Edit camera RAW photos in PhotoCraft with RAW Develop

To edit a raw photo in PhotoCraft, open it with File › Open… (Ctrl+O, ⌘O) or drag it onto the window. Instead of opening straight away, it shows in the RAW Develop window: a preview on the left and the develop panels on the right. Set the white balance and exposure, adjust whatever else you need, and click Open. The photo then opens as a normal 16-bit document, in Adobe RGB unless you changed the defaults, and you edit it like any other image. Cancel closes it again. PhotoCraft has its own raw decoder, written from public specifications, so it needs no Adobe software, codec or plug-in. It is free, works offline and needs no account.

This page describes PhotoCraft v0.23.1 (12 November 2026). v0.22.0 (9 November) renamed the feature, decodes more cameras and adds the filmstrip, the Done button and crops from sidecars. v0.23.0 (11 November) decodes compressed Fujifilm files and moves more of the preview to the GPU. The raw window itself has been in PhotoCraft since v0.6.0. Get the app from the download page. The online editor runs v0.23.1 too, with the differences listed below. For every other file type, see file formats.

Camera Raw is now RAW Develop

Since v0.22.0, PhotoCraft names its own raw processing RAW Develop (#12403). Older release notes, issues and earlier versions of this site say Camera Raw. It's the same feature:

Before v0.22.0	Since v0.22.0
The Camera Raw window	RAW Develop, titled "RAW Develop (file name)"
Filter › Camera Raw Filter…	Filter › RAW Develop Filter… (`Ctrl+Shift+A`, `⌘⇧A`), titled "RAW Develop Filter (layer name)"
Edit › Preferences › Raw Defaults…	Edit › Preferences › RAW Defaults…

Only the names you see changed. The command ID is still filter.cameraRaw, and preference IDs and saved settings are unchanged, so scripts and old preferences keep working. Documents keep the filter names they were saved with. A Photoshop action file stores its own step names, so a Camera Raw step loaded from an .atn keeps Photoshop's "Camera Raw Filter" wording and is saved back unchanged. Settings files and sidecars are still Adobe Camera Raw .xmp files in Adobe's crs: namespace, and the buttons that handle them still say "Camera Raw .xmp file", because that's the format (feature-names.md).

Which raw files open

PhotoCraft recognises .dng, .cr2, .cr3, .nef, .nrw, .arw, .srf, .sr2, .pef, .orf, .rw2, .raf, .3fr and .fff. For most of them it decodes the sensor data. For some variants it can only open the JPEG preview the camera stored in the file:

Format	Developed from the sensor data	Embedded preview only
DNG	Uncompressed, Deflate, lossless JPEG, lossy JPEG and JPEG XL (DNG 1.7, desktop only); colour and monochrome	Floating-point data other than JPEG XL
Canon CR2	Yes, and since v0.22.0 sRAW and mRAW (#7122)	–
Canon CR3	–	Always: the CRX sensor data isn't decoded
Nikon NEF, NRW	Uncompressed, lossless and lossy compressed, 12 and 14-bit. Since v0.22.0 also "lossy after split" files, which upstream found from the D3400, D5, D5000, D5200, D5500, D5600, D7000, Nikon 1 J5 and Z 6_2 (#10529)	High Efficiency (HE and HE*)
Sony ARW, SR2, SRF	Uncompressed, lossless and compressed ("cRAW")	Sony "Compressed RAW 2"
Fujifilm RAF	Uncompressed, and since v0.23.0 lossless and lossy compressed, X-Trans and Bayer, 12, 14 and 16-bit (#7377)	Early FinePix / SuperCCD files
Panasonic / Leica RW2	RawFormat 3, 4 and 5	RawFormat 6 and newer
Olympus / OM System ORF	Uncompressed 16-bit (E-1, E-400…)	Compressed ORF
Pentax PEF	Uncompressed and lossless JPEG	Compressed PEF
Hasselblad 3FR, FFF	New in v0.22.0: uncompressed files, measured on the X2D II 100C (#9058). Other bodies' uncompressed files open with a warning that their colour layout is assumed	Lossless-JPEG files from the earlier X and H cameras

When a file can only show its preview, it opens as an 8-bit image with a warning saying so, and RAW Develop doesn't open for it: the window is only for raws developed from their sensor data.

Colour. DNG files carry their own colour data. For the other formats PhotoCraft has one camera profile measured by upstream (the Nikon D4). For the rest, since v0.8.2 it fits each file's colour and tone to the JPEG the camera stored in it, so the result looks close to the camera's own JPEG (#2135). That's an estimate, not a calibration. A file with no usable preview gets a neutral rendering that looks flat. Converting such files to DNG gives calibrated colour.

