Screens showing color grading software that works on Windows, Mac and iPad.

A nEw alternative to Adobe Lightroom - Color.io

Adobe Lightroom vs Color.io

Adobe Lightroom is a fantastic general purpose photo editor but its color grading features are a bit underwhelming. Color.io is a powerful online raw image editor that brings advanced color grading and film emulation tools to digital photography.

Try Color.io Free
No Subscription Required

Comparing Color.io to Lightroom

Advanced Color Grading.
For Photographers.

Photographers need the ability to create stunningly realistic and rich tones that truly elevate an image without looking artificial. Color.io uses cinema grade color science and powerful gamut stabilisers to achieve a color rendering that is unmatched by any other tool on the market.

Color.io AI Color Grading and Photo Editing Software and Mobile App interace on macOS and iPhone

AI Color Matching with Lightroom XMP Export.

Color Match uses  AI to extract the color, contrast and brightness from reference images. Designed for photographers, Color.io enables pro-grade color matching for photography and exports Lightroom XMP Profiles.

Try it Free
Example of film density color grading
Analog Color Curves for filmic color grading and look creation in Color.io
Color Curves

Analog Curves for complete color control.

Intuitive color curves driven by world-class analog color modeling enable color depth and precision far beyond Lightroom’s straight-line adjustments.

Explore Curve Tools
Alternative to HSL for hue-stable color shifting with tetrahedral interpolation in Color.io
Refraction Wheels

Filmic HSL for extreme color stability.

Color.io comes with proprietary color refraction wheels that allow you to shift and compress colors with much higher color stability than the HSL tool in Lightroom.

Film look presets and profiles in Color.io
Preset Library

More than 100 Film Presets. Built on True Analog Color Science.

The Color.io Preset Library brings you hundreds of installable film emulations. From Kodak Vision3 200T, 500T, and 250D to Portra 400 and CineStill 800T, Color.io presets add true analog behavior to your photos. While Lightroom’s presets excel at quick tonal adjustments, Color.io models the chemical and optical response of real film, giving you subtler grain, authentic halation, and non-linear color curves. Every preset in Color.io is fully editable so you can fine-tune curves, density, and vibrance - then export your custom look as a Lightroom profile to keep your end-to-end workflow smooth and consistent.

Explore The Preset Library
Film look presets and profiles in Color.io

Preset and Look Library

Apply film looks with built-in and custom presets. Get started with hundreds of built-in film emulations and generate film presets with Spectra AI model.

History Timeline Icon

History Timeline & Snapshots

Edit fearlessly with a seekable undo history and persistent snapshots. Experiment, compare, and branch edits with versioned control over every grade.

RGB, Luminance and Saturation Histogram plus traditional video scopes for photographers

Real-Time Scopes Overlays

Grade with precision using histograms, waveforms, vectorscopes, and masks. Analyze exposure, color balance, and skin tones with live, movable scopes.

Exposure Curve Control

Exposure Curve Control

Shape image brightness with a multi-point exposure curve. Brighten shadows, dim highlights, and freely distribute brightness across your images with precision.

Crop Icon

Crop, Rotate, Flip and Tilt

Crop and rotate with control in a full-screen transform mode. From freeform crop to filmic aspect ratios, adjust with real-time previews and intuitive keyboard gestures.

White Balance, Temperature, Tint and quick exposure and film density adjustments with the Balance panel in Color.io

Color and Tone Balance

Fine-tune exposure and color with dual-axis controls. Adjust brightness, saturation, temperature, and tint interactively, with precise feedback and fast resets.

Exceptional color (and texture) emulation.

Every control in Color.io is driven by an engine that models the complex, non-linear response behaviours of analog film. This allows photographers to easily bring out dense, painterly colors from their images with best-in-class cinema color science, a huge preset library and powerful color transformation tools that enable color grading images unlike ever before.

DNG
TIFF
DPX
CR2/3
NEF
crw
raf
+ more
Film Photo of a man standing in a green field at dusk, looking at a sky of painterly filmic colors. Shot by Ivana Cajina

Online Raw Image Editor

Film-like RAW.

Raw development in Color.io is powered by VisionLog - an ultra-wide-gamut, log-encoded color space compatible with built-in ACES © color managed. The VisionLog curve has a wider dynamic range than a standard linear encoding, which means that it can capture all detail in both the highlights and shadows of an image - a perfect starting point for grading.

Analog film halation in highlights compared to raw digital photo

Film Halation Emulation

Real Film Halation.

Color.io comes with optical film halation simulation that recreates the effect of very bright light causing orange-red highlight flaring on analog film. It's an important characteristic of many film stocks that can not be created through color grading alone.

3d LUT color space visualizer in color.io. A transforming 3D RGB cube also known as 3D LUT that represents a color grade in all three dimensions

XMP Profile Export

Lightroom Profiles.

Open Color.io from within Lightroom via "Edit in" and export XMP profiles and 3D LUTs.

