Raw SmithCamera RAW editor for iPhone, iPad and Mac
Forge your RAWs. Own your editor.
The pro RAW editor for Apple devices that you buy once: Lightroom-style tools, Capture One speed, private iCloud sync, no account.
Coming soon. A TestFlight beta runs before launch.
Buy once. Every Apple device.
One purchase unlocks iPhone, iPad and Mac, and can be shared with your family. No account, no subscription required.
The pro tools you already know, native and fast.
Panels in Lightroom's order, Capture One-style Speed Edit, AI masks, 3-way colour grading, Point Color, heal and clone. Written in SwiftUI for Apple's own RAW engine.
Private and portable.
Everything runs on your device. Your library syncs through your own iCloud. XMP sidecars carry ratings, labels and keywords to other apps.
What it is
A real RAW developer, not a filter app.
Raw Smith is a library and a non-destructive editor for camera RAW files. Every edit is rendered from the RAW itself: while you drag a slider you see a fast linear preview, and the moment you let go, Raw Smith redraws the photo from the sensor data, with sharpening, noise reduction and lens correction applied where they belong.
Your original file is never touched. Edits are settings, with a full history, named snapshots and virtual copies, so you can try three looks on one frame and keep them all.
- Native on each device: a three-pane Mac app (not a port), an iPad app with full keyboard support, and an iPhone editor built for one hand.
- Same edit everywhere: the same engine on every device, so an edit started on iPhone looks the same on the Mac.
- HDR-ready: highlights above white show on XDR and HDR displays, and export as HDR with a gain map.
RAW support
Every camera Apple supports. And ProRAW.
If Apple's RAW engine can decode it, Raw Smith opens it. That's 860+ cameras today, across 18 makers, plus DNG and Apple ProRAW. The list follows Apple's, so it grows with iOS and macOS updates, with nothing to wait for from us.
- CR3
- CR2
- NEF
- NRW
- ARW
- RAF
- ORF
- RW2
- PEF
- DNG
- ProRAW
- IIQ
- 3FR
- FFF
- RWL
- SRW
- MOS
- ERF
- + JPEG, HEIC, TIFF
Editing tools
The tools you know, in the order you expect.
The Edit panels follow Lightroom's Develop order, top to bottom, with Capture One's best ideas where they earn their place. Each panel has a reset and shows when it's been changed.
- ProfileStandard, Neutral, Vivid, Monochrome or Apple's own rendering as the starting point.
- White balanceAs Shot, Auto, presets, Kelvin and tint on the RAW's own scale, and an eyedropper.
- ColorVibrance and Saturation, an 8-band Color Mixer, and Point Color for one picked colour.
- DetailRAW sharpening and noise reduction from the decoder, and the Enhanced decoder where available.
- OpticsLens profile correction, chromatic aberration and purple and green defringe.
- RemoveHeal and clone, brushed onto the photo.
Masks and AI, on device
Select the sky in one tap. Without the cloud.
Masks find the subject, sky, background, people, a person, a face or an object with Apple's Vision framework, right on your iPhone, iPad or Mac. Combine them with a brush, linear and radial gradients, colour range and luminance range, then add, subtract or intersect.
Each mask gets its own Light, Color and Effects, a curve, sharpening and noise reduction. ProRAW photos bring the iPhone's own sky matte. Presets carry masks too, and a found mask is found again on each photo you paste it to.
- Brushes with Apple Pencil on iPad.
- No uploads, no credits, no generative fill. Just your pixels, adjusted.
Library and culling
Get from a full card to the keepers, fast.
Import from Files and Finder, the Photos library, SD cards or a camera over USB. RAW+JPEG pairs come in as one photo. Then cull with the keyboard or, on iPhone, with Fast Cull.
- Ratings, flags and colour labels, keywords, captions and albums.
- Smart albums from rules: rating, flag, label, keyword, camera, lens, date, ISO and more.
- Browse by camera and lens, straight from the sidebar.
- Compare and Survey picks side by side, zoomed together.
- Culling hints: focus, closed eyes and near-duplicates measured on device, shown as suggestions, never applied for you.
iCloud sync
Your library on every device. In your iCloud.
Raw Smith syncs through CloudKit in your own private iCloud database. There's no Raw Smith server and no account to make, and we can't see your photos.
Appears in seconds
A new photo shows on your other devices as soon as its small preview arrives. Rate, edit and export it right away; the RAW follows.
Your iPhone stays light
Full RAWs download when you zoom to 100% or export at full size, or always, per device. On by default on the Mac, off on iPhone.
