A Lightroom alternative, without the subscription.
Numa is a photo editor for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Linux. No subscription, no account, nothing uploaded. Free on Linux, and one purchase for iPhone, iPad and Mac.
In short
| Numa | Lightroom | |
|---|---|---|
| How you pay | Free on Linux. One purchase for iPhone, iPad and Mac, once the beta is over | A subscription |
| Account | None | An Adobe account |
| Your photographs | Stay where you keep them; nothing is uploaded | Kept on your computer (Classic) or in Adobe’s cloud storage |
| Platforms | iPhone, iPad, Mac (Apple silicon) and Linux | Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android and the web; no Linux app |
Lightroom’s plans and prices change from time to time; Adobe’s own page has the current ones.
Bring your presets
Numa imports presets from Lightroom Classic (.lrtemplate), Lightroom (.xmp) and Capture One (.costyle and .costylepack). Tone, presence, the colour mixer, colour grading, curves, white balance, detail, vignette and grain are translated.
The result is close, not the same: two editors never develop a photograph identically. Local adjustments and camera profiles are not carried over, and Numa lists what it left out, so nothing goes missing silently.
Your photographs, where they are
Your photographs stay wherever you keep them: in a folder, on an external drive or a NAS, in a synced folder such as iCloud Drive or OneDrive, or in your Photos library. Numa opens them through your device’s own files and never sends them anywhere. It has no cloud or account of its own.
On Linux a library is simply a folder: there is no import step, Numa never writes to your originals and leaves no sidecar files beside them. Its catalogue lives in a hidden folder inside the library, with a weekly backup.
Not locked in: a DNG exported from Numa carries its edit as Camera Raw settings that Lightroom reads, roughly. Crop, curves, masks and retouching stay behind.
What you get
- Masks in one tap: the sky, a subject, a person, water or greenery, found by AI models that run on your device. Each mask has its own light, colour, curve and grade.
- Culling that measures: sharpness per frame, bursts grouped, the best frame suggested, closed eyes asked about. Swipe up to keep, down to let go.
- Colour: camera and lens profiles, twelve looks with a Strength slider, LUTs (.cube and .3dl), a colour wheel for shadows, midtones and highlights, a tone curve per channel.
- Retouch: heal and clone, find the sensor dust, remove what does not belong in the frame.
- RAW files from hundreds of cameras, as well as JPEG and HEIF.
When Lightroom fits better
Numa has no cloud of its own, so it does not sync your edits from one device to another, and it has no version for Windows or Android. If you rely on either, Lightroom does those things and Numa does not.
What it costs
Numa for Linux is free and open source, under the GPL-3.0.
Numa for iPhone, iPad and Mac is one app, bought once for all three, with no subscription. The TestFlight beta for iPhone, iPad and Mac opens once Apple’s review is done; write to me and you get the link as soon as it does.
Questions
Is there a Lightroom alternative without a subscription?
Yes. Numa is a photo editor for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Linux with no subscription and no account. It is free on Linux; on iPhone, iPad and Mac it will be one purchase for all three, after a free TestFlight beta.
Can I use my Lightroom presets in Numa?
Yes. Numa imports Lightroom Classic .lrtemplate and Lightroom .xmp presets, and Capture One styles. Tone, colour, curves, grading, detail, vignette and grain are translated; local adjustments and camera profiles are not, and Numa lists what it left out.
Does Numa upload my photographs?
No. Numa has no account and no cloud of its own, and it never sends your photographs anywhere. They stay wherever you keep them, including synced folders such as iCloud Drive or OneDrive.
Does Numa sync edits between devices?
No. Numa has no cloud, so it does not sync. It has the same controls on every device.