A darkroom, not a photo library
The film look, built from
how film actually behaves.
LunaLux Editor turns a folder of photos into a working darkroom. Invert scanned negatives, grade with classic stock emulations, add halation and silver-halide grain that respond to your own highlights, print a sprocket rebate around the frame — and export without ever modifying the original file.
Film simulation engine
Halation and grain, simulated — not stickered on.
Red-channel halation with its own diffusion radius and highlight threshold. Black-mist bloom. Silver-halide grain with real size, roughness and dye-cloud controls that scale with the image, so a 42-megapixel frame doesn't end up with 42-megapixel-sized noise.
Rebates & borders
Sprockets, rebates, DX barcodes.
Print the frame the way the lab handed it back.
- Full sprocket overlay, 35mm, 120 rebate, instant frame and gallery border
- Darkroom black, film-base amber or fine-art white surround
- Editable film-stock label, frame number and DX barcode
- Optional EXIF watermark set in typewriter type
The full toolset
Everything a frame needs, in one panel stack.
Negative Lab & Inversion
Invert scanned colour negatives with orange-mask compensation, then grade the positive like any other photo.
Film recipes
Ten built-in stock emulations, from neutral to punchy consumer colour. Save any state as your own reusable recipe or snapshot.
8-channel HSL & 3-way grading
Hue, saturation and luminance on eight colour bands, plus lift / gamma / gain wheels with a balance slider.
Subject & background masks
On-device Vision analysis separates subject from background. Linear and radial masks and spot healing cover the rest.
Scanner dust & scratches
Add period-correct dust and scratches for character — or use spot healing to take real ones off a scan.
Scopes & HDR headroom
Live RGB and luma waveform with clipping warnings, plus an UltraHDR gain map and a real headroom readout for your display.
The whole roll
Built for a session, not a single photo.
Point LunaLux Editor at a folder and it opens as a roll. Cull with keyboard star ratings, colour labels and reject flags, filter down to the keepers, sync one look across everything, and batch export with live per-file progress.
Your originals stay untouched
Edits live in a small recipe file beside the photo. Nothing is imported, converted, moved or overwritten — and no XMP sidecars are scattered through your folders.
No catalogue to maintain
There is no library database to import into, rebuild, or lose. Move the folder to another drive and the edits move with it.
Export on your terms
JPEG, 16-bit TIFF or PNG, in sRGB, Display P3 or Adobe RGB, written wherever you choose, at full resolution.
Requirements
What you need to run it.
- Operating system
- macOS 14 Sonoma or later
- Processor
- Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3, M4 or later)
- Formats read
- JPEG, PNG, TIFF, HEIC and camera RAW formats supported by macOS
- Formats written
- JPEG, 16-bit TIFF, PNG — in sRGB, Display P3 or Adobe RGB
- Network
- Not required. All processing happens on your Mac; no account and no sign-in.
- Languages
- English, 简体中文, 繁體中文, 日本語, Deutsch, Français, Español
Questions before you start?
Support, FAQ and a direct line to a real person.