A RAW editor with PIXL's own colour science, AI masks and over 300 looks that run on your computer, and RAW to HDR export. It works on the folders you already have, with no catalog and no subscription.
Free PIXL account, 18 or older. Then download for macOS (Apple silicon or Intel) or Windows 64-bit.
Real RAW files from an entry-level camera, straight off the card and finished in Playroom. Drag across the picture, or use the arrow keys, to compare the untouched file with the edit.
RAW
DNG
JPEG XL
HEIC
JPEG
TIFFWhat makes one RAW editor look different from another is mostly what happens to colour between the sensor and the screen. From the demosaic onward, that part of Playroom is PIXL's own. LibRaw decodes the file; then PIXL's camera profile, working space, gamut handling and output conversion take over.
Open Scopes in Develop and the same geometry is on screen: a CIE chart of your photo with PixlRGB and the standard spaces drawn over it, and the metrics before and after.
% = share of the visible range (u′v′ area) inside the triangle.
The curve is every pure wavelength of light, 380 to 700 nm, on the CIE 1976 u′v′ diagram. Each triangle is the set of colours a space can make. PixlRGB's triangle holds the whole visible range, so a camera's colours are never clipped by the space the edit runs in. Point at the diagram to see which spaces hold a colour.
Edits run in PixlRGB, a 32-bit float space we designed so that every colour a camera records, and every colour in sRGB, Display P3, Adobe RGB and Rec.2020, is a positive number. The space your edit runs in never clips a colour. It's an open specification.
PIXL fitted a colour profile for 46 camera bodies from each camera's measured spectral sensitivity. Any other camera uses the colour its file carries, and you can switch any photo between the two under Colour in Develop.
When an edit pushes a colour past what the eye can see, PIXL brings it back to the edge of the visible range with its brightness and hue kept, instead of clipping a channel and shifting the colour.
Grade a RAW above white and export it as HDR, choosing the white level and the peak brightness in nits. Write PQ or HLG, or an SDR picture with a gain map. Playroom measures the brightness of the pixels it wrote.
Photos you edited in 0.2 can shift a little in 0.3.0-beta, because curves, the colour mixer and HSL now act in PixlRGB. Playroom keeps the old preview so you can compare, and any photo can go back to the file's own camera colour. Today LibRaw still demosaics the RAW; HEIC export is replaced by AVIF.
Rate, flag and colour-label as you cull. Smart collections, keyword trees, stacks and a duplicate finder keep a whole shoot in order, across every folder, without moving a file.
Compare before and after side by side, watch the histogram and the hue chart, and work down one column of panels. Jump to any of them, or keep one open at a time. Every slider updates the picture as you drag, and your original is never touched.
Over 300 looks inspired by camera colour, film stocks, cinema and TV, previewed live on your own photo. Hover to try one, dial it in with Amount, and keep editing. Smart looks go further: they find the subject or the sky and adjust just that part.
Let AI find the subject, the sky or any object you click, or pick it by colour, tone, brush or gradient. Then every panel edits just that part. Stack as many masks as you like, reorder them, and change your mind later. Nothing is baked in until you export.
Playroom reads your lens from the file, and one click corrects its distortion and vignetting from built-in profiles for about 1,500 lenses, offline. Chromatic aberration is measured on the photo itself, fringes go with a picker, and fisheye shots can be defished.
A smart look carries instructions as well as sliders: find the subject, click the sky, quiet the background, denoise. Playroom runs them on each photo you apply it to and leaves ordinary masks and steps you can change or undo. Save your own edit as a look, and its AI masks are made again on the next photo.
Crop, Heal and Masks are one click away, and every adjustment folds into one column. Every slider updates the picture and the histogram as you drag.
Colour or B&W, a profile, white balance in real Kelvin on RAW files, then exposure and tone, with a scene-aware Auto that knows a flat, overcast frame needs contrast, not a highlight pull.
Shadow, midtone, highlight and global wheels with blending and balance, and Add colour, which tints the light like a gel on a lamp or matches a colour you pick.
Subject, Background, Objects (click, box or scribble) and Sky, plus brush, gradients, lasso, and colour and luminance range, with snap to edges. Add, subtract and intersect them, then every panel edits just that mask. People and depth masks are coming.
Your lens recognised from the file, with profiles for about 1,500 lenses that work offline, chromatic aberration measured on the photo, defringe with a picker, manual distortion and vignetting, and defish for fisheye lenses.
Three things that are different from Lightroom Classic and Capture One, with the numbers.
Lightroom Classic on Adobe's Lightroom plan is $431.64 over three years. Capture One Pro is $349 once, with new features as paid upgrades, or $648 by subscription. Playroom is $69.99 at 1.0, with every 1.x update, and it keeps working if you stop paying anything else.
Point it at a folder and start. Each edited photo gets one .pixl project beside it, holding its edits, history, masks and copies, and by default a copy of the original. It's one documented SQLite file that any SQLite tool can read.
