Manuals, comparisons, and answers. Everything you need to get the most out of a focused, native macOS RAW editor — and to understand exactly where your work lives.
A signed and notarised copy of Photo Developer that runs for thirty days from the first time you open it. There is nothing to sign up for — the app never talks to a server, so there is nothing it could sign you up to. The read-me inside the download covers installing and what to expect.
Download the trialDownloads as a .zip. Whichever runs out first ends the trial: the thirty days, or the build's own stop date. This build stops working after 11 January 2027.
.xmp sidecars next to your RAW files, in the format Lightroom, Bridge and Camera Raw read. How that works.The shortest honest path from a RAW file to a finished photo. Six steps, no jargon, no pipeline theory. Start here on day one.
Read the guide →Curves, the Tone Equalizer, masking, color grading, diagnostics, and getting your edits in and out of Lightroom — organized around the processing pipeline.
Read the guide →What transfers through XMP, what doesn’t, and what to do before you cancel anything. Includes the DNG trap that catches most people.
Read the recipePhoto Developer next to Lightroom, Capture One, DxO, darktable, ON1, Nitro, RapidRAW and more — nine developers, what each is actually for, and the honest case against each.
See the table →How each developer stores your work, and what actually survives if you switch apps. Sidecars, catalogs, and the difference between transparent and portable.
Read the explainer →Every release in plain language — what changed, when it shipped, and why it matters. Organized by Mac App Store version, newest first.
See what's new →What is being worked on and what is on the list — and, the more useful half, the features deliberately left out with the reason for each. No dates, no version numbers.
See the roadmap →The deterministic pipeline, custom Metal shaders, proxy rendering, and the XMP namespaces it writes. For the curious.
Tech deep dive →The essay behind the engine: why a RAW file is a latent negative, how light behaves from sensor to eye, and why that physics forces every design decision. A scrollytelling read.
Read the essay →Photo Developer, Photo Culler and Photo Archive — separate tools sharing one open XMP sidecar. No catalog, no lock-in.
Explore the suite →No account, no cloud, no telemetry. The app only sees the files you open. The short version and the long version.
Read the policy →Photo Developer reads every RAW format Apple's camera engine supports, so whatever you shoot — Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fujifilm, OM System, Panasonic and more — it should just open. That currently covers 780+ camera models; Apple keeps the working list on its RAW compatibility page. Worth stating the unit precisely, because the industry is sloppy about it: 780+ is models, not formats — there are only around 25–30 distinct RAW file formats in circulation. RAW support is inherited from macOS itself, which means new camera bodies are picked up as Apple adds them.
Nothing is ever written into your original file. Every adjustment is saved as a plain-text .xmp sidecar sitting next to your RAW. The original is always untouched, and you can change your mind forever. There is no catalog database to corrupt or orphan — your files are the database.
Your metadata (ratings, keywords, labels, caption, copyright) and your basic develop settings — exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, white balance, the parametric tone curve, HSL, color grading, the B&W mixer, lens corrections and more — are written to Adobe's crs: namespace, so they carry into Lightroom Classic as a faithful starting point.
Photo Developer's signature tools (Tone Equalizer, Bloom, RGB/point curves, local adjustments, Fine Art tools) live in its own pd: namespace. Lightroom preserves them but can't render them — the same limitation every app has with its own look. The full story is here.
No. Photo Developer is a one-time purchase on the Mac App Store — $29.99. No subscription, no account, no cloud, no license check. It works entirely offline, now and in ten years.
No — Photo Developer is Mac-only by design, built directly on Apple's Metal, Vision and Display P3 stack. If you're on Windows or Linux, the comparison guide points to cross-platform alternatives that will serve you better.
They're separate tools that share one sidecar. Photo Culler handles fast picking and rating; Photo Archive browses and organizes folders; Photo Developer does the editing. Each reads what the others wrote and never clobbers their data — all in the same readable .xmp. The three are sold together in the DigTek Photo Suite bundle.
Email developer@digtek.app with your macOS version, camera model, and a short description of what happened. It reaches the person who built the app.
There's no support queue and no chatbot — questions go straight to the developer. Tell me what you're seeing and I'll help. If you're on the trial, open Photo Developer Trial ▸ About and include what it says: it tells me the version, the build, and how much of the trial is left, which saves my first reply being three questions.
Email developer@digtek.app