Layer-based image editing

A layer-based editor with the workflow you already know.

Litesum Photo is a non-destructive raster and vector editor for Windows: layers, masks, selections, retouching, adjustments, paths and type, with a GPU compositor and a CPU backend that must produce the same pixels. It follows the conventions professional editors have established — the shortcuts, the panels, the way tools behave — with its own code, its own interface and its own file format.

Notify me at launch What it can do

In developmentIn development. Runs and installs, in the signed catalogue since 5 September; not yet independently reviewed, no user documentation, not signed.In development · Windows first · No release date promised

Native format: .lphoto
Interchange: PSD, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, WebP, OpenEXR, camera RAW
Panels: Layers · Channels · Paths · Comps · History · Actions · Swatches
Shortcut profiles: Photoshop Compatible · Litesum Default · Custom

No screenshot yet. One replaces this panel when the interface settles.

What it can do today

Built and reachable in the current build.

A count of what exists, not a judgement of quality. Confirmed by the Photo team on 2026-09-18.

Layers, groups and all 26 blend modes
Pixel, group, adjustment, fill, shape, text and Smart Object layers; opacity and fill opacity; clipping masks; Blend If with split handles; knockout; layer comps.
Masks and selections that stay editable
Raster and vector masks, Quick Mask, marquee, lasso, Quick Select, Colour Range, Refine Edge, and selections saved as stored alpha channels.
Retouching that solves rather than smears
Healing Brush, Spot Healing, Clone Stamp, Content-Aware Fill, Content-Aware Scale, Liquify, Puppet Warp and Perspective Warp.
Adjustments as re-editable layers
Levels, Curves, Hue/Saturation, Colour Balance, Selective Colour, Gradient Map, Colour Lookup and more — each destructively or as an adjustment layer with a live preview.
Styles, filters, paths, type and colour
Ten layer styles; blur, sharpen, noise, distort, stylise and render filters that stay editable as Smart Filters; Bézier paths and shape layers; point and paragraph text with OpenType features; ICC colour management with soft proofing and 16- and 32-bit documents.
Several documents open, and recovery after a crash
Documents in tabs, switched with Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab. Crash-safe autosave: a snapshot taken on the interface thread, written off it, renamed atomically, with recovery decided by a lock rather than a guess.

What it is built on

Three decisions that shape everything else.

A document engine that never bakes
Every edit is a command in a log, so undo is exact and the history is a list of named steps. Adjustment layers stay editable. Smart Objects store their transform rather than applying it: scaling one to 10% and back measured zero difference.
Runs with or without a graphics card, and the answers are identical
The compositor runs on Vulkan 1.2. A CPU backend is not a degraded mode but the reference the GPU must match — the test suite requires both to produce byte-identical results for every kernel, and passes unchanged on a machine with no Vulkan at all.
Documents bigger than memory
Pixels live in tiles that move between graphics memory, system memory and disk as needed, so a document's size is not limited by either.

The full inventory

Everything in the build, with the names the application uses.

Everything listed exists and is reachable from the interface. It is a count of what is there, not a claim about how well it works.

Layers and compositing

Pixel, group, adjustment, fill (solid, gradient, pattern), shape, text and Smart Object layers
All 26 blend modes, including the non-separable Hue, Saturation, Colour and Luminosity
Opacity and fill opacity, clipping masks, Blend If with split handles, knockout
Merge Visible, duplicate, drag to reorder, layer comps

Masks and selections

Raster layer masks, vector masks, filter masks, clipping masks and Quick Mask
Rectangular and Elliptical Marquee, Lasso, Quick Select, Colour Range, Focus Area, from layer transparency, from path
Select ▸ Modify: Feather, Expand, Contract, Border, Smooth, Grow, Similar, with an exact distance transform
Refine Edge, Transform Selection, save and load selections as alpha channels

Tools

Move, Crop, Brush, Eraser, Gradient, Paint Bucket, Eyedropper
Clone Stamp, Pattern Stamp, Healing Brush, Spot Healing, Red Eye
Dodge, Burn, Sponge, Smudge, Shape, Pen, Edit Path, Type
Stylus pressure, tilt and rotation; every tool has an options bar

Adjustments

Levels, Curves, Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation, Vibrance, Black & White, Photo Filter, Selective Colour, Shadows/Highlights
Colour Balance, Colour Lookup (.cube), Invert, Threshold, Posterise, Gradient Map, Auto Tone, Auto Contrast, Auto Colour
Each available destructively and as a re-editable adjustment layer, with live preview and presets

Layer styles, filters and retouching

Ten layer styles: Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Outer Glow, Inner Glow, Bevel & Emboss, Satin, Colour, Gradient and Pattern Overlay, Stroke
Blur, sharpen, noise, distort, stylise and render filters, a Filter Gallery, and re-editable Smart Filters on Smart Objects
Content-Aware Fill, Content-Aware Scale, Liquify, Puppet Warp, Perspective Warp, Free Transform
Healing solves the gradient domain rather than cloning — Spot Healing is the same solver with no guide

Vector and type

Bézier paths, shape layers, custom shapes, path booleans, stroke path, a Paths panel
Point text, paragraph text, type on a path, warp text, OpenType features, tracking, named text styles
Font fallback through the operating system

Colour, depth and RAW

ICC colour management, per-monitor display profile, Assign and Convert to Profile, soft proofing with gamut warning, Export for Press (CMYK)
8-, 16- and 32-bit float documents; scene-linear and display-referred; nothing is tone-mapped without being asked
Camera RAW opens as a Smart Object with its settings stored, never baked — Litesum Develop
HDR Merge and Photomerge under File ▸ Automate, each with its limits stated in the dialog

Reliability and automation

Crash-safe autosave, recovery decided by a lock rather than a guess, a transaction journal, atomic save
History panel, Actions panel with a recorder, Batch, and a command-line tool driving the same commands
Shortcut profiles: Photoshop Compatible, Litesum Default, Custom

Files

What it opens and what it saves.

