imagic: AI Photo Culling & RAW Editor, Lightroom Alternative

How it works

Your entire workflow, 5 simple steps

From folder to finished exports. No catalogues to manage, no import settings to configure. Point imagic at a folder and go.

Watch every step and every feature in the real app (11 min)

01 · IMPORT

Import your photos

Point imagic at any folder. It scans and catalogs every photo, RAW, JPEG and TIFF included, subfolders too. One click to begin.

Recursive folder scan, thousands of files
No catalogue, no import dialog
Everything stays on your machine

1. Import

02 · ANALYSE

Analyse with AI

AI scores every shot on sharpness, exposure, noise, composition and detail. Duplicates are flagged automatically. Results in minutes, not hours.

5 quality metrics per frame
Burst and duplicate groups found for you
1,000 RAWs sorted in about 6 minutes, measured

2. Analyse

03 · REVIEW

Review & cull

See per-metric breakdowns at a glance, including face detection. Keep or trash each shot with one click, and the AI learns from every decision.

Metric bars on every tile
One-key keep / trash
Feedback learning tunes the scoring to you

3. Review & Cull

04 · EDIT

Edit & grade

A full manual editor: exposure, curves, HSL, crop and local adjustments, plus presets, LUTs and cinematic grades with live previews. Non-destructive, always.

Curves, HSL, presence, detail, lens
Brush, linear and radial local adjustments
Masks, retouch and portrait polish on Plus

4. Edit

05 · EXPORT

Export in batch

Parallel, multi-threaded export through imagic's own processing engine. Thousands of photos, hands-free, with your edits baked in.

JPEG and PNG, resize and quality presets
Multi-threaded, uses every core
Lightroom XMP hand-off if you still need it

5. Export

The AI does the tedious part

Everything you need to cull smarter

Scores, sorts, de-duplicates and batch-edits, then hands the creative decisions back to you. Every suggestion can be overridden.

Every frame scored on

5 quality metrics

Sharpness, exposure, noise, composition and detail, plus subject focus. One score you can sort by.

A Review tile: the photo, its score, six metric bars and the Keep and Trash buttons

The Duplicate Cleaner: a group of four similar photos, the sharpest marked Keep, the rest Trash

Bursts & duplicates

One keeper per burst

Perceptual hashing groups near-identical frames and pre-selects the sharpest. The rest are one click from the bin.

A 1,000-photo shoot in

0 to 0 s

The keepers float to the top before you open a single file. Everything runs on your machine, nothing is uploaded.

Feedback learning

Ranks the way you would

Every keep and trash decision feeds back into the scoring weights. After a few sessions the AI's first pass looks like your own.

Native RAW engine

11+ RAW formats

True demosaicing for Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax and DNG. Included at every tier.

The editor's histogram with the file's ISO, aperture, shutter speed and score

Masks & retouch Plus

Select, heal, polish

AI masking for subject, sky, people and background, heal and clone, portrait polish, lens blur, watermarking for client delivery.

AI tools: masking, heal and remove, lens blur, portrait polish

imagic Max Max

Neural denoise & upscale

Heavy models when you need them: neural noise reduction, super-resolution upscale, enhance details, and CLIP search across the whole library.

AI tools: denoise, smart sharpen, super resolution, enhance details

New: LUT support

Bring your LUTs

Load the looks you already own, set how strongly they land, and they are baked into every file you export.

Strength slider

Same photo, one LUT, your call

Drag from no LUT to full strength. Most looks sit best somewhere short of 100, so every LUT gets a 0 to 100 slider. Try it on the photo.

Two goats under a tiled roof, exported from imagic with no LUT

LUT strength 80%

Both frames are exported by imagic from the same RAW with the same edit. The look is a LUT we generated for this demo; the slider blends the two exports, which is what Strength does.

Log footage looks, too

Log in, graded out

Load a log-to-Rec.709 LUT and a flat log frame comes out graded. Making a still look with a log LUT? Set the LUT's input to S-Log3, V-Log or F-Log and imagic converts the photo to that log space first.

A flat, low-contrast S-Log3 style frame of a lake beach in Holland

The same frame after a log-to-Rec.709 LUT: full contrast and colour

The flat frame is a Holland photo run through imagic's S-Log3 curve, standing in for camera log. The look is a log-to-Rec.709 LUT we generated.

In the editor

A LUTS section beside your sliders

Each tile previews the LUT on your own photo. Apply one to this photo, a selection or the whole shoot. It stays a setting, not a flattened file, so you can change it later.

The imagic editor with the LUTS section open: tiles for each LUT, an input menu and the strength slider at 80

3 formats.cube, .3dl and Hald CLUT (PNG or TIFF)
0 to 100A strength slider on every LUT
3 log inputsS-Log3, V-Log and F-Log are converted first
Baked inThe LUT is in every file you export
AI ready Maxlist_luts and apply_lut, through the MCP server

Try imagic free See what is in every tier

LUTs come with every tier, Lite included; the AI assistant tools need Max, and the free trial includes everything in Max. imagic ships three free sample LUTs and bundles nobody else's. Your LUT is applied after the rest of your edit, on imagic's own render, so a look can differ from other editors. Sending a photo to Lightroom? LUTs do not travel in the XMP file, so imagic warns you and the exported file carries the baked look.

