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RAWmakase is a free RAW photo editor that reads Lightroom catalogs
A photographer paying for a Lightroom subscription can now open the same catalog, with its ratings, flags, labels and keywords, in a free native app that reached 884 stars in two weeks.
Image: GitHub
Why it mattersAn editor that reads the Lightroom catalog lets a photographer test leaving Adobe without rebuilding every rating, label and keyword by hand on another tool first.
Leaving Lightroom has always meant rebuilding every rating, label and keyword by hand in another editor, because other editors could not read the catalog. A new free app called RAWmakase imports a Lightroom Classic catalog directly, with its ratings, flags, labels and keywords, and runs natively on macOS, Linux and Windows.
The project is written by Piotr Chmolowski, a single author who publishes under the GitHub name pch. The repository went public on 26 September 2026, reached 884 stars by the time of writing, and has shipped five releases in the four days from v0.2.0 to v0.2.4.
What it reads from Lightroom
The readme says RAWmakase imports Lightroom Classic catalogs with ratings, flags, color labels, keywords and compatible develop settings. The import never writes to the original catalog or to the photos, so a user can test it without putting their Lightroom library at risk. Spot removal and brushed and gradient masks are imported too, labelled by the project as experimental and not yet measured against Lightroom.
For Photoshop files, the readme states that re-saving keeps the render of 307 of the 309 psd-tools test files. Camera raw files are decoded through LibRaw, which supports almost every current camera according to the project; the readme names Sigma Foveon cameras, monochrome bodies, and already-demosaiced linear DNGs as the ones it skips.
How it runs
RAWmakase is pure Rust and ships as a native desktop app. Previews render at the viewport size, with the color and tone stage on the GPU through wgpu, on Metal on macOS, Vulkan on Linux, and DirectX 12 or Vulkan on Windows. A CPU fallback is included. Catalogs are SQLite, and the readme says all writes are atomic.
The licence is MIT or Apache-2.0, and the author describes the status as early alpha. A command-line interface lets the user inspect files, render previews, export thumbnails, import catalogs and profiles, and benchmark the engine without opening the window. A built-in Model Context Protocol server lets a coding agent adjust the running editor, inspect previews, save and export.
What is not there yet
The readme calls out parity gaps against Lightroom and keeps a file listing them. LUT support, AI masks, object removal, and culling assistance are listed as coming soon. Installer builds are not code-signed on Windows, so Microsoft Defender SmartScreen warns on install. The AUR package is paused. The author describes the rendering goal as close to Lightroom output, with the gaps file documenting where it differs.
The 884-star count is a traction signal, and the project is 14 days old. Nobody outside the author has measured whether a real photographer can replace Lightroom with it today, so a reader considering the switch is working with an active side project at its own pace of releases. The two-week test is whether the catalog import brings the ratings and keywords across cleanly on their own machine.
An agent-facing editor through MCP is one feature few other photo tools have. A coding agent can drive the same engine the person uses, which allows batch edits a photographer writes once and runs on a shoot. The readme states no measurement of agent-driven work yet.
Source
This item was written by an AI system from the linked source. Reveneau is responsible for what it publishes.
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