Conflicts become snapshots
Ratings, labels and keywords merge field by field. If two devices change the same edit, the other version is kept as a snapshot.
Keyboard first on Mac and iPad
Speed Edit: hold a key, scroll to adjust.
Hold E for Exposure, C Contrast, H Highlights, S Shadows, W Whites, B Blacks, T Temperature, V Vibrance or A Saturation, then scroll or drag anywhere on the photo. Your eyes never leave the image.
Every action is also in the menus. On the Mac, a second window can show the photo full screen on another display.
HDR and export
See the highlights. Then ship them.
On XDR and HDR displays, Raw Smith shows the brightness your RAW really holds. Export it as HDR with an ISO gain map, which carries an SDR version inside for every other screen.
Formats
JPEG, 10-bit HEIC, 16-bit TIFF and PNG, with optional HDR gain map.
Size and colour
Long edge, short edge, megapixels or percent. sRGB, Display P3 or Adobe RGB. Output sharpening.
Batch
Export a whole selection with saved export presets, rename templates and a text watermark.
Metadata
Keep all, copyright only or none; strip location. XMP sidecars with ratings, labels and keywords.
Privacy
No account. No tracking. Your photos stay yours.
- No account and no Raw Smith server storing anything about you.
- No analytics, no ads and no third-party SDKs in the app.
- Photos stay on your devices and, if you turn sync on, in your own iCloud.
- AI runs on device. Masks and culling hints never upload a pixel.
Agents, Shortcuts and Siri
Let an AI assistant do the tedious part.
On the Mac, Raw Smith can act as an MCP server, so an assistant such as Claude can search your library, look at previews, apply profiles, presets and edits, cull, keyword and export, through the same code paths as the app. Every agent change shows live and can be undone.
It's off until you turn it on, view-only by default, and reached only through a local connection on your Mac. When an agent looks at previews, they go to that assistant's AI provider, and Settings says so plainly.
“Every 4★ frame from Saturday's import: Vivid, warm it a little, export 2048 px to blog/.”
“Make these 30 frames consistent with the first one.”
“Flag the frames where someone's eyes are closed.”
Shortcuts and Siri actions work on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
FAQ
Questions, answered.
Which cameras does Raw Smith support?
Every camera Apple's RAW engine decodes: 860+ cameras on macOS 27 and iOS 27, from Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Panasonic, OM System and Olympus, Leica, Pentax and Ricoh, Hasselblad, Phase One, Leaf, Sigma and more, plus DNG and Apple ProRAW. The list follows Apple's and grows with OS updates. Search the full list.
Is it a subscription?
It doesn't have to be. Raw Smith is a free download with a free tier, and a 14-day trial of everything. Pro is planned as a one-time purchase (Pro Forever) or a yearly plan, and one purchase covers iPhone, iPad and Mac. Prices are announced at launch; see Pricing.
Do I need an account?
No. There's no Raw Smith account and no server of ours. Sync uses the iCloud account you're already signed in to, and your photos are stored in your own iCloud storage.
Are my edits destructive?
Never. Your original RAW is never modified. Edits are a recipe of settings stored in the library, rendered from the RAW every time, with full history, snapshots and virtual copies. Each photo also remembers the version of Apple's RAW decoder it was edited with, so an OS update doesn't change an edit you've already made.
Where do the AI features run?
On your device. Subject, sky, people, face and object masks use Apple's Vision framework, and the culling hints (focus, closed eyes, similar shots) are measured locally. Nothing is uploaded to make them, and nothing is generative: Raw Smith adjusts the pixels your camera captured.
Can I move from Lightroom or Capture One?
The tools are laid out in the same order as Lightroom's Develop panels and use many of the same shortcuts, and Speed Edit works like Capture One's, so there is little to relearn. Your RAW files open as they are. Ratings, labels and keywords can travel between apps in XMP sidecars, but other apps' develop settings don't convert, so past edits don't carry over.
What isn't in version 1?
To be clear about what's out of scope for v1: tethered shooting, face recognition (naming people), generative fill or remove, and Windows. Raw Smith is for iPhone, iPad and Mac only.
When is it available?
Raw Smith is coming soon to the App Store. A TestFlight beta runs before launch; to ask about joining, write to support@rawsmith.app.
Forge your RAWs. Own your editor.
Raw Smith: Photo Editor is coming soon to the App Store for iPhone, iPad and Mac. A TestFlight beta runs before launch: to ask about joining, write to support@rawsmith.app.
Requires iOS 26, iPadOS 26 or macOS 26 or later.