The .pixl formatMasks, noise reduction and Super Resolution all run on your own computer. Nothing is uploaded, there are no analytics, and editing works offline for up to 30 days between account checks.
Lightroom and Capture One are ahead on tethering, layers, HDR and panorama merge, print, generative remove and people masks. The full comparison says so row by row, with prices and features checked on October 2, 2026.
Anyone 18 or older with a free PIXL account can use Playroom 0.3.0-beta before 1.0. Tell us what breaks and what you'd change, and help shape the release.
The whole app, on up to 3 computers, macOS or Windows. Sign in once in the app and you're in.
Help → Report a Problem sends what happened straight to us. It's pre-release software, so keep backups; your originals are never changed.
When 1.0 ships, every tester gets the 14-day trial and a one-time code for 30% off a licence, good for 90 days.
One licence, every tool, no subscription.
$69.99one-time
Describe the edit and let an AI agent do it, across one photo or a whole folder. Every change it makes is a normal history step you can undo.
Playroom is in beta, so this list moves with what testers tell us. We'll say here, and in the app's What's new, when each one lands.
Today a smart look runs a fixed list of steps. Next, a look carries real logic: conditions, loops and branches that decide, photo by photo, what to mask and which adjustments to apply. For example, darken the sky if there is one, and leave the photo alone if there isn't.
Playroom will open itself to AI agents through MCP, so any agent that speaks it can find photos in your library and use every slider, mask and look. An agent's edits are ordinary history steps, the same as yours, so you can review, step back or undo any of them.
More fixes, more accessibility features and a smoother UI, plus models for people and the sky. Feedback decides the order. Help → Report a Problem sends us what happened, and joining the beta is how you get a say.
No. You buy a licence once and keep it. Every 1.x update is included. Bringing your own AI agent will be included. Optional cloud add-ons may be sold separately later, and the app never needs them.
Up to 3 at a time, on macOS or Windows. Replacing a computer? Remove the old one from your account and add the new one.
From the demosaic onward, from PIXL. LibRaw decodes the RAW and demosaics it; after that the colour is PIXL's own: a camera profile fitted by PIXL for each of 46 camera bodies (other cameras use the colour the file carries), editing in PixlRGB, our own working space that holds every colour a camera records, and our own gamut compression, tone mapping and output conversion. PixlRGB is an open specification, published on the PIXL Engine site. Photos you edited in 0.2 can shift a little in 0.3, so Playroom keeps the old preview for you to compare, and you can switch any photo back to the file's own colour.
Yes. You can grade a RAW above white and export it as HDR, choosing the white level and the peak brightness in nits: PQ or HLG in AVIF, JPEG XL and PNG, or an SDR picture with a gain map (an Ultra HDR JPEG or an AVIF). Gain-map photos such as an iPhone HEIC open too, and you can edit on their SDR picture or on the HDR one. The editor shows HDR tone-mapped to a standard screen; showing it on an HDR display is planned.
No. Editing, previews and every AI feature run on your own machine. The AI models download once, when you first use them, and nothing of yours is uploaded.
Never. Playroom works on the folders you already have and never modifies your originals. Each edited photo gets one .pixl project file beside it (or in a folder you choose) holding its edits, history, masks and virtual copies, with a copy of the original inside by default. The .pixl format is documented, and any SQLite tool can read it. It doesn't read or change a Lightroom catalog.
It opens camera RAW, DNG, JPEG, JPEG XL, HEIC, TIFF, PNG, WebP and AVIF. It exports JPEG, PNG, TIFF, WebP, AVIF and JPEG XL, one photo at a time or in batches, in sRGB, Display P3, Adobe RGB or Rec.2020. HEIC files open, but export is AVIF instead.
Not yet; it's planned before 1.0. Playroom will open itself to AI agents through MCP (the Model Context Protocol), so any agent that speaks it can browse your library and use every control, by conversation or on a whole shoot. Every change it makes will be a normal history step, exactly like one you made, that you can review and undo. It's included with the app. What you let an agent see goes wherever that agent runs, so a cloud agent means its provider sees it.
Yes. The beta is open now and free: every tool, on up to 3 computers, until 1.0 ships. Join at playroom.pixlfoundation.com/beta with a free PIXL account. From 1.0 there is a free 14-day trial with every tool unlocked.
When 1.0 ships, soon. Until then the beta is free, and everyone who tests it gets a code for 30% off the full version.
Playroom is built by Syed Ali, trading as PIXL Foundation, an independent developer in Ontario, Canada. Here is what you can check for yourself.
The .pixl project format is documented, and PixlRGB, the colour space Playroom edits in, is an open specification with ICC profiles you can download.
Playroom's repository is public for reference. It is not open source, and it can't be built without the private engine.
Read what each beta brought, check which cameras and lenses it handles, and who is behind it.
Every picture in Playroom is a render by PIXL Engine, our Rust imaging core, and PixlRGB is its working space. The preview goes through the same engine path as an export, so what you see is what you export.
Meet the enginePlayroom 0.3.0-beta is free while it's in beta
Join the beta