"Save $120 a year on Adobe": how a German photography hobbyist's LLM-written RAW editor got 300 stars

CalibRaw is a free, open-source RAW photo editor that looks like Lightroom. Its author is a German hobby photographer, and this is their only repo on GitHub. The repo was created in July, shipped 1.0 in September, and by Nov 6 had 302 stars, 120 of them gained in the last week. Its play is "free Lightroom alternative," a lane that was already crowded this fall. Below: what it is, where the stars came from, whether you should build one too, and how to do it.

September 17, one post

In 2026 September 17, a GitHub user named Duecki1 posted on the open-source photography forum pixls.us with the title "CalibRaw v1.0.0, RAW editor, GPU-accelerated, Linux first." The body was short:

For the past three months I've been writing a RAW editor for myself, because I never found one that really worked for me. … The project was built with the help of LLMs. I've been on Linux for a while and tried many RAW editors. Some had complicated workflows, some produced ugly output, and some had bugs or weren't optimized for Linux.

The replies weren't all praise. One said, "I'm not interested in yet another basic RAW editor, and my experience with RapidRaw (another LLM-written editor) wasn't great." Another said, "You probably spent less time learning darktable than it took to write this editor." One longtime user put it most bluntly: "You're arriving alongside a flood of AI-written editors and film-emulation projects. Many of them will get buried."

The author's answers were practical. He likes darktable's processing, but its interface "needs a diving suit to go down into." He used RapidRAW for a long time but found it laggy on his machine, with more and more bugs. He mostly shoots portraits, and AI subject masking is the feature he needs most. The thread eventually ran to 5 pages and 80+ replies, and people were still replying in November 2.

What it is

A desktop and Android photo editor written in Rust, with an interface modeled on Lightroom: a library on the left, a column of sliders on the right (exposure, color, curves, color grading, masks, lens correction, HDR merge). It edits without touching the original files. The GitHub description reads "Free, open-source RAW editor for Linux, Android, Windows and macOS."

Three differentiators the project lists itself:

1. Same engine on Android. Phone and desktop read the same .calibraw edit record, so you can start editing on the computer and continue on the phone.
2. AI runs entirely locally. Subject masking, point-selection masks, AI object removal and denoising. Models download only after you consent. No account, no cloud upload.
3. Some fun video-style effects. Depth-based fog, rain, ground reflections and relighting. Edit Replay can export your whole editing session as a short video at 30 fps.

The official FAQ is candid: darktable's color pipeline is more mature, and the author's workflow was inspired by RapidRAW.

Where the stars came from: two waves of coverage, with the author posting in between

Source: GitHub per-release download counts (11-06); daily star counts recorded from 10-28 (175 → 302).

The key to the first wave was the Android Police piece, headlined "CalibRaw is a free open source Lightroom alternative that saved me from paying Adobe $120 a year" (10-10). Author Rahul Naskar says he's not a professional photographer, had used Lightroom for years, found the nearly $120 annual fee too steep, and spent weeks looking for an alternative. The article has a section on the Android version: "Like Lightroom, CalibRaw also has an Android app. It's free to download and install, with no payment needed to unlock any features."

Which channel drove the November spike is impossible to split out: Reddit post scores aren't visible, and three or four articles landed on the same two days. The author 11-02 posted a Show HN that got only 1 points, so HN didn't work. Almost nobody mentioned it on X in the past few months. No sign of any paid promotion.

As of 11-06, installers across versions have been downloaded roughly 14.1k times: about 4,100 for Windows, 3,700 for the Android APK, and 2,100 for macOS. Few stars but many downloads suggests most people arriving are ordinary photo users who came to use the software, not GitHub-browsing developers.

Why this one

The topic itself draws traffic. "Escaping the Adobe subscription" is a story tech outlets write every year, and editors go looking for it. In the same month XDA covered RapidRAW, another Lightroom clone called LightCraft, and a roundup of "vibe-coded" alternatives.

The Android version is why it got written up. Among open-source RAW editors, RapidRAW, darktable, and RawTherapee have no Android version. CalibRaw does, so Android-focused outlets like Android Police and mondoandroid covered it, and the APK became the second-largest download source. To be fair, the Android Police article also said the Android version is "less capable than the desktop one," mainly due to stability. Media wanted "it's on your phone too," not "it's just as good on your phone."