Develop a raw

Open the raw with File › Open…, Open Recent, drag and drop, or from the command line.
RAW Develop opens as a window of its own, which you can move and resize. The main window is dimmed and takes no input until you finish. Since v0.23.0, switching back to PhotoCraft (⌘Tab, the Dock or a click on the dimmed window) brings RAW Develop to the front, restoring it if it was minimised. Before, the dimmed main window could end up on top and the app looked frozen (#7119).
Adjust the panels. Ctrl+Z (⌘Z) undoes inside the window, and Y or the Before (Y) box shows the photo without your changes.
Click Open to keep it, Cancel (or Esc) to close it, or Done to save the settings without opening (below).

Open does more than apply the sliders. When you changed Temperature, Tint, Exposure, Shadows, Highlights, Clarity, Texture or Dehaze, or picked another Demosaic method, it develops the raw again from the sensor data, so white balance and highlight recovery work on the raw values in linear light, before the camera's tone curve. The other settings are applied as one RAW Develop Filter step. Then the RAW Defaults convert the colour space and bit depth, and the new document counts as unmodified. So do white balance and exposure here, not later with the filter, which only sees the developed pixels.

The panels

Panel	Controls
Light (open at first)	Auto, which sets the tone sliders from the image, then Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks
Color	White Balance: As Shot, Temperature and Tint (−100 to +100 around the camera's white balance, not in kelvin), Vibrance, Saturation
Effects	Texture, Clarity, Dehaze; Vignetting with a style (Highlight Priority, Color Priority or Paint Overlay), Amount, Midpoint, Roundness, Feather and Highlights; Grain with Amount, Size and Roughness
Curve	A point curve (up to 16 points) and the Highlights, Lights, Darks and Shadows sliders
Color Mixer	Hue, Saturation and Luminance for Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Aqua, Blue, Purple and Magenta
Color Grading	Shadows, Midtones, Highlights and Global wheels, Blending and Balance
Detail	Demosaic (only while a raw opens): AHD (the default, cleanest edges), Malvar–He–Cutler or Bilinear. Fujifilm X-Trans files always use their own method. Then Sharpening (Amount, Radius, Detail, Masking) and Noise Reduction (Luminance, Luminance Detail, Color, Color Detail)
Calibration	Shadows Tint, and Hue and Saturation for the red, green and blue primaries

What RAW Develop doesn't have: crop and straighten, geometry, lens profiles, masks, spot removal, camera profiles, a white-balance eyedropper or presets such as Daylight or Cloudy, and kelvin values. After opening, Filter › Lens Correction… (Ctrl+Shift+R, ⌘⇧R) and the Crop tool do some of that work on the developed image.

Preview, histogram and zoom

The histogram above the panels shows clipping: U and O turn on the shadow and highlight warnings, and holding Alt (⌥) while dragging a Light slider shows what clips. S places colour samplers (up to nine), with RGB or Lab readouts, and the histogram's menu turns on a vectorscope. To zoom, use Z, H or Space to pan, Ctrl+0 (⌘0) to fit and Ctrl+Alt+0 (⌘⌥0) for 100%. At 100% the preview is refined at full resolution, for images up to 64 megapixels (camera-raw-zoom.md).

While you drag, the preview is developed from a reduced copy of at most 900 pixels a side. Since v0.23.0, Shadows and Highlights (#6951) and Dehaze, Clarity and Texture (#7020) develop on the GPU in that preview, along with the per-pixel settings, so only Detail (sharpening and noise reduction) still sends the preview to the CPU. The CPU is also used with Rendering Mode set to CPU, on a software graphics adapter, and in the browser. v0.23.1 builds that reduced copy faster (#11064).

Several raws: the filmstrip and Done

The filmstrip (new in v0.22.0, #7120). Select several raws in File › Open…, or drag them in together, and they share one RAW Develop window with a column of thumbnails on the left. The one shown is outlined, and a dot marks the ones you edited. Long names keep their end, where the frame number is. Click a thumbnail to switch: each raw keeps its own settings and Demosaic choice. A raw you haven't shown yet starts from its sidecar, or from Auto if Apply auto tone is on in RAW Defaults, or from the defaults. Open develops every raw in the filmstrip with its own settings, and Cancel closes them all. You can't yet edit several at once or copy one raw's settings to the others (#13025, #13094).