Camera RAW is read-only by design: settings are stored with the document and never baked into the pixels. RAW depends on a build that includes LibRaw, which is checked against the shipped installer before launch.
Format	Opens	Saves	Notes
.lphoto	Yes	Yes	Native. Chunked, checksummed per chunk, compressed per tile.
PSD	Yes, layer-aware	Yes, with limits	8-bit RGB only; PSB is not supported. Export writes the layers; Smart Objects are written as ordinary pixel layers, and any layer kind the writer has no PSD record for is left out and named in the export warning, adjustment layers being the kind you will meet. Never checked against Adobe Photoshop on a machine that has it, so no round trip is promised.
PNG	8 and 16-bit, alpha, ICC	Yes	—
JPEG	8-bit, ICC	Yes	Flattened onto white on export.
TIFF	8 and 16-bit	Yes	Plus CMYK through Export for Press.
WebP	Yes	Yes	An animated WebP opens as its first frame only.
OpenEXR	Half and float	Yes	Scene-referred.
Camera RAW	ARW, CR2, CR3, NEF, DNG, RAF, ORF, RW2, PEF, SRW, SRF, SR2	Never	Opens through Litesum Develop as a Smart Object.

Requirements

What you need to run it.

Operating system: Windows, 64-bit. The minimum version has not been established on a machine somebody actually tried, so none is claimed yet. Windows on ARM is not in this version.
Graphics: A graphics card is not required. Vulkan is used where the machine has it; a machine with no usable Vulkan gets the CPU backend and a working editor, not an error, and the two produce identical results.
Installer: About 41 MB to download and about 122 MB installed, measured on the published 0.3.0 (decimal megabytes, as on the download page). Installs into your own user folder and never asks for administrator permission.
Other platforms: macOS and Linux are planned where technically practical. Neither is built or offered.
Signing: Not yet code-signed. Windows will warn that the publisher is not recognised until a certificate is in place.

Not yet supported

What it does not do, in the team’s own words.

This list is as load-bearing as the capability list. Each item is a recorded decision or a known gap, and the page must not imply otherwise.

Native CMYK or Lab document modes: Colour management, soft proofing and CMYK export exist; a CMYK working space does not, by decision.
PSB and spot channels: Large-document PSB is refused by name. Spot channels are out of scope.
Right-to-left and bidirectional text: Out of scope for this version.
AI features: There is no AI in Photo. Enhance's enlargement may reach it later as an optional module; nothing of the kind ships today.
Plugins: A plugin seam exists behind two switches that are both off. No plugin ecosystem is offered.
Animation, video, 3D: Later phases of the plan, not started.
Alignment in HDR Merge, bundle adjustment in Photomerge: HDR Merge assumes a tripod; Photomerge assumes a roughly level sweep and refuses a canvas past 64 megapixels.

When a membership ends

Paid processing in Photo means saving and exporting.

Save, Save As, Export As, Export for Press, Print and Batch are refused when the licence does not cover Photo; opening, editing in memory, undo, settings, presets and crash recovery keep working; nothing on disk is ever changed by a refusal.

Membership

Litesum Photo is included in Litesum Complete.

Planned at £9.99 per month for every released Litesum application — 6 are being built to launch together — on 2 computers, cancellable from your account page. Everything you open, edit or export stays on your own computer — never uploaded, never used for training, never held behind a subscription.

Notify me at launch About membership

In development · Windows first · No release date promised

Questions

About Photo.

Help articles for Photo are written alongside the application.
Release notes and progress
Ask something else

Has Litesum Photo been reviewed by anyone but its author?

Not yet. Unlike Enhance, Photo has no independent review, no scored release checklist and no user documentation. The counts on this page are of what exists, not judgements of quality. It gets the same review as Enhance before it is offered for sale.

Does it need a graphics card?

No. The compositor runs on Vulkan 1.2 when a card is present, and a CPU backend produces byte-identical results when one is not. The test suite requires both to agree.

Can I open my Photoshop files?

8-bit RGB PSD files open with their layers, groups, masks and layer styles, and Photo writes PSD back with its layers: Smart Objects become ordinary pixel layers, and any layer it cannot carry is named in the export warning, which explains that adjustment layers have no PSD record; the composite stays correct. It has never been checked against Adobe Photoshop on a machine that has it, so no round trip is promised. Large-document PSB is not supported. Photoshop is named here only to say which file format is meant.

What happens to my documents if my membership ends?

Paid processing in Photo means saving and exporting. Save, Save As, Export As, Export for Press, Print and Batch are refused when the licence does not cover Photo; opening, editing in memory, undo, settings, presets and crash recovery keep working; nothing on disk is ever changed by a refusal.

The rest of the suite

The other five, on the same membership.

Taken from the Litesum Photo repository's README, phase roadmaps and architecture decisions log as of 5 September 2026, corrected by the Photo team on 18 September 2026 (version, PSD export, installer size) and by its docs/site-facts.md of 19 September 2026 (no minimum Windows version claimed, GPU not required, about 41 MB download and about 122 MB installed in decimal megabytes, the PSD caveat).