PhotoFlow

Description

PhotoFlow is a free, open-source non-destructive photo retouching program that provides a complete RAW image editing workflow. It is similar to Darktable or RawTherapee.

The software allows you to open an image and apply common editing tools, such as levels, curves, brightness-contrast, blurring and sharpening, using non-destructive adjustment layers. The program organizes the editing into layers, layer groups, and masks.

Note: You can find a PhotoFlow tutorial here and the Install instructions (for various OS) here.

PhotoFlow Features

• support for RAW, JPEG, TIFF plus EXIF data and ICC profiles
• colorspace conversions based on ICC profiles
• realtime preview
• on-the-fly colorspace conversion
• color-managed processing with floating-point precision
• color-correction options: black and white conversion, contrast/brightness adjustment, channel inversion, custom tones curves, hue/saturation adjustment, horizontal/vertical/radial gradient
• scaling, rotating and cropping
• gaussian blurring
• sharpening support
• freehand drawing

PhotoFlow Review

Let’s be honest with ourselves for a second. We’ve all lost photos of the editing process. I know I have. Photoflow is an image editing software built around non-destructive editing.

Photoflow has enough essential tools to get most editing jobs done. After spending some time with Photoflow, you’ll be wondering why digital photography didn’t make destructive editing a thing of the past from the start.

Non-Destructive Editing

One of the best parts of digital photography is being able to edit images without destroying them. What do I mean? In the physical film, if you make an edit, it can be hard, or even impossible, to take it back. It’s what’s known as “destructive” editing since it “destroys” the previous state of the film as it goes on. The digital film lets us get beyond this limitation, but not always.

If you’ve been into digital photography for any amount of time, you, as I have, might have experienced the sheer terror that is realizing you just hit save after making edits you can’t take back. Maybe you forget to create a new copy for the edits, or you’ve gone too many edits in for the undo functionality to keep up; it is where Photoflow makes some exciting moves in the digital photo editing world.

Photoflow is an always non-destructive photo editing program. It means that every time you edit your image, it performs that edit in a new layer. Your base layer is still the untouched photograph, just as it was when you captured it. No matter how many clumsy saves or bold edits you make, Photoflow keeps your base image wholly preserved, great for anyone who doesn’t want to risk losing that base photograph, whether you are new to digital editing and want to keep those files safe or you are working on a sensitive project, like a wedding or another once in a lifetime event, and need to make sure those files don’t get lost.

Having a stable, untouched backup copy of your photo, inside your workflow, is a resource I’ll be looking for in every photo editor after experiencing it in Photoflow.

Photoflow includes common editing tools, all of them non-destructive:

• Masking
• Levels
• Curves
• Brightness & Contrast
• Blur & Sharpen
• Crop & Resize
• Colorspace Conversion

Non-destructive editing with these features is an impressive accomplishment. The ability to change colorspace without altering the underlying file is a much-needed feature. Photoflow also has a “digital fill-in flash” filter effect that allows you to “relight” a scene in post, a considerable jump up from the basics of level adjusting and cropping.

Photoflow is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS, with installation instructions for each on the project’s website.

Conclusion

After testing out Photoflow, I’m left wondering why non-destructive editing isn’t the norm. It’s such a relief knowing that no matter how hard I mess up the editing process, the core photograph is still untouched and ready for the next round of edits.

Photoflow is already worth the experience, even if only to see how nice it is to know that your edits are always non-destructive.