A free RAW, WebP and JPEG XL viewer for Mac
Lumen is a quiet, fast photo viewer for people who keep photos in folders. Open a folder and see everything in it, RAW straight from the camera included, with nothing to import. Type “red hat” or “Kyoto” and it finds the photo.
Opens everything
JPEG, PNG, HEIC, WebP, AVIF, JPEG XL, GIF, TIFF, PSD, and RAW from Canon, Nikon, Sony and Fujifilm cameras: 25+ formats with no plugins. Folders open immediately and stay smooth at 10,000 photos; hold an arrow key to scrub through a whole shoot.
Folder-first, not library-first
Subfolders appear as tiles, the path bar is clickable all the way up, and new files show up the moment they land. Copy, paste, duplicate, rename and trash with undo, right in the viewer. Your folders stay exactly as they are.
Search what is in your photos
Lumen finds photos by what is in them, the words visible inside them, and where and when they were taken, in one folder or all of them. Right-click any photo to find similar ones. It all happens on your Mac.
Edit, convert, present
- Auto-enhance, exposure, contrast and saturation, crop and straighten; export as JPEG, PNG, HEIC or TIFF.
- Batch convert and resize, with optional EXIF and location stripping.
- Slideshows with Ken Burns drift, and a chrome-free Present mode for AirPlay, HDMI and Sidecar.
- An info panel with full EXIF, an RGB histogram and a map; Live Text to select text in a photo.
Lumen makes no network connections at all. Read the help pages and the three-sentence privacy policy.
Questions
- Which formats does Lumen open?
- JPEG, PNG, HEIC/HEIF, WebP, AVIF, JPEG XL, GIF (with playback and frame stepping), TIFF, BMP, PSD, EXR, and RAW formats including DNG, CR2, NEF, ARW and RAF. No plugins.
- Is it really free?
- Every feature is free: browsing, every format, search, editing and export, batch convert, slideshows, Present mode and Live Text. The free app keeps one folder in its library at a time; Lumen Pro keeps unlimited folders for $9.99 once, with no subscription.
- Does Lumen import or move my photos?
- No. There is no library to import into. Lumen shows your folders as they are, viewing is read-only, and edits are saved as copies next to the original unless you choose to replace a file.
- How does search work, and is anything uploaded?
- Type what is in a photo ("red hat"), words visible in it, a city, or a date like "October 2024". Lumen reads your photos on your Mac and keeps the index there; it makes no network connections at all.
- Can it convert RAW files in bulk?
- Yes. Batch convert and resize turns hundreds of RAWs into web-ready JPEGs in one pass, with optional EXIF and location stripping.
- Which macOS does it need?
- Search works on macOS 14 and later. Written photo descriptions need macOS 27 with Apple Intelligence; without them, search uses recognised subjects, text in photos, places, dates and names.