A Lightroom alternative that keeps your photos where they are
A free RAW editor and photo library for the folders on your device. How Litria compares with Lightroom and others, and where it falls short.
Most people who look for a Lightroom alternative want one of three things: to stop paying a subscription to edit their own photos, to stop sending them to someone else's cloud, or to get through a shoot without an import step first. Litria was built for all three.
What Litria does differently
It works on the folders you already have. You pick a folder and Litria reads the photos where they are. There is no import and no copy. Litria never moves, renames or overwrites a photo, and the file your camera wrote stays as it was.
Nothing is uploaded unless you publish it. The editor, the library and exports run on your device, on its graphics card where Litria can use it. Your edits are kept on the same device. A photo leaves it only when you publish an album or a portfolio, and then only the copy you chose.
Editing is free and needs no account. The editor, the library and exports cost nothing on every plan. Pro is for publishing more: it adds storage for published photos, larger published photos and more portfolio templates.
What you can do in it
- Develop a RAW photo: Light, Curves, Color with a Color Mixer and Color Grading wheels, Detail, Effects and LUTs, with a live histogram.
- Adjust one part of a photo with masks: brush, linear and radial gradients, luminance range and color range.
- Cull a shoot in the library with ratings, keep and reject, all from the keyboard.
- Export a whole selection in one run, made on your device from the full photo.
- Publish an album or a portfolio when you want to share your work.
How it compares
Lightroom (the cloud version) keeps your originals in Adobe's cloud so it can sync them between devices. Lightroom Classic works on your own drive, but it adds photos to its catalog through an import first. Both need an Adobe subscription to keep editing. Litria needs neither the upload nor the import, and editing in it is free.
darktable is free, open source and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. It has more tools than Litria and a steeper learning curve. Litria is newer and smaller, and aims to be easy to pick up.
RawTherapee is free and open source too, with a deep RAW engine. It has a file browser for rating and sorting photos rather than a full library, with no albums or publishing. Litria puts the editor, the library and publishing in one place.
Photopea runs in the browser like Litria, but it is built like Photoshop, around layers and editing a single image. Litria is built like a darkroom, for developing and culling a whole shoot.
Where Litria falls short today
These are Litria's limits today:
- Nine RAW formats. Litria develops DNG, ARW, NEF, CR2, CR3, RAF, RW2, ORF and PEF files, and edits JPEG, PNG and WebP. Other camera formats are not on that list.
- Best in Chrome or Edge. Use Chrome or Edge on a computer, or Chrome on Android, which keep your folders open between visits. Firefox on a computer works too, but you pick the folder again on each visit or copy the photos into the browser. Safari and every browser on iPhone and iPad are not supported.
- No Mac app. The desktop app is for Windows and Linux.
- No layers. Litria is a RAW developer, not a compositing tool.
If those fit how you work, try it on your next shoot.
Try Litria
Open Litria in Chrome or Edge, or download the desktop app. You can start with sample photos, or add the folder from your last shoot. You need no account to edit.