Why this exists
Most RAW workflows assume you have a desktop application and a subscription. That makes sense for managing catalogs of thousands of images. But a large share of everyday RAW work is simpler: fix the white balance, recover some highlights, push the contrast, maybe darken the sky with a gradient mask, and export.
Raw Photo Editor exists for that workflow. Open a camera file, make the adjustments that matter — including selective masks when you need them — and export a finished image. All in the browser, all on your device.
How it works
Everything runs client-side. There is no server processing, no upload step, and no cloud dependency.
- RAW decoding in your browser. A full RAW decoder, compiled to WebAssembly, reads ORF, CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, DNG, RW2, PEF, and more on your own machine. Demosaicing runs at full quality — AHD for standard Bayer sensors, Markesteijn for Fujifilm X-Trans.
- Every adjustment runs on your GPU. White balance, exposure, tone curves, HSL, split toning, grain, and the rest are graphics shaders, so the preview follows your slider as you drag instead of catching up after.
- Masks layer on top of the global edit. The global adjustments render once; each mask then blends in only its own corrections through a soft alpha map, so adding masks doesn't re-run the whole edit.
- Your original is never touched. An edit is a set of settings, with masks stored as shapes and brush paths rather than pixels. Every step can be undone or revisited, and the whole edit can be saved as a small sidecar file.
Privacy by architecture
This is not a privacy policy bolted onto a service — it is the way the application is built. Your images never leave your browser. No uploads, no server-side processing, no analytics pixels watching what you edit. The only thing kept is your edit settings, in your own browser, so you can pick up where you left off. See the privacy policy for details.
What you can do
The editor covers the full correction-to-export workflow:
- White balance — temperature, tint, red/green/blue balance, and an eyedropper for any neutral.
- Exposure and tone — exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, and blacks, with highlight recovery that rebuilds color in partly clipped areas.
- Tone curves — master + per-channel R/G/B.
- HSL selective color — 7 color bands (red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue, magenta) with hue, saturation, and luminance per band.
- Split toning — independent highlight and shadow color, with balance.
- Texture, clarity, dehaze — fine detail, halo-free local contrast, and haze removal.
- Selective masking — linear gradient, radial gradient, luminosity range, color range, and brush masks, each with 12 adjustments and an invert option.
- Heal and clone — remove dust spots and sensor specks by clicking or dragging along a streak, with an experimental backscatter finder for underwater photos.
- Film grain — amount, size, and roughness.
- Vignette — edge darkening or lightening with midpoint and feather.
- Sharpening and noise reduction — sharpening without color fringes, plus luminance and color noise reduction.
- Crop and rotate — 10 aspect ratios, straighten, flip, and quarter-turn rotation.
- Presets — 5 built-in presets, plus your own saved in the browser.
- Autosave and sidecars — edits save in your browser as you work; save a sidecar file to keep or share the settings.
- Viewing — Fit to 400% zoom with true 1:1 pixels at 100%, before/after swipe and hold-to-peek, clipping overlay, live histogram, and step-back history.
- Export — JPEG with quality control, PNG, or 8-bit TIFF, at full resolution or resized by long edge or percentage.
What this is not
Raw Photo Editor does not manage catalogs, handle batch processing, do lens corrections, merge HDR brackets, or sync to the cloud. It does not try to be Lightroom, Capture One, or darktable.
It is a focused tool for the single-image editing workflow that covers the majority of what photographers do with their RAW files — including selective editing with masks. If your work regularly needs cataloging, lens profiles, or plugin ecosystems, a desktop editor is still the right tool for that.