A fast, non-destructive RAW photo editor and catalog manager for the desktop.
Develop the RAW, not a JPEG. Layered, local, non-destructive edits on a headless processing core — with a responsive, resizable UI.
| On-canvas crop & straighten | Local-adjustment masks |
|---|---|
 |
 |
Developing RAW files from a Toronto shoot — the develop panel, the on-canvas crop tool (handles, rule-of-thirds grid, dimmed surround), and a radial local-adjustment mask drawn on the photo.
Most edits you make to a photo are destructive — they bake pixels. Vibe Photo keeps your entire edit as data: a stack of adjustment layers, local masks, crop, and a creative profile, all stored separately from the image. The same resolution-independent pipeline drives both the live preview and the final export, so what you see is what you get. RAW files are demosaiced to 16-bit scene-linear light, so exposure and tone behave photographically and highlights keep real headroom — you are developing the RAW, not editing a flattened preview.
The whole processing engine and catalog are headless: they never import the UI, so they run in CI, on a server, or in a batch job without a display.
- Scene-linear pipeline — 16-bit linear demosaic; white balance, exposure, and tone run in linear light, then a filmic base tone-map renders to display.
- Per-camera white balance — Temperature (Kelvin) + Tint with an eyedropper, calibrated to each camera's as-shot illuminant.
- Highlight recovery — clipped-channel reconstruction at decode and in the pipeline, so blown skies resolve cleanly instead of smearing colour.
- Creative profiles — ten base looks (Neutral, Standard, Vivid, Portrait, Landscape, Flat, Matte, Warm/Cool Film, Monochrome) applied beneath every adjustment.
- Exposure, Contrast, Highlights / Shadows / Whites / Blacks.
- Presence: Texture, Clarity, Dehaze; Vibrance / Saturation.
- Parametric and point tone curves (RGB + per-channel).
- HSL / B&W mixing and 3-way (+ global) colour grading.
- Detail: sharpening (amount/radius/detail/masking) and luminance/colour noise reduction.
- Radial, graduated (linear), and brush masks — per layer.
- Add and tune masks from the panel, or draw them directly on the photo: drag a radial's centre/edges, drag gradient endpoints, paint brush strokes.
- Add/subtract mask components; each layer applies only inside its mask.
- Crop & straighten — centred aspect-ratio presets plus an on-canvas crop tool (drag corners/edges, rule-of-thirds grid, dimmed surround), 90° rotation, and a straighten slider, all from the image footer.
- Distortion (barrel/pincushion), chromatic-aberration defringe, and vignetting — pure geometry, no lens-profile database required.
- Catalog indexing, thumbnails, ratings/flags, and metadata on an embedded database.
- Import develop presets in the common XMP and legacy Lua-table sidecar formats.
- Colour-managed export to JPEG / PNG / 16-bit TIFF with an embedded sRGB ICC profile, plus resize and watermark presets.
- Non-destructive adjustment layers; toggle any layer to compare.
- One-click Auto tone and a single-image HDR look, computed per photo.
- Smart-preview editing — a low-resolution draft renders live while you drag (skipping the expensive blur stages), then a crisp full-resolution frame lands once the edit settles, keeping the UI responsive on large files.
- Copy/paste settings, edit-like-last, full undo/redo, and a resizable workspace.
Prebuilt desktop packages are published on the
Releases page for every
v* tag:
| Platform | Asset | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | VibePhoto-Setup.exe |
Per-user installer (no admin), Start-Menu shortcut, clean uninstaller. Also committed at the repo root for the latest build. |
| macOS | VibePhoto-<version>-macos.zip |
Unzip → drag VibePhoto.app to Applications. The app is unsigned: on first launch right-click → Open (or allow it under System Settings → Privacy & Security). |
| Linux | VibePhoto-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz |
tar -xzf, then run VibePhoto/VibePhoto. Needs standard desktop libraries (libegl1, libxkbcommon0). |
The macOS and Linux packages are built by the release workflow
(.github/workflows/release.yml) — PyInstaller cannot
cross-compile, so each platform builds on its own runner.
