Photo2Mac

A native macOS image editor — simple, fast, non-destructive.

In Romanian / In romana

Links

• Landing page: https://cremenescu.ro/en/photo2mac/ (Romanian: https://cremenescu.ro/ro/photo2mac/)
• Latest release .dmg: https://github.com/cremenescu/Photo2Mac/releases/latest
• Issue tracker: https://github.com/cremenescu/Photo2Mac/issues
• XMP edit-stack format: docs/XMP.md

Status

In development — v0.1.0-alpha (phase 1: single-image editor).

The pixels of the original file are never touched until you Save. Every adjustment (crop, rotate, flip, brightness, contrast, saturation, exposure) lives on an EditStack that is rendered live by Core Image and persisted into the XMP metadata of the saved file. Re-opening the same file in Photo2Mac restores the stack so you can keep editing.

Features in the alpha

• Non-destructive editing with a live Core Image pipeline (Metal- backed).
• Crop with 8 handles (corners + edges) and an aspect-ratio picker (Original, 1:1, 4:3, 3:2, 16:9, ..., Free).
• Rotate with ±90° presets, a 0.01° slider and a precise angle field; Flip H / V.
• Tune with brightness / contrast / saturation / exposure sliders and a live histogram (Luminance / RGB / R / G / B).
• Edits list popover in the toolbar, with per-row revert.
• Save (Cmd+S) overwrites the open file with rendered pixels + embedded XMP EditStack; Save As (Cmd+Shift+S) prompts for a destination.
• Invisible autosave in ~/Library/Application Support/Photo2Mac/ so unsaved edits survive a tab close.
• Welcome screen with recent files, Metadata viewer (EXIF + Photo2Mac XMP status).
• Bilingual UI (English default + Romanian), switchable in Settings.
• Custom About panel + Help window (Cmd+?).

Formats: JPEG, PNG, HEIC, TIFF (RAW is on the roadmap).

Roadmap (phase 2+)

• Vector annotations (text / arrow / rectangle / blur).
• Batch processor.
• Library / organize / browse mode.
• Screenshot + markup capture.
• RAW support.

Build

xcodegen generate
xcodebuild -project Photo2Mac.xcodeproj -scheme Photo2Mac \
    -configuration Debug -derivedDataPath .build-xcode build
cp -R .build-xcode/Build/Products/Debug/Photo2Mac.app /Applications/

Requires macOS 14+, Xcode 16+, and XcodeGen (brew install xcodegen).

To produce a self-contained .dmg:

./build/package.sh v0.1.0-alpha

Installation (from a release .dmg)

The .dmg is ad-hoc signed (no Apple Developer ID yet), so Gatekeeper will refuse to launch it on the first try. After dragging the app into /Applications:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Photo2Mac.app

Then double-click as usual.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. Source files carry an SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later header.

Copyright (c) 2026 Razvan Cremenescu.

See NOTICE for third-party attributions.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md. Security issues go to SECURITY.md.