Lightning-fast, native macOS photo framing and border studio.
Designed for photographers, content creators, and printmakers.
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- ⚡ Instant Startup: Launches in under 30 milliseconds with zero runtime overhead or heavy interpreter delays.
- 🎨 True macOS Native Design: Seamless integration with macOS Sequoia, featuring translucent materials (
.ultraThinMaterial), standard system controls, SF Symbols, native color pickers, and automatic dark/light appearance. - 📐 Smart Aspect Ratio Framing: Automatically fits photos into standard social media and print aspect ratios:
- 4:5: Optimized for Instagram portrait feed posts
- 1:1: Clean square presentation
- 9:16: Fullscreen Stories and Reels
- Polaroid: Authentic physical proportions (4.5mm top/side borders, 23.5mm bottom chin based on classic 88mm × 107mm frames)
- 3:4, 4:3, and 16:9 widescreen ratios
- 🔗 Granular Border Linking: Control individual borders or link pairs together:
- Link Top & Bottom (Vertical symmetry)
- Link Left & Right (Horizontal symmetry)
- Master "Link All" for uniform 4-sided borders
- Precise sliders (0–500 px) with numeric entry supporting up to 10,000 px
- 🎞️ Multi-Image Filmstrip:
- Unified session supporting single photos or batches
- Interactive bottom filmstrip carousel with thumbnail badges and hover removal
- Docked "Add Image" card at the end of the filmstrip
- Floating "Add Image" capsule button when editing a single photo
- Full drag-and-drop support from Finder for images and entire folders
- 📊 Real-Time Canvas HUD: Floating monospaced info badge dynamically shows source resolution, final output dimensions, target ratio, and exact directional padding.
- 🚀 Parallel Apple Silicon Export: Multi-threaded export engine powered by Swift Concurrency (
TaskGroup) and CoreGraphics, rendering full-resolution exports across all CPU performance cores simultaneously. - 💾 Preset Management: Save and load custom border configurations to JSON files for rapid, repeatable workflows.
- macOS 15.0 (Sequoia) or later
- Apple Silicon (
arm64— M1, M2, M3, M4 series) - Xcode 16+ or Command Line Tools (for building from source)
If you've built the app locally or downloaded a release:
open build/Photon.appBuild the standalone macOS .app bundle with a single command:
./build.shThe compiled bundle will be generated at build/Photon.app.
Open the Swift Package directly in Xcode for development or debugging:
open Package.swift| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| ⌘ O | Pick image(s) from disk |
| ⌘ V | Paste image from clipboard |
| ⌘ S | Export active image or batch |
| ⌫ / Delete | Remove active image from session |
| → | Select next image in filmstrip |
| ← | Select previous image in filmstrip |
| ⌘ ⇧ S | Save current border settings preset (JSON) |
| ⌘ ⇧ O | Load border settings preset (JSON) |
photon/
├── Package.swift # Swift 6 Package Manifest
├── Info.plist # macOS Application Bundle Metadata
├── build.sh # Build entry point (invokes Scripts/build_app.sh)
├── Scripts/
│ └── build_app.sh # Standalone compiler and bundle packager
├── Resources/
│ ├── icon.icns # macOS App Icon
│ └── icon.png # High-res icon asset
├── Sources/
│ └── PhotonApp/
│ ├── PhotonApp.swift # App entry point & lifecycle delegate
│ ├── Models/ # Aspect ratios, border modes, settings & items
│ ├── Services/ # CoreGraphics renderer, auto calculator, batch exporter
│ ├── ViewModels/ # Main studio observable view model
│ └── Views/
│ ├── Canvas/ # Canvas preview & CanvasInfoBadge HUD
│ ├── Filmstrip/ # Bottom carousel & thumbnail item views
│ ├── Sidebar/ # Controls, palette, sliders & export action
│ ├── Export/ # Batch export progress sheet
│ └── MainView.swift # Root view layout & shortcut handler
└── .github/
└── workflows/
└── build.yml # CI/CD: Automated builds on macOS-15 runners
Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.