Requires Python 3.12+.
git clone https://github.com/RenderDeMartes/VibePhoto.git && cd VibePhoto
python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate # Windows
# source .venv/bin/activate # macOS / Linux
# Headless processing core only:
pip install -e .
# Full desktop app (UI + RAW decoding):
pip install -e ".[ui,raw,cv]"RAW decoding uses LibRaw via rawpy (the raw extra). Without it the app still runs
and falls back to embedded previews for RAW files.
| Extra | Adds |
|---|---|
ui |
The PySide6 desktop application |
raw |
RAW decoding (LibRaw / rawpy) |
cv |
OpenCV-backed computer-vision helpers |
dev |
Test, lint, and type-check tooling |
build |
PyInstaller, for packaging the desktop app |
python -m vibephoto # launch the desktop app (needs the [ui] extra)pip install -e ".[ui,raw,cv,build]"
python scripts/build_exe.py # PyInstaller one-folder bundle -> dist/VibePhoto/The same spec builds on every platform (macOS additionally produces
dist/VibePhoto.app). PyInstaller does not cross-compile — build on the OS you are
targeting.
Windows installer (extra step):
python scripts/build_installer.py # -> VibePhoto-Setup.exe (repo root)build_installer.py builds the bundle and then compiles packaging/VibePhoto.iss with
the Inno Setup compiler (free — install from https://jrsoftware.org/isdl.php). The
result is a single setup.exe that installs per-user (no admin required) with Start-Menu
and optional desktop shortcuts and a clean uninstaller.
macOS: zip the app bundle — ditto -c -k --keepParent dist/VibePhoto.app VibePhoto-macos.zip.
Linux: tar the folder — tar -czf VibePhoto-linux-x86_64.tar.gz -C dist VibePhoto.
Releases are built by CI (release.yml) from a version
tag — one command chain publishes all three platforms:
# 1. Bump the version in pyproject.toml AND src/vibephoto/__init__.py, commit.
# 2. Rebuild + commit the Windows installer (kept current in the repo root):
python scripts/build_installer.py
git add -A && git commit -m "Release vX.Y.Z"
# 3. Tag and push — the tag triggers the release workflow:
git tag vX.Y.Z
git push origin main --tagsCI then runs lint/types/tests, builds the Windows installer, the macOS .app zip, and
the Linux tarball, creates the GitHub Release for the tag, and attaches all three
artifacts with auto-generated release notes.
Strictly layered packages. The cardinal rule: the processing engine and catalog never import the UI. Everything below the UI is fully usable headless.
UI (PySide6) canvas, panels, modules
|
Application / Services orchestration, view-models, commands
|
Catalog - Metadata - Presets - Export domain layers
|
Processing engine - RAW decode pure NumPy, headless
The develop pipeline is an ordered, memoizing chain of pure stages: changing one
parameter recomputes only that stage and the ones downstream of it, which is what keeps
slider drags fast. Edit layers compose bottom-to-top over a once-applied crop/straighten.
The full design lives in docs/.
pip install -e ".[ui,raw,cv,dev]"
pytest # 349 tests
ruff check src tests # lint
mypy src # type-check (strict)The headless test suite runs with no Qt present; GUI tests use the offscreen Qt platform
and are marked gui. RAW integration tests run against a tiny synthetic DNG, with an
optional full end-to-end test gated on VIBEPHOTO_TEST_RAW=<path-to-a-real-raw>.
src/vibephoto/
processing/ develop pipeline, RAW decode, layers, masks, geometry, lens, profiles
catalog/ embedded-database catalog, indexer, repositories
export/ renderers, presets, ICC tagging
presets/ XMP / Lua-table preset import
ui/ PySide6 desktop app (canvas, panels, modules)
docs/ architecture and design documents
packaging/ PyInstaller spec + Inno Setup installer script
scripts/ build helpers
tests/ full test suite
Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please run pytest, ruff check, and mypy
before submitting. Do not commit third-party preset packs, sample RAW files, or any
other content you do not own — presets/ and common media extensions are git-ignored for
this reason.
Released under the MIT License. © 2026 Vibe Photo contributors.
This project is an independent work. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from any other photo-editing product, and all trademarks are the property of their respective owners.