Photomator 3.4.15 (macOS)

Smart Deband is the first thing I look for in any photo editor now. Photomator has it built in, which means you can strip out colour banding from skies and gradients without hunting through third-party plugins. That alone puts it ahead of several free editors I've used on school Macs.

Before you install, you'll want to know about the AI selections. Subject, sky, and background are picked out automatically, so masking a landscape or portrait takes a few clicks rather than a careful lasso job. Crop, straighten, and perspective tools are all there, and the clone and repair brushes handle the usual dust spots and stray objects.

Batch editing is where it earns its keep. You can apply adjustments to a whole folder, and RAW files sit happily alongside JPEGs in the same batch. The match-look feature copies the tone of one photo onto another, which is handy when you're trying to keep a series consistent.

Upscaling is built in too, so you can push a small image without leaving the app. The current version, 3.4.15, adds compressed RAW support for recent Sony and Fujifilm bodies, and fixes a pile of small bugs. It runs on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, as long as you're on macOS 13 or later.

Working through a headshot retouch from start to finish

I had a portrait shot from a school play that needed cleaning up. The lighting was uneven, the background had a folded curtain with a distracting crease, and the subject had a spot on their collar. Here is how Photomator handled it.

1. Opened the RAW file from the card. It loaded straight in with the default profile applied.
2. Used the AI subject selection to mask the person. One click, and the edges were tight enough around the hair that I didn't have to refine much.
3. Inverted the selection and dropped the exposure on the background. That killed the crease without touching the subject.
4. Switched to the clone tool for the collar spot. Small brush, Alt-click on a clean area, one stroke.
5. Applied a colour adjustment to warm the skin tone. Copied that adjustment to the other three shots from the same sequence via copy and paste.
6. Exported the batch as JPEGs at 2048 pixels wide. Done.

The whole thing took less time than it would have taken to open GIMP and configure a layer mask. The AI selection saved the fiddliest step.

Drag and sort a folder of school sports RAW files

My standard session starts with a folder of RAW files from a school sports day. I drag the whole folder into Photomator's browser view. Thumbnails render quickly, and the EXIF data shows beneath each one so I can spot the shots taken under the tree versus the ones in direct sun.

I pick the best frame, open it, and run the auto-adjust button as a starting point. From there I tweak exposure, contrast, and white balance. If the sky has banding — common with compressed RAW in high-contrast light — I open the Deband tool and nudge the slider until the gradient looks natural again. No extra panels, no plugin window.

For the rest of the set, I copy the edit from the first photo and paste it onto the similar shots. A few frames need individual corrections, but the batch paste handles the bulk. I check the match-look tool on a couple of frames where the light shifted: it pulls the colour temperature closer to the reference, then I adjust exposure by half a stop manually.

I finish by selecting all the edited photos and exporting as full-resolution JPEGs into a dated folder. The whole session, maybe 120 frames, takes about twenty minutes.

Session notes for someone else's workflow

• Keep the Deband slider low unless the source is badly compressed. Overdoing it softens detail.
• Select sky and subject separately if you want different adjustments on each, rather than using the combined auto-mask.
• The perspective tool is worth checking on group shots where the camera was tilted up. It corrects vertical lines cleanly.

Remove varied iPhone backgrounds for consistent product shots

A friend runs a ceramics studio and takes her own product shots on an iPhone. The images are fine, but the backgrounds vary: sometimes a workbench, sometimes a shelf. She needed consistent white-background shots for her online shop without rebuilding the lighting setup.

She used Photomator's AI background selection to isolate each pot or bowl. With the background selected, she replaced it with a solid white layer, then adjusted the exposure on the subject to match across the set. The clone tool removed a few dust specks that had landed on the glaze. She saved the edit as a preset and applied it to the next batch of new pieces.

The workflow removed the need for a light tent or post-processing in a dedicated background-removal app. She exports directly to JPEG at 1200 pixels and uploads them to her site. For a single-person business, that kind of direct tool cuts out a step they do not have time for.

• Bug fixes and performance improvements.
• Added support for compressed RAW images from Sony Alpha ILCE-7M5, FUJIFILM GFX 100S II, and FUJIFILM GFX 100RF cameras.
• Added support for High Efficiency and High Efficiency Star RAW images from Nikon Z5II and Nikon Z50II cameras.
• Added support for RAW images from Panasonic LUMIX DC-S1RM2 cameras captured in High Resolution mode.

• macOS 13 or later
• Intel or Apple Silicon