Done (new in v0.22.0, #7121). Done, next to Open and Cancel, saves each raw's settings to its .xmp sidecar and opens none of them, as Adobe Camera Raw's Done does. The status bar names the files it wrote, or says there was nothing to save when every raw is at its defaults. Done writes even with Write xmp sidecars turned off, but follows the other sidecar rules below: no sidecar beside a DNG or over another program's. If a write fails, the window and every raw stay open, so nothing is lost. The next time you open those raws, they start from the saved settings.

XMP sidecars, Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw

Reading. When you open a raw from disk, PhotoCraft looks for the sidecar with the same name, IMG_0001.xmp beside IMG_0001.CR2, as Lightroom, Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw write it, and starts RAW Develop from its settings (since v0.17.0, #5128). It reads the sidecar beside a DNG too. The status bar names the sidecar and the settings it couldn't use. It reads Adobe's Process 2012 and later controls: the Basic tone sliders, Texture, Clarity, Dehaze, Vibrance and Saturation, the parametric and point tone curves, HSL, Color Grading (split toning), sharpening, noise reduction, grain, post-crop vignetting and calibration. Lens corrections, geometry, defringe and other settings PhotoCraft has no control for are ignored and named. Sidecars over 4 MiB, or that don't parse, are skipped and the raw opens anyway.

White balance doesn't come across. For raw files Adobe stores white balance in kelvin (crs:Temperature and crs:Tint). PhotoCraft's Temperature and Tint are relative to the camera's white balance, so it reads only Adobe's relative IncrementalTemperature and IncrementalTint and ignores the kelvin values. Set the white balance again in the Color panel.

Crops (new in v0.22.0, #9991). A sidecar's crop (crs:HasCrop="True" with CropTop, CropLeft, CropBottom and CropRight) is applied when you click Open: the raw is developed again and cropped before the other settings, so a post-crop vignette centres on the crop. The preview in RAW Develop still shows the whole frame. A straightened crop (CropAngle other than 0) isn't applied, and the status bar names it as not supported. The crop also applies with Open in camera raw off. v0.22.0 also stops listing RawFileName as an unsupported setting.

Writing. With Write xmp sidecars on (the default), Open writes your settings back to the sidecar when you changed them. Settings at their defaults, or unchanged from the sidecar, write nothing. PhotoCraft marks the files it writes as its own, and when it rewrites one, it keeps the crop. It never writes:

beside a DNG, where Adobe keeps the settings inside the file;
over a sidecar another program wrote, because Lightroom's and Bridge's hold crops, masks, ratings and keywords PhotoCraft can't keep (a notice says the sidecar was kept);
for a request from a script or an AI agent.

Settings files. Save Settings… and Load Settings… in the window's footer write and read Adobe Camera Raw .xmp settings files with the same controls (since v0.9.0, #4279).

PSD files. A RAW Develop Filter kept as a smart filter is saved in a PSD as Photoshop's Camera Raw smart filter, for the settings upstream has checked against Photoshop. A filter with settings outside that set is left out of the PSD with a warning. Matching settings don't mean matching pixels: PhotoCraft uses its own develop pipeline, not Adobe's (camera-raw-histogram.md).

RAW Defaults

Edit › Preferences › RAW Defaults… sets what happens to every raw you open (since v0.17.0, #5128). The labels are as the English interface shows them in v0.23.1:

Setting	Default	What it does
Color space	Adobe RGB	The document's colour space after the develop: sRGB, Adobe RGB, ProPhoto RGB or Display P3. Raws are developed in ProPhoto RGB and converted last
Bit depth	16	16 or 8 bits per channel
Resolution	300	The ppi the document gets; raws state none
Sharpen for	None	Output sharpening added to the develop: Screen (amount 25, radius 1.0), Glossy (40, 1.0) or Matte (35, 1.2)
Open as smart object	Off	Turns the developed layer into a smart object, so filters you add later stay editable. The smart object holds the developed pixels
Apply auto tone	Off	Fills the Light sliders with Auto when a raw without a sidecar opens
Open in camera raw	On	Off opens raws without the window; the sidecar and these defaults still apply
Demosaic	AHD	The method raws are developed with: AHD, Malvar–He–Cutler or Bilinear
Write xmp sidecars	On	Off still reads sidecars but never writes one, except with Done

The RAW Develop Filter on any layer

Filter › RAW Develop Filter… (Ctrl+Shift+A, ⌘⇧A) opens the same window on the active RGB or Grayscale layer of any document, a JPEG for example. Its buttons are OK and Cancel; there's no Demosaic menu, filmstrip or Done. It works on the layer's pixels, inside the selection if there is one, and OK is one step in History. On a smart object it becomes a smart filter: double-click it in the Layers panel to reopen it with its settings. Use Filter › Convert for Smart Filters first to keep a layer editable.

