Focusless Edit

Focusless Edit is a personal desktop photo editor focused on a simple interface, non-destructive editing, and controlled memory usage with large images.

The project currently contains its first working vertical slice:

• Import JPEG, PNG, and WebP images
• Fit, 100% view, zoom, and pan
• Live Temperature and Tint white-balance adjustment
• Perceptual Contrast adjustment from -100 to +100
• Edge-aware Shadows and Highlights adjustments from -100 to +100
• Separate luminance and color denoise adjustments from 0 to 100
• Perceptual Saturation adjustment from -100 to +100
• Texture, Clarity, and Dehaze adjustments from -100 to +100
• Luminance-only Sharpness adjustment from 0 to 1000
• Live exposure adjustment from -3 EV to +3 EV
• Interactive five-point tone curve drawn directly over the photo
• Non-destructive ±45-degree straighten dial
• Interactive crop with move, edge/corner resize, Free mode, and aspect presets
• Adjustable export frame with five neutral color presets
• Adjustable luminance vignette from 0 to 100
• Linear, radial, and brush masks with feathering and local adjustments
• Persistent undo/redo history
• Versioned .focusless project files
• Debounced, atomic autosave
• JPEG, PNG, and WebP export
• Viewport-based previews for 50–100 MP images

RAW files, general-purpose layers, and photo catalogs are not implemented yet. See the mask guide for local adjustments and interaction rules.

Technology

• Rust 1.97
• Slint desktop UI
• libvips image engine
• LittleCMS-backed ICC color management with a 32-bit float linear scRGB working space
• Native Linux runtime with X11 and Wayland support
• Native Windows x64 runtime and portable packaging

The UI, document model, persistence, and image engine live in separate crates. See the architecture document, the canonical render pipeline, and the performance notes for details.

New developers and AI collaborators should follow the complete development setup and handoff guide. Repository rules for coding agents are in AGENTS.md.

Native Windows development, release builds, and portable packages are covered in the Windows guide.

Ubuntu 24.04 setup

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y \
  build-essential pkg-config libvips-dev icc-profiles-free \
  libfontconfig1-dev libxkbcommon-dev libxkbcommon-x11-dev \
  libwayland-dev libgl1-mesa-dev zenity

If Rust is not installed:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

The repository's rust-toolchain.toml selects the required toolchain and components automatically.

Clone, verify, and build:

git clone https://github.com/NeoAcar/focusless-edit.git
cd focusless-edit
cargo test --workspace --locked
cargo build --workspace --release --locked

Windows x64 setup

Install Git, Rustup, and Visual Studio Build Tools with the Desktop development with C++ workload. Then run from a native PowerShell window:

git clone https://github.com/NeoAcar/focusless-edit.git
Set-Location focusless-edit
.\scripts\windows\build.ps1 -Package

The script downloads and verifies the pinned official libvips runtime, runs the quality gate, builds the native application, and creates dist\Focusless-Edit-windows-x64.zip. See the complete Windows guide for development and troubleshooting.

Run

cargo run -p focusless-app

Run the optimized build:

./target/release/focusless-edit

Import a photo or project directly:

cargo run -p focusless-app -- /path/to/photo.jpg
cargo run -p focusless-app -- /path/to/edit.focusless

Enable more detailed logs:

RUST_LOG=debug cargo run -p focusless-app

On Linux, logs are stored in the focuslessedit directory below the XDG state directory. Unsaved work uses a recovery project below the XDG data directory.

Keyboard and mouse

Action	Shortcut
Import	Ctrl+O
Save / Save As	Ctrl+S / Ctrl+Shift+S
Export	Ctrl+E
Copy edited image	Ctrl+C
Undo / Redo	Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y
Fit / 100%	0 / 1
Zoom	Mouse wheel
Pan	Drag the photo
Move crop	Drag inside the crop frame
Resize crop	Drag a crop-frame edge or corner
Shape tone curve	Drag any white control point

The crop tool includes Free, 1:1, 4:3, and 16:9 modes plus a full-image reset. Crop and straighten rotation are stored non-destructively in the project and applied to full-resolution exports. Temperature and Tint use CAT16 chromatic adaptation in linear RGB and preserve alpha. Contrast reshapes OKLab lightness while leaving chroma and extended-range values intact. Shadows and Highlights use an edge-aware guided filter over log OKLab lightness, preserving fine detail, chroma, alpha, and extended-range values. Saturation scales OKLab chroma while preserving perceptual lightness and hue. Denoise uses scale-aware guided filters on OKLab lightness and chroma so fitted previews remain consistent with full-resolution output. Sharpness uses a thresholded unsharp mask on OKLab lightness to avoid color halos. The tone curve works in linear RGB with fixed endpoints, three two-dimensional control points, shape-preserving interpolation, and a live full-image preview. The vignette darkens OKLab lightness radially after sharpening. The frame is composited in linear light after vignette and is included in full-resolution exports.

Quality checks

cargo fmt --all -- --check
cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets --locked -- -D warnings
cargo test --workspace --locked
cargo build --workspace --release --locked
git diff --check

Before contributing, read CONTRIBUTING.md and the guide for adding an operation.