RAW photo editors for Mac, iPhone and iPad, side by side.

A RAW editor and library for iPhone, iPad and Mac, built on the same engine as Numa for Linux. You buy it once for all three, with no subscription and no account. It is free while the TestFlight beta is open. Numa for Mac and Numa for iPhone and iPad have the details.

Masks for the sky, a subject, a person, water or greenery are found on the device in one tap. Culling measures the sharpness of each frame, groups bursts and asks about closed eyes. Numa opens your photographs where they are: your Photos library, or a folder in Files, on a drive or on a NAS. It imports presets from Lightroom and Capture One. Fujifilm RAF files get extra support, with X-Trans demosaicking and the lens corrections stored in the RAF.

Numa is young and made by one developer. The Mac app needs a Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 15 or later. The iPhone and iPad app needs iOS or iPadOS 26. Numa has no layers and no cloud of its own. To keep libraries in step on several devices, you run Numa Home on your own NAS.

Adobe’s editor and library runs on Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android and the web, and it is sold as a subscription. Adobe’s plans page has the current plans. Lightroom keeps your photographs in Adobe’s cloud storage and syncs them between devices. Lightroom Classic is a desktop app that keeps your originals on a local drive. Adobe lists AI masks for a subject, the sky and the background, and Assisted Culling, which scores sharpness, focus and open eyes. Numa and Lightroom side by side.

Capture One Pro is a professional RAW editor for Mac and Windows. Tethering is one of its main features: you shoot from the camera straight into the app. Pro comes as a subscription or as a one-time licence. Capture One says the one-time licence suits photographers who do not depend on its newest updates or hardware support. It also has an app for iPhone and iPad. Capture One’s pricing page has the current plans.

A RAW editor for Mac and Windows, sold with a perpetual licence. DxO lists those two systems only. DxO lists DeepPRIME noise reduction, lens corrections that come from measurements made in DxO’s laboratory, AI masks and U Point local adjustments. DxO PhotoLab.

Affinity, from Canva, is free for individuals and runs on Mac, Windows and iPad. It has separate studios for pixels, vectors and page layout, and unlimited layers. The photo studio has RAW Develop, with lens profiles and noise reduction. You sign in with a free Canva account, and its AI tools need a paid Canva plan. I found no photo library or culling on its pages. Affinity.

Apple’s layered image editor for Mac and iPad. Apple lists more than 750 RAW formats, and RAW photos open as layers that you edit without converting them first. The one-time version in the Mac App Store needs macOS 12 or later. With an Apple Creator Studio subscription it needs macOS 26 on the Mac and iPadOS 26 on the iPad, where it comes only with the subscription. Apple lists no iPhone version. Pixelmator Pro.

RAW Power, by Gentlemen Coders, is a RAW editor built on Apple’s own RAW engine. On the Mac it is an app and also an extension inside Photos. A separate app for iPhone and iPad syncs edits, ratings and flags through iCloud Photos. Each app is bought once. The maker’s comparison with its Nitro app lists no brushes, gradients or clone tool in RAW Power. Gentlemen Coders.

A free, open-source (GPL-3.0) RAW developer and library with a very large set of modules, drawn and parametric masks, and optional local AI tools since version 5.6, such as masking an object you click on. It has a build for macOS on Apple silicon and no official release for Intel Macs. I found no iPhone or iPad version. It takes time to learn, and it suits people who want every control. darktable. For darktable on Linux, see photo editors for Linux compared.

Lightroom fits better if you want your photographs on every device without running a server, or if you also use Windows or Android. Adobe runs the sync. Numa has no cloud of its own and no version for Windows or Android.

Capture One fits better for studio work with the camera on a cable, and it also runs on Windows.

DxO PhotoLab fits better when noisy files and lens corrections are your main work. Numa has AI denoise too, but I have not measured it against DeepPRIME.

Affinity and Pixelmator Pro fit better when you work in layers. Affinity also does vector shapes and page layout. Numa has no layers. Both open RAW files, and many photographers develop in one app and finish in the other.

RAW Power fits better if you want your editor to live inside Photos and iCloud Photos. Numa also opens your Photos library and saves your edit back to it when you tap Done, but it syncs between your devices only through Numa Home.

darktable fits better if you want a free editor with the deepest control, or if you also use Windows.

Numa fits better if you want one purchase for iPhone, iPad and Mac, with the same controls on all three, no account, and photographs that stay where you keep them. A one-time purchase is not unique to Numa. DxO PhotoLab, Capture One Pro, RAW Power and, on the Mac, Pixelmator Pro offer one too, and Affinity and darktable are free. What Numa adds is one purchase that covers the iPhone and iPad as well as the Mac, with masks found in one tap and culling that measures each frame.

• Numa for Mac
• Numa for iPhone and iPad
• A Lightroom alternative
• Photo editors for Linux compared
• Try Numa’s sliders in your browser