright halos. Off until you want it.
It measures the noise in each photo first, so high-ISO shots clean up without going plastic.
Distortion, colour fringing and dark corners, fixed from measured lens profiles.
Common ratios or your own, and it can level a wonky horizon for you.
One click picks out the subject, or everything behind it.
Select a whole person, or just their skin, eyes or lips.
Finds the sky, right into the gaps between branches. Needs macOS 14 or later.
Paint a mask by hand, or drag a linear or radial gradient across the photo.
Going through a shoot
Press 1 to 5 to give a photo hearts, or X to reject it. Add Shift and it moves on.
Press Space to flip through photos at full size, sorting them as you go.
Press C to put up to 16 photos side by side and zoom into all of them at once.
Save a look you like. Point at a preset to see it on the photo before you pick it.
Get one photo right, then paste the edit onto the rest of the shoot.
Hold \ to see the original, and let go to see your edit again.
Lightroom's keys work from the start, and you can change any of them.
Each photo keeps its own history, so going back on one never touches another.
Finding and exporting
Type 35mm, f/1.8, beach or 2024, or filter by camera and lens.
It spots what's in your photos, like mountains, snow or dogs. Five are free, and supporters get them all.
Your own words on photos. They go into exported files as keywords too.
Gather photos from different folders without moving a single file.
JPEG, HEIC, 16-bit TIFF or PNG, in sRGB or Display P3, as many at once as you like.
A white border, and the date stamped in the corner like an old film camera.
How you shoot, worked out from your own photos. The full page is for supporters.
They're only ever read. Edits sit in a small hidden folder beside them and travel with the photos.
No trial, no subscription and no ads.
Why I made it
I shoot a Sony and a Ricoh GR. When I dropped Lightroom, the free editors could do everything, but they felt clunky to me. So I made my own.
If you like it and want to chip in, there's Patreon. You never have to.
Open Terminal (⌘ Space, type Terminal), paste this and press Return:
curl -fsSL https://rawdemption.com/install.sh | bashIt downloads the app, checks it and puts it in Applications. No password, nothing else installed. Read the script if you like; it's short.
- Download RAWdemption (9.4 MB) and move it to Applications.
- Run this once in Terminal, so macOS lets it open:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/RAWdemption.app
SHA-256 of the zip: 897b45340acaebf8e1a03f787d41c2597c7ccf0de3f8f8f228c3b6d1e31f11f1
Why Terminal?
macOS only opens a browser-downloaded app straight away if Apple has notarised it, which needs a paid yearly developer membership. I make this on my own and give it away, so for now macOS calls it “damaged”. Nothing is wrong with the file.
Both ways above just do what you'd do by hand. After that, every update is signed with RAWdemption's own key, and the app checks it before installing.
Questions
Something else? Settings › Feedback in the app comes straight to me.
Will it stay free?
Yes. Editing and exporting are free and always will be: no limits, no subscription, no ads, and nothing that's free today will be put behind a payment later. Patreon is optional. It lets me spend more time on RAWdemption, and as a thank-you, supporters get their full profile page and every Thing.
Which cameras does it open?
RAWdemption reads RAW files with LibRaw, the open-source RAW library many editors are built on. It opens most RAW files from Canon, Fujifilm, Leica, Nikon, OM System/Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax/Ricoh, Sony and others, plus DNG. Sigma's Foveon cameras aren't supported. JPEG, HEIC, PNG and TIFF open too. If your camera doesn't work, tell me in Settings › Feedback.
Will my photos look like they do in Lightroom?
Not exactly. RAWdemption reads RAW files with LibRaw, an open-source library, and does its own colour and tone from there; Lightroom uses Adobe's own engine. Every editor develops RAW files a little differently, and so does your camera's JPEG. Expect some difference in contrast and colour.
Did you use AI to make it?
Yes. A RAW editor made by one person in their spare time would absolutely not exist otherwise.
Your photos never leave your Mac. Nothing is uploaded and no AI service ever sees your photos.
Does it change my photos?
Originals are only read. Each edit is a small recipe saved in a hidden .lightbox folder beside the photos, along with your favourites, so edits travel with the folder to another drive or Mac. Exports are always new files.
Which Macs does it run on?
Macs with Apple silicon (M1 or later) on macOS 13 Ventura or later. 16 GB of memory is recommended for smooth editing of 24-megapixel RAW files; Intel Macs aren't supported.
Why does installing need Terminal?
macOS only opens an app downloaded in a browser if Apple has notarised it, which takes a paid developer membership. RAWdemption is free and made by one person, so it isn't notarised, and macOS calls it “damaged” instead. The Terminal command installs the very same app without the “downloaded” label that triggers this. The install script is short enough to read, and every update after that is signed and checked by the app before it installs.
Can it replace Lightroom?
For a lot of people who shoot for fun, yes. It covers what I used Lightroom for day to day. It doesn't do catalogues across many drives, tethered shooting, print layouts or plugins, and I don't plan to add them in this current version of the app anyway.
Is it finished?
No. It's in public beta. If something breaks or looks off, Settings › Feedback sends it to me. I read every report.