What this page is for. Photo Developer is not trying to match Lightroom (or any other RAW editor) feature for feature. The unit of work is one photograph, every control is meant to be legible, and the engine underneath gets deepened before the surface gets wider. That means some obvious-looking features are missing on purpose — the last section is where those live.
Nothing here promises a date, and the order within each section means nothing. An item leaves this page in one of two directions: into the release notes, or into decided against below, with the reason it was dropped.
Being looked at now
- The engine underneath. Most of the work between releases goes into how a raw file is decoded and rendered rather than into new panels — highlights and noise are where that attention sits at the moment. Changes of that kind alter photographs you have already edited, so they move slowly and are judged on real photographs before they ship.
- macOS 27. Photo Developer develops your files using Apple's raw engine, and macOS 27 brings a new version of that engine with it. It is already being tested here against real files. Where it makes a photograph better it will be used, and where it doesn't it won't — that is a decision to be made on evidence rather than on it being new. Either way the first priority is that your photographs open and render the way you left them on macOS 26 after you upgrade.
Other things on the list, in no order
- Combining masks — one adjustment limited to where two masks overlap, or to one mask minus another. Sky without the branches; a face minus the shadow side.
- A curve inside a local adjustment — the same tone curve you have globally, applied only to a masked area.
- Perspective and keystone correction — straightening converging verticals on a building.
- Defringe — removing the coloured edges a lens leaves on high-contrast boundaries.
- A reference image — a second photograph beside the one you are editing, to match by eye.
Decided against, and why
These are settled. They are here so you can tell a deliberate absence from a gap.
- A catalog or database. Your folders are the library and your edits live in an XMP sidecar next to the raw file. Photo Developer won't take on the role as library or asset manager.
- Layers. Adjustments are parametric and stack in a fixed, sensible order; masked adjustments cover what layers are usually reached for, without the file format that comes with them.
- Importing 3D LUTs. A LUT is a black box that does something to your colours you cannot inspect or partially undo.
- Matching a look automatically. A reference image beside your photograph is a tool; a button that copies someone else's grade onto your file is magic, and magic is unpredictable on the frame where it matters.
- A subscription. Photo Developer is a one-time purchase and stays one.
- Culling, renaming, and keywording. They are real work and they are done properly in separate applications — Photo Culler, Photo Batch Renamer, Photo Archive — rather than half-done here.
A note on how your edits age
Your edits are stored as a recipe, not as pixels, and the engine that reads that recipe keeps improving. So a photograph you developed a year ago can render slightly differently after an update — not damaged, but not identical either. Photo Developer will not ship frozen copies of old engines to prevent that; it will tell you plainly in the release notes when a change is large enough to notice. The record that never changes is the file you exported.
Last reviewed: 10 September 2026. What has already shipped is in the release notes.