Fast releases, so there's always something to write about. From mid-September to late October there were 8 versions in total, each with new features and GIF demos. Review bloggers had material: 1.2 wrote one, 1.3 wrote one, and 1.4 wrote two more.

The author spread the word widely and tailored the framing for each community. In open-source photography circles it was "built by a photographer," on r/BuyFromEU it was "made in Europe," on r/FuckAdobe it was anti-subscription, and on German forums it was posted in German.

Image quality itself wasn't the reason. Long-time users on pixls said it "feels very different from what I'm used to," and the author admitted its color pipeline isn't as good as darktable's.

Who it's competing with

Star counts from GitHub, 11-06.

The most useful comparison here: RapidRAW came out a year earlier and has over ten thousand stars. CalibRaw got coverage from Android Police and a series of reviews from one creator, yet after three and a half months it has only 300 stars. The slots were largely taken by earlier arrivals, and later projects get only a fraction of the attention even when they land press coverage.

If it were you

C. Worth learning how to get stars for an open-source project, but not worth building another Lightroom alternative. This niche was flooded in October with AI-assisted clones. RapidRAW leads with over ten thousand stars, and even after CalibRaw did everything it could on promotion, it has only 300 stars. The technical bar for RAW processing is high too: decoding, color science, and support for different cameras and lenses take time, and an LLM can help you write a UI but can't get the colors right for you.

Who it suits: developers who are photo users themselves, want a tool they'd enjoy using, are willing to maintain it long-term, and treat stars as a side effect. Or people who want to apply this playbook to a different category.

Who it doesn't suit: people hoping to build a name from a single repo in three months. In this niche, you'll be the Nth "AI-written Lightroom alternative," and communities like pixls are already getting tired of them.

How to do it: don't copy CalibRaw, copy its formula and apply it to a different category. Find a major vendor's software that charges annually, where open-source alternatives are desktop-only or hard to use (video editing, audio denoising, PDF editing, note-taking, subtitling), and build a free version whose interface matches the paid one, works on phones, and runs AI locally. Before you start, search GitHub: if there are already three to five similar projects and the leader has thousands of stars, pick something else. If you insist on photos, target what RapidRAW and CalibRaw haven't done well: a lightweight version for iPhone ProRAW or Android phone RAW files, or a solid film-emulation preset library, rather than another full editor.

How to get users: follow CalibRaw's sequence. First post in the category's specialist communities as "I'm a user who built this for myself," and take criticism as feedback. Then post across several subreddits with a different angle for each (regional, anti-subscription, Linux, open-source alternatives). Use titles like "Save $X a year on [software]," which tech outlets will happily reuse as headlines. Ship a release every two weeks, each with one screenshot-worthy new feature, and find one or two YouTube reviewers in the niche to cover it version by version. Use free stores like Flathub, F-Droid, and AUR for long-tail discovery. Show HN and X didn't work for this kind of project, so don't bet on them.

When to move: there's no deadline, but the "AI-written alternative" framing is starting to wear thin, and communities are getting more wary of it. The earlier you move the better. Lead with what users save, not how the thing was built (inference).

What would show you've misread it: (1) if CalibRaw's stars more than double after the Google Play release, that signals the full mobile version is worth more than expected, and photo tools deserve a B; (2) conversely, if daily star gains fall back to single digits after mid-November with no new coverage, it means it rode two waves of press and projects like this top out at a few hundred stars; (3) if someone ships the same thing in your chosen category within two weeks, it means the "alternative plus Android" playbook is already in everyone's hands.

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Data and sources: GitHub repositories, per-release download counts, and daily star counts (10-28 to 11-06); pixls.us release post (09-17); Android Police (10-10); Mark G Adams's blog and YouTube reviews (10-11 to 10-31); Flathub and F-Droid pages; individual Reddit posts; Show HN (11-02); ilsoftware.it, LockerGnome, straw-dog; competitor stars from GitHub (11-06). Where I write "inference," the figure is an estimate.