Authentic 35mm film emulation color grading with artificial intelligence

Online Batch Image Editor

Batch Editing.

Grade hundreds of images at the same time. Multiple documents, batch export - you got it!

Grain simulation applied to an image in Color.io, showing authentic film-like texture with visible grain structure, demonstrating real-time grain emulation for cinematic color grading and analog film look creation.

Rather than overlaying grain textures like most other software, Color.io deconstructs your image and rebuilds it pixel-by-pixel using synthetically generated film grain. This results in an incredibly organic look because the underlying pixel structure of digital images is entirely reconstructed to match the grain distribution, density, rotation, size, and color gradation of real film.

Advanced Film Grain Emulation

Realistic Grain.

A long strip of film photos with dense and vibrant, filmic colors, grain and film halation. A long strip of film photos with dense and vibrant, filmic colors, grain and film halation.

Start for free on Desktop, Mobile & Web.

Color.io runs in your browser and as an app on (almost) all desktop and mobile devices. Jump right in and get creative with free access to all tools or upgrade to an affordable Pro plan - available as a one-time purchase or an affordable subscription - whatever you prefer!

Side-by-side view of Color.io on a MacBook and iPhone, demonstrating seamless desktop and mobile support for advanced color grading, creating cinematic LUTs, applying film emulation presets, and editing photo and video references across devices.

What makes Color.io a great alternative to Adobe Lightroom for Photographers?

Color.io delivers a raw editing and color-grading experience tailored to creative workflows, with:

  • Not a Subscription-Only Product
    Explore Color.io for free - no credit card required. Upgrade to the full Pro version with a one-time Lifetime purchase (includes all future updates), or choose a flexible monthly or yearly subscription option.
  • Film-accurate emulation parameters
    Fine-tune grain, halation, density curves, and hue-stable “refraction wheels” based on real film measurements — features you won’t find in Lightroom.
  • 3D LUT & XMP export
    Build, customize, and export true 3D LUTs for video and photo apps (including Lightroom via xmp profiles). This bridges your on-device grading with any color-managed workflow.
  • Streamlined interface
    A minimalist, project-based panel lets you batch-sync edits and stay “in the zone,” rather than navigating Lightroom’s module-heavy UI.
  • Optical film halation
    Recreate that subtle orange-red light bloom around highlights: an analog effect absent in Lightroom’s digital sliders.

Together, these focused color and film emulation tools help you dial in your look faster and more precisely than a generalist RAW editor.

How does Color.io integrate with my existing Lightroom workflow?

Color.io is designed to integrate seamlessly into your Lightroom and mixed-media workflows:

  1. Hand-off RAW files
    Open your DNG, CR3, or other RAW directly in Color.io, grade with analog-driven curves and halation, then export. You can even add Color.io as an external editor in Lightroom Classic to speed up your workflow further.
  2. Create and Export reusable Lightroom profiles
    If Lightroom is your go-to RAW editor, you can still benefit from Color.io's superior color processing: Simply export a TIFF from Lightroom into Color.io, develop your  look and export it as an XMP profile. You can then install these xmp profiles in Lightroom’s develop module and apply them with one click on all of your devices. Learn how this works
  3. 3D LUTs for hybrid projects
    If you’re working on video or mixed media, export LUTs to use in Adobe Premiere, Resolve, or even back in Photoshop via the Color Lookup adjustment.

This two-way compatibility means you can leverage Color.io’s film-centric tools without disrupting your Lightroom catalog.

What unique film emulation features does Color.io offer over Lightroom?

Lightroom is great for cataloging and giving you a decent color starting point; Color.io gives you Resolve-like color grading tools that model film behavior:

  • Volumetric film grain
    Grain is generated per-pixel with correct size, rotation, and physically accurate distribution for a much more organic look than Lightroom’s overlayed grain texture.
  • Physically accurate halation
    Simulate the red/orange highlight bloom of analog film when bright sources hit the edge of frame.
  • Non linear, analog curves
    Go beyond linear highlights and shadows - Color.io empowers you to emulate true film density response so each tone roll-off feels authentic.

Together, the extensive color and texture tools in Color.io let you recreate not just the look, but the light-reactive behavior of real film stocks.

Is Color.io faster than Lightroom for creating and applying looks?

Once you’ve defined your style - absolutely:

  • One-click batch synchronization
    Grade one frame and instantly propagate that look across all images in a shoot. Learn how to batch edit images with Color.io Projects
  • Preset-driven starting points
    Choose from hundreds of built-in film emulations to get within 90% of your target in seconds, then refine. The film emulations in Color.io are the real deal - not cheap imitations created by pushing a few sliders around.
  • Custom vibrance & density models
    Build a “house style” once and reapply in future projects - either as custom presets in Color.io or Lightroom XMP profiles. No need to rebuild complex curves every time.

Many users report cutting their raw grading time in half compared to Lightroom alone.