Batch, actions, the CLI and agents

Actions. Since v0.20.1, the Camera Raw Filter steps of Photoshop actions play as RAW Develop Filter steps when they use only sliders PhotoCraft has (#8714). See Photoshop actions.
Batch. File › Automate › Batch… opens each raw developed with the default settings, without the window or its sidecar, at the RAW Defaults resolution. With Format Same the results are saved as PSD, since PhotoCraft can't write raw formats. The Batch command also takes suppressOpenOptions, which recorded Photoshop Batch steps and droplets with Suppress File Open Options Dialogs set: then each raw opens like an interactive Open with your RAW Defaults and its sidecar, crop included. A raw whose sidecar has a setting PhotoCraft can't apply, or that only opens as a preview, then fails with an error instead, and sessions with restricted file access refuse it.
The CLI. photocraft-cli convert, run and info open raws developed with the default settings: 16-bit ProPhoto RGB at 300 ppi, with no sidecar and no RAW Defaults conversions. v0.23.1 has no raw options on the command line. The RAW Develop Filter is the command filter.cameraRaw, with the panel settings as parameters (photocraft-cli commands --filter cameraRaw --json lists them). It works on the developed pixels. For example:

photocraft-cli run IMG_0001.CR2 --cmd filter.cameraRaw --params '{"exposure":0.5,"shadows":30}' --cmd edit.convertToProfile --params '{"profile":"srgb","intent":"relative"}' --out IMG_0001.jpg

AI agents. Opens through the control channel or MCP never show RAW Develop and never write sidecars. While the window is open, ui.menu.invoke with filter.cameraRaw and a ui object sets the sliders, picks the Demosaic method and commits, cancels or presses Done. See MCP and CLI.

In the browser

The online editor runs v0.23.1 and opens raws too, with these differences:

RAW Develop is drawn inside the page instead of in a window of its own.
No sidecars are read or written, so Done can't save anything.
JPEG XL DNGs, such as Samsung Expert RAW files, are refused: their decoder is left out of the browser build to keep it small (since v0.7.0, #2233).
Decoding and the preview run on the CPU on one thread, and zoomed in, the preview stays at its reduced size instead of being refined.

For large raws or many of them, use the desktop app from the download page.

Known limits

Notable open issues as of 12 November 2026. Upstream tracks raw support in #50.

CR3 opens only its preview, and so do Nikon High Efficiency NEFs (#9714), compressed ORF (#12714) and the other variants in the table above.
Colour is estimated for most cameras. Users report CR2 and NEF colour that differs from other converters (#9699) and washed-out Apple ProRAW DNGs (#9904).
No white-balance eyedropper or presets (#10004), and no masks (#8335).
No syncing settings between raws in the filmstrip, and no "previous settings" (#13025, #13094).
A raw opened without a file path, for example from bytes dropped in, can't be developed again: Open then applies white balance and exposure to the developed pixels instead of the sensor data (#12415).
A crash on an Intel Mac when dragging a slider was reported on 12 November and isn't confirmed yet (#13478).
The window's size and position aren't remembered (#10102).
Size. The decoder refuses raws over 268 megapixels or needing buffers over 2 GiB, and since v0.23.1 a raw re-read for Open is limited to 2 GiB too (#11204).

Troubleshooting

RAW Develop didn't open. The file opened as its embedded preview (the warning says so), Open in camera raw is off in RAW Defaults, or the file was opened by a script or agent.

The white balance from Lightroom is gone. Adobe's kelvin values aren't read. Set Temperature and Tint again.

The Lightroom crop wasn't applied. It's a straightened crop, which PhotoCraft can't apply yet. Crop after opening.

No sidecar was written. The settings are at their defaults or unchanged, the raw is a DNG, the sidecar belongs to another program, Write xmp sidecars is off, or you're in the browser.

The colours look flat. The file has no usable preview to fit the colour to. Convert it to DNG, or adjust Vibrance, Contrast and the curve.

The main window looks frozen. RAW Develop is open behind it. Update to v0.23.0 or later, or click the dimmed window to bring RAW Develop forward.

More help is in Troubleshooting and file formats.

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