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Software · Photo & graphics

LightZone

LightZone is a photo editing program, available on Windows and Linux.

  • Completely free
  • Windows and Linux
  • Open source
  • No account

Overview

LightZone is a photo editing program, available on Windows and Linux. Other documented uses: RAW processing.

Overview written by LicitPro from the documentation published by the authors and the cited sources; we have not tried the resource ourselves.

Excerpts that establish this information
  • “Camera RAW image processor” — Flathub, 10 November 2026
  • “A professional-level digital darkroom and photo editor.” — Winget, 10 November 2026

At a glance

All of LightZone is free: no feature is locked behind a paid plan, and its code is open.

Its licence (BSD-3-Clause) is a permissive open source licence: use, modification and redistribution are allowed, including in commercial projects.

Strengths

  • Open source code
  • No account needed
  • Commercial use allowed

About

LightZone is a professional-level digital darkroom and photo editor for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It includes RAW processing and editing. Rather than using layers in the way that other photo editors do, LightZone lets the user build up a stack of tools which can be rearranged, readjusted, turned off and on, and removed from the stack. It's a completely non-destructive editor, where any of the tools can be re-adjusted or modified later — even in a different editing session. A tool stack can even be copied to a batch of photos at one time. LightZone always operates in a 16-bit linear color space with the wide gamut of ProPhoto RGB.

Description from Flathub — AppStream (Flathub)

Sources and checks

  • Facts collected from Flathub (credit card, source code, publisher, licence, free status, platforms, commercial use, version) —
  • Facts collected from Winget (Windows Package Manager) (credit card, account, source code, publisher, licence, free status, platforms, commercial use, version) —
  • Last technical check: 7 November 2026
  • Description from Flathub — AppStream (Flathub)

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