LightCraft 0.5.0

LightCraft is a free, open-source photo editor and RAW developer built as an alternative to Adobe Lightroom.

It organises your library, develops RAW files and exports finished photos, with no subscription, no account and no cloud.

It is also brand new and still labelled alpha by its own developers, so treat it as a promising free option rather than a finished Lightroom replacement.

What LightCraft Actually Does - in Plain Terms

A RAW file is the unprocessed data straight off your camera's sensor. A RAW developer turns it into a photo you can share, and lets you fix exposure, colour and detail far beyond what a JPEG allows.

LightCraft does this non-destructively, which means your original files are never changed. Every edit is stored as a list of instructions, so you can undo or rework a photo at any time.

• Develop tools. Exposure, tone curve, white balance, an 8-band colour mixer, colour grading wheels, clarity, dehaze, vignette and grain.
• Local adjustments. Brush, linear and radial gradients, colour and brightness range masks, and sky, subject and background selection.
• Detail and repair. Sharpening, noise reduction, spot removal and red-eye fixes, plus lens distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberration correction.
• Merging. Combine bracketed shots into HDR images, or stitch several frames into a panorama.
• Library. Albums, folders, ratings, flags, colour labels, search and a grid view for sorting a shoot.
• Export. JPEG, PNG, TIFF, WebP, AVIF and DNG, with watermarks and contact-sheet PDFs.

Under the hood it works in 32-bit floating point with a wide colour range, the same approach high-end editors use. In practice that means highlights roll off gently instead of clipping, and shadows lift without grey halos.

What Is New in 0.5.0

Version 0.5.0 is a big step, with around 90 changes from more than 40 contributors.

• Lightroom migration. It can now import a Lightroom Classic catalog directly, and XMP preset import has been fixed.
• More cameras. Added or improved support for Fujifilm compressed RAF, Canon CR3 and C-RAW, Panasonic RW2, Nikon NEF, Olympus ORF, Pentax PEF, Hasselblad 3FR and Samsung SRW.
• Optional AI tools. AI subject masks, AI RAW noise reduction, and face detection with a People view, all opt-in.
• Easier to use. German, Russian and Spanish translations, a keymap editor, trackpad zoom and pan, a Folders sidebar and LUT profile support.

Files a decoder cannot fully read yet now import as preview-only rather than failing, so they still show up in your library.

LightCraft or Lightroom

The honest answer depends on what you do with photos. For sorting and editing a few hundred holiday or hobby shots, LightCraft already covers the core of what Lightroom does, for free.

If you earn money from your photos, keep LightCraft as a second editor for now and test it on copies of real shoots before moving your library over.

Which File to Download

The LightCraft download page carries six files. Most Windows PCs want the 64-bit installer, the first row.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

The tell is the camera you shoot with. If your RAW files come from a very new body or an unusual brand, check them in LightCraft first, because some variants still open as previews only.

• darktable is the mature free Lightroom alternative, with years of camera support and lens profiles built in.
• RawTherapee suits people who want deep control over each RAW conversion rather than library tools.
• RapidRAW is a lighter, faster free editor for people who mostly adjust and export.
• Your camera maker's own software reads its RAW files perfectly: Digital Photo Professional for Canon, NX Studio for Nikon.
• Fujifilm shooters can use X RAW Studio, which processes files inside the camera itself.

For pixel-level editing such as removing objects or combining images, you want a layer editor like GIMP, or PhotoCraft from the same team as LightCraft.

Tools That Pair Well With It

If Windows Explorer shows blank icons for your RAW files, the Raw Image Extension adds thumbnails. For a camera LightCraft does not read yet, Adobe DNG Converter turns its RAW files into DNG, which it does.

ExifTool reads and fixes the date, camera and location data in each photo, and Duplicate Photo Cleaner clears out repeat shots before you import a big card.

The Graphics category has the rest of the photo tools.

Quick questions

Download LightCraft 0.5.0 and try it on a copy of your last shoot, or be the first to tell us how you got on.