Photomator 3.4.15 — Mac version

Photomator ships with support for 650+ RAW formats, so your camera files are likely covered before you even open the lid.

RAW support — the app reads unprocessed sensor data from most cameras, including Apple ProRAW and compressed Fujifilm files. No pre-conversion needed.

AI subject select — click once to grab the subject, sky, or background. Good first move when you want to brighten a face without touching the sky.

Smart Deband — removes colour banding from gradients. Try it on a sunset shot where the sky breaks into visible stripes.

Copy-and-paste edits — lift adjustments from one photo and drop them onto a batch. Works across RAW and JPEG files together, handy after a day out shooting.

Denoise — runs on Core ML. Pulls grain out of high-ISO shots without smearing detail. Try it before you sharpen.

Presets — landscape and black-and-white looks you can tweak. A quick way to see what a flat file can do, then dial it back to taste.

Straighten, crop, clean up — a five-minute workflow

Let's say you've pulled a dozen shots off a walk round town. One stands out, but it's slightly wonky and there's a bin on the pavement you didn't spot at the time. Here's the order I follow.

1. Open the RAW file. Photomator reads it without any import dance.
2. Crop and straighten first — no point fixing tones on a tilted frame. Drag the straighten slider or use the auto-level button. Crop to taste.
3. Tap the AI subject select. It usually grabs the main figure or building cleanly. If it misses a bit, paint the missing area in — takes seconds.
4. With the subject still selected, lift exposure and shadows a touch. The background stays as it was.
5. Switch to the repair tool. Circle the bin and let the clone fill do its thing. On plain pavement it's nearly invisible.
6. Apply Smart Deband if you see colour stepping in the sky. It's subtle but effective.
7. Copy edits, paste onto the rest of the batch shot in the same light. Done.

That whole loop — from crooked frame to clean, straightened photo with consistent light — runs inside a couple of minutes once you know where the tools live.

Just open the raw and start editing

Photomator fits a particular groove. If you shoot RAW on a camera that spits out files Lightroom needs a catalogue to open, you'll appreciate how it just opens the file and lets you work. No library management, no import dialogue.

Mac users who already lean on Photos or iCloud sync get an extra boost — edits flow back and forth to the Photos library without exporting and re-importing. If you've already got years of images organised in Photos, that integration saves real time.

People doing batch edits on mixed formats — RAW, ProRAW, JPEG all together — find the copy-paste workflow genuinely useful. Not every editor handles that mix smoothly. Photomator doesn't blink.

It's also a solid fit if you want AI selection tools but don't want a subscription-shaped hole in your wallet. The subject, sky and background selection works locally on the Neural Engine, same as the Denoise and upscaling. No uploads, no queue, no credit system.

Reviving a 2019 iMac for Fuji compressed raw work

I volunteer Saturdays at the bike library. Last month a bloke brought in a 2019 iMac that was running slow and asked if it could still handle photo work. He shoots a Fuji X-T5 — compressed RAW files — and thought he needed a newer machine.

We cleaned out a few years of cruft, updated to Ventura, and downloaded Photomator. He pulled a card of market-day shots straight into the app. The compressed Fuji RAWs opened without a hiccup. AI subject select grabbed the fruit stall awning clean off the busy background. He lifted the shadows, dropped a black-and-white preset, and copied the look across twenty frames while I made tea.

That machine stayed in service. He didn't need a new Mac — he needed software that didn't fight the hardware he already had. Seeing someone's face when a supposedly "obsolete" machine breezes through a RAW batch is exactly why I write this catalog.

Denoise on 24 MP raw, done in under two seconds

On Apple Silicon, everything feels instant. Denoise on a 24-megapixel RAW finishes in under two seconds. AI selections resolve in less than a second. Scrolling through a folder of RAWs is fluid — no thumbnail lag, no beachball.

On Intel Macs it's still respectable. A 2019 iMac with a decent GPU handles most operations without stuttering. Denoise takes a couple of beats longer but doesn't lock the interface. The app uses Metal for rendering and Core ML for machine-learning tasks, so it leans on the GPU rather than hammering the CPU. Memory sits around 400–600 MB for a single image, bumping to about 1.2 GB during a batch of thirty RAWs. That's reasonable for the work it's doing.

Stability-wise, I've not had a crash during edits. The only wobble I saw was on an older Ventura install where the repair tool hesitated on a very large TIFF — saving and reopening sorted it. Day-to-day, it stays out of the way.

If you've been hunting a Photomator download that handles compressed Sony and Fuji RAWs without fuss, the 3.4.15 update means those files open natively now. No extra conversion step, no compatibility warnings.

• Added compressed RAW support for Sony Alpha ILCE-7M5, FUJIFILM GFX 100S II, and FUJIFILM GFX 100RF.
• Added High Efficiency and High Efficiency Star RAW support for Nikon Z5II and Nikon Z50II.
• Added support for Panasonic LUMIX DC-S1RM2 High Resolution mode RAW files.
• Bug fixes and performance improvements.

• macOS 13 or later
• Apple Silicon or Intel 64-bit Mac