Photura

A lightweight, fast image viewer and editor for Windows — built as a personal replacement for the Windows Photos app.

Features

Viewer

• Opens all common image formats: JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, WebP, ICO, PSD
• RAW support: DNG, CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, ORF, RW2, RAF
• HEIC/HEIF support (requires HEIF Image Extensions from Microsoft Store)
• Mousewheel navigation through images in the same folder
• Ctrl+Scroll to zoom, right-click or middle-click to pan
• Copy image to clipboard
• Delete to Recycle Bin
• Remembers window size, position and theme between sessions

Editor

• Crop — always-visible crop area with handles, aspect ratio presets (Free, 1:1, 4:3, 16:9, 9:16, and more), rule-of-thirds grid
• Rotate & Flip — 90° CW/CCW, flip horizontal/vertical
• Straighten — fine rotation slider (-45° to +45°)
• Image resize — resample the working image up or down while keeping crop area fixed
• Adjustments — Brightness, Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Vignette, Saturation, Warmth, Tint, Sharpness
• Filters — 24 filters including Vivid, Warm, Cool, Grayscale, Sepia, Kodachrome, Fuji, Polaroid, Lomo, Cross Process, Golden Hour, Moonlight, Cinematic, Bleach Bypass, Duotone, Infrared, Halation, and more
• Filter intensity — blend any filter from 0–100%
• Compare — toggle to preview original image without edits
• Mousewheel support on all sliders
• Double-click any slider to reset to default
• Dark and Light theme, remembered between sessions

Requirements

• Windows 10 or later (64-bit)
• .NET 10 Desktop Runtime
• For HEIC/HEIF: HEIF Image Extensions (free, from Microsoft Store)

Installation

Download PhotouraSetup.msi and run it.

The installer will:

• Install Photura to C:\Program Files\Photura\
• Create a Start Menu shortcut
• Register Photura in the "Open with" menu for all supported image formats

You can then set Photura as your default image viewer in Windows Settings → Apps → Default Apps.

Building from source

1. Install Visual Studio 2026 with the .NET desktop development workload
2. Clone the repository
3. Open Photura.sln in Visual Studio
4. Build and run with F5

To build the installer:

1. Install WiX Toolset v6: dotnet tool install --global wix
2. Install extensions: wix extension add --global WixToolset.UI.wixext/6.0.2
3. Build in Release mode in Visual Studio
4. Run: wix build PhotouraSetup.wxs -o PhotouraSetup.msi -ext WixToolset.UI.wixext -arch x64

Tech stack

• C# / WPF / .NET 10
• Magick.NET for extended format support
• WiX Toolset v6 for the installer

License

See LICENSE for details.