Develop your photos
like film.

Chromogen is a standalone film-emulation photo editor for Windows and macOS. It develops your photos the way film does: it reads your exposure and lays in a real film response (13 stocks measured from real film, with grain, halation and tone modeled on physics) instead of stacking filters on top of a JPEG. It works on 16-bit RAW and JPEG, needs no Lightroom underneath, and can be bought outright.

Four days with the real app on your own photos: full RAW developing, all 13 film stocks, and exports up to 2048px on the long edge. Premium stocks and looks carry a trial mark until you buy a license; the rest export clean. No credit card to start.

Your choice. You can subscribe monthly or yearly, or buy a lifetime license: one payment, and Chromogen is yours to keep forever, every future update free, usable on Windows or macOS, and no recurring charges. Lightroom and Capture One only rent you the software; here you can own it. The lifetime license is $498. The rent plans are $29 a month or $228 a year.

Your license works on either platform: the same key activates the Windows app and the macOS app, active on one computer at a time. Move it between your own machines freely; you just can't run two computers at once on one key. Need that? It's a second license. If you get stuck moving it, email us and we'll sort it out.

A preset drops a look onto a finished JPEG. Chromogen develops the actual file: a real film engine with physics-modeled grain, halation and tone, working on your full 16-bit RAW. It's the difference between a filter and a darkroom.

Try it free first, so you know before you buy. That is exactly what the trial is for. A license is a digital product delivered instantly, so all sales are final. If anything ever misbehaves, email us and a human will help you get it working.

Email us. Requests go straight to the person who writes the code, not a ticket queue, and they shape what gets built next. Chromogen updates often; take a look at the release notes to see what people have already asked for and got. We can't build everything, but you'll always hear back from a human.

Yes. Over 1,500 lens profiles are built in. Turn on Auto lens correction in the Lens card and the lens named in the photo’s EXIF has its measured distortion, colour fringing and vignetting corrected before the film goes on; if the photo names no lens, or names it differently, choose the lens from the list. Manual distortion and defringe sliders sit under the switch. Nothing already edited changes by itself: the switch is per photo, and Settings can turn it on for photos you open for the first time.

Yes. Set Chromogen as an external editor (Lightroom Classic's “Edit in / Additional External Editor”, or Capture One's “Open With”) and your photo opens straight in Chromogen, ready to develop. You can also just drag any file in. When you're done, export the developed image back out to your library.

Yes. The Instagram page previews a post the way the feed, grid, story or carousel will show it and exports a 1080 px sRGB JPEG. Book Studio lays out a photo book and exports the exact files Blurb, Lulu, Saal Digital, Peecho, Prodigi, Printique, Mixbook, Shutterfly or Artifact Uprising ask for. Mockups place a photo in framed prints, posters, books, billboards, devices and CDs, or on a client's measured wall at its true size, and print export sets real paper sizes at 300 ppi with crop marks and colour bars.

No, JPEGs work fine. But RAW gets the most out of it: Chromogen develops the full 16-bit file, so your highlight and shadow latitude survives instead of being baked away.

Never. Editing is non-destructive: your adjustments are saved in a small sidecar file beside each photo, and the original is left untouched.

Chromogen edits your photos locally, so your images aren't sent to us. Two exceptions: licensing is checked online when the app launches, and the optional AI assistant, if you turn it on with your own API key, sends the current preview to the AI provider you choose.