📷 DarkroomForge

📣 What this app will do for you

This app will give you a photo editor that never modifies your original file — open a JPG, PNG, or WebP photo, adjust exposure, contrast, saturation, and white balance, rotate it in 90° steps, straighten it by up to ±45°, and crop it by dragging, all applied in one fixed order through a single render pipeline the preview and the export share, then save a PNG or a JPEG (quality 0.92, EXIF metadata stripped). Heads up: your edits live only while the app is open — closing it discards them, and the original is all that remains — there is no undo history (clearing an edit's settings is how you undo it), no zoom or pan, and the adjustment set is deliberately small: no brightness, sharpening, or filters. Backed by a 7-day money-back guarantee.

A photo editor that stays on your own computer — open a photo, adjust it, straighten and crop it, and export the result. Your original file is never modified, and nothing is uploaded anywhere.

$29 one-time price. No subscription. Yours forever.

Buy Now — $29

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What's included: the full DarkroomForge app for Windows · one license covers 3 computers (free a slot anytime from inside the app with its "Deactivate this computer" button, or from your CertSight account page by regenerating your key) · your license key is emailed at checkout and can also be shown on screen right after payment.

What it does

  • Adjustments, with the original one click away. Exposure (−3 to +3 stops), contrast, saturation, and white balance as three per-channel gains. The "Show original" toggle flips between your edit and the untouched photo at any time.
  • Geometry by dragging. Rotate in 90° steps, straighten with a slider from −45° to +45°, and crop by dragging a rectangle on the photo — drag inside it to move it, drag the square handles to resize it, and "Clear crop" removes it.
  • One pipeline for preview and export. Every edit is a parameter, applied in one fixed order — rotate, then straighten, then crop, then the adjustments — through a single render pipeline that produces both the on-screen preview and the exported file, so what you see is exactly what is written.
  • A real export choice. Save as PNG, or as JPEG at a fixed quality of 0.92. Before writing the file, the app verifies that the format you picked and the actual encoded bytes agree. PNG keeps the transparency straightening creates at the corners; JPEG has no transparency, so those corners come out black.
  • Deactivate from inside the app. A "Deactivate this computer" button frees that computer's activation slot when you replace a machine — no support ticket, no waiting.
  • Everything stays on your computer. Your photos never leave the machine. The only network connections the app ever makes are the activation / deactivation checks to CertSight, and there is no telemetry.

⚠️ Scope notes — read before you buy

  • Your edits are not saved. Edits live only while the app is open. Close it and the adjustments and geometry are discarded — there is no save button, no edit file, no sidecar. The original photo survives, untouched; export your result before you close the app if you want to keep it.
  • There is no undo. No undo/redo history. Undoing an edit means clearing its settings — "Clear crop" for the crop, sliders back to centre for adjustments, "Reset all edits" for everything.
  • Export strips EXIF metadata. Exported files are re-encoded from the edited pixels, so camera, lens, and location EXIF data does not carry over into the exported file.
  • JPEG quality is fixed at 0.92. There is no quality slider and no export resize option. PNG exports of large photos are big files.
  • No zoom or pan. The photo is shown at native resolution on a scrolling page, in preview and in crop mode alike — there is no zooming in to inspect fine detail.
  • A deliberately small adjustment set. No brightness, no highlights/shadows, no temperature/tint sliders (white balance is the three channel gains), no sharpening, no noise reduction, no vignette, no filters, and no histogram. No AI enhancement and no face recognition.
  • JPG, PNG, and WebP only. Those are the formats it can open. RAW, HEIC, and TIFF files cannot be opened.
  • Rotating or straightening clears the crop. Crop coordinates are measured in the rotated, straightened frame, so changing rotation or straighten after cropping removes the crop — crop last.
  • Windows only for now. The download below is a Windows portable build. There is no macOS or Linux build yet — we'd rather say that plainly than promise one. Your license will work on those builds if and when they're published.
  • Human GUI click-through is still pending. Checkout, licensing, and activation are covered end to end by automated tests, but the app's hands-on flows have not yet had a full human play-through on a real Windows machine — the in-app experience is v1.1 and we will say so plainly until that pass is done.

If any of the above is a deal-breaker for you, v1.1 isn't for you yet — and we'd rather tell you now than after checkout.

Download

Windows 10/11 (64-bit), portable build — no installer, just download and run.

⬇ Windows (portable .exe)

macOS and Linux are not available yet. There is no build for them today; if one is published later, this same license key will activate it.

The app is unsigned, so Windows SmartScreen may show a warning on first launch — this is normal for a new publisher. Choose "More info → Run anyway" to start it.

How activation works: at checkout your license key is emailed to you (and can be shown on screen right after payment). Enter it on the app's activation screen — one license activates on up to 3 computers, with 30-day offline trust after activation. Replacing a computer? Use "Deactivate this computer" inside the app to free its slot, or generate a fresh key from your account page (the old key stops working).