Versus Lightroom

Why photographers are ditching Lightroom

imagic does what Lightroom does, faster, simpler, and without the $120-a-year subscription.

from€19one-time, no subscription

0×faster culling

0+RAW formats, every tier

∞photos, no limits

imagic

Lightroom

Price

From €19, once

$9.99/month

AI photo culling

Built-in

Manual only

Duplicate detection

Automatic

Not available

Cull 1,000 photos

~30 seconds

2-3 hours manual

RAW processing

11+ formats

Supported

Batch export

Multi-threaded

Supported

Learning AI

Learns from you

No

Drive it from an AI agent

MCP + CLI (Max)

No

Feedback loop

Direct with dev team

Slower enterprise roadmap

Account required

No

Yes (Adobe ID)

From people using it

In their own words

“Makes my job so much easier. Wish it was a little more strict and I could say only keep my best 30.”

Mateoin-app review, 4 stars

He asked for a keep limit. It shipped as the keep-limit bar in Review.

Pay once, own it

Simple, honest pricing

No subscription. Buy once, update forever: every licence includes all future imagic versions and new camera support for its tier. Upgrade any time for the difference. Every tier shares the same download and the same RAW engine.

imagic Lite

€19one-time

The clean entry tier for a pro cull-to-export pass.

What's included

AI culling with duplicate & burst detection
Full manual editor: exposure, curves, HSL, crop
Local adjustments: brush, linear, radial
Presets, LUTs & color grades
Batch export on a native RAW pipeline
Non-destructive edit history
All future versions & new camera support, free for life

Get imagic Lite

For client work

imagic Plus

€49one-time

The retouch and masking toolkit for polished client galleries.

Everything in Lite, plus

Full mask-layer engine (named layers, feather)
AI masking: subject, sky, people, background
Heal, clone & content-aware remove
Portrait polish: skin, teeth, eyes
Lens blur / synthetic bokeh
Watermarking for client delivery
All future versions & new camera support, free for life

Get imagic Plus

Frequently asked questions

Is imagic really free?

Yes. Start with a free 500-export trial and no credit card, the trial includes everything in imagic Max. If imagic fits your workflow, keep it with a one-time license starting at €19 and no recurring fees. Three tiers: Lite, Plus, and Max.

Are future updates included?

Yes. Buy once, update forever: every licence includes all future imagic versions and new camera support for its tier. This covers Lite, Plus and Max alike, at no extra cost, for the life of the product: no paid major versions and no update plan to renew. Moving up a tier (Lite to Plus, Plus to Max) is the only paid change, and costs just the difference in price.

Does imagic work on Mac, Windows, and Linux?

imagic runs natively on Windows and macOS, and the same license key activates on both. For Linux there is a portable .tar.gz on the download page, published less often than the Windows and macOS installers (currently version 1.3.11).

What RAW formats does imagic support?

imagic supports all major RAW formats: CR2 & CR3 (Canon), NEF (Nikon), ARW (Sony), RAF (Fujifilm), ORF (Olympus), RW2 (Panasonic), DNG (Universal/Adobe), PEF (Pentax), plus JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and WebP.

How does the AI photo culling work?

imagic's AI analyses every photo across 5 quality metrics: sharpness, exposure, noise, composition, and detail. Each photo gets an overall score. The AI automatically flags duplicates and burst groups, selecting the sharpest shot from each group. You can keep or trash photos with a single click, and the AI learns your preferences over time.

Can imagic replace Adobe Lightroom?

For most photographers, yes. Try the full Lightroom-style workflow free for 500 exports, including built-in AI culling. If it fits, pay from €19 once instead of $9.99 every month. RAW processing is included at every tier.

How long does it take to cull 1,000 photos?

Measured on a 14-core desktop PC, imagic imports 1,000 RAW files from 24 to 27 MP cameras in about a minute and analyses and sorts them in about 6 minutes. See the system requirements and dated benchmark for the hardware and method. Manually culling 1,000 photos in Lightroom takes 2 to 3 hours. imagic reduces culling time by up to 10×, meaning a typical wedding shoot of 3,000 photos takes minutes instead of a full day.

Do I need an internet connection to use imagic?

No. imagic processes everything 100% locally on your machine. No photos are ever uploaded to any cloud server. An internet connection is only needed for initial license key activation. This means your photos stay private and processing speeds are only limited by your hardware.

Does imagic learn my editing style?

Yes. imagic's feedback learning system tracks your keep/trash decisions, the manual edits you make, and the color grades you prefer. Over time, the AI adjusts its scoring weights to better reflect your personal taste, like training a photo editor who knows exactly what you look for.

Bought before tiers existed?

You already have imagic Max, forever, free. Every license bought before the tiers launched was upgraded automatically, no action needed on your end.

Why did the price change from $10?

imagic used to be one $10 price. We split it into three tiers, Lite, Plus, and Max, so we can keep building the heavier AI features without pricing out hobbyists who just want a clean cull-to-export pass. Nobody who already bought lost anything.

Cull & edit photos
10× faster than Lightroom

The first photo editor your AI can drive