It is clear that Apple purchased this company to gut technology for their own use and kill the software. This app is slowly stopping to work. Previews are not loading, slow in converting photos, and it is slow opening files.... these changes are with each iOS update. If I did not have a lifetime license I would be looking elsewhere. Shame it was a great software.

In an attempt to move away from Lightroom and use only an iPad Pro, Photomator seemed to be exactly what I needed. The reviews were great, and everyone spoke very highly of it. I do enjoy using the App. It COULD be a full replacement for Lightroom, but the iPad version is missing one crucial feature - photo rating. It’s near impossible to cull photos in this app without a rating/flagging system. Fix this one basic issue, and I’ll gladly update my review to 5 stars.

Just downloaded this, right out of the box it’s unusable. The crop menu constantly closes itself and the color adjustment menu constantly scrolls itself back to the top. There are many reports of this being a known bug on online forums and few reports of potential solutions.

There is so much of this program that seems to be ‘just take what we give you’ - Workflows - Excellent, well, export does not support watermark. Turn of the banner on set films, rocket science. Right click a photo to export, no, you need to go to a menu for that. The App is solid, and it fells like a iPad app moved to the Mac verse an app built for the power of the Mac.

I'm a serious hobbyist, not a pro, and I can't justify a monthly subscription for photo editing. Then I found Photomator as a one-time purchase. What luck! It handles RAW files cleanly, Denoise has rescued shots I'd given up on, and batch editing saves me hours. I also own Pixelmator Pro outright for the occasional layers-and-text job. Great software at a price that makes sense for someone like me.

Really wished Photomator had better masking capabilities. Otherwise really like it, and like that it isn’t a subscription.

This app would be perfect if I could rank and cull photos stored on external drives. I do not want to import my images into the Apple photos library to use all of the features of this app. The desktop version of this app works perfectly. Not sure why the basic functionality of the app changes when using the iPad version. Note that I do realize that there are always differences between the two platforms but in this case the iPad version is effectively worthless in working with external drives. I’ve called Apple support a couple of times and while they tried, the call ultimately ended with a “we just bought this company and we’re not familiar with how the software works at this point” responses. I’d be happy to give this app an higher rating if you can share with me how to rate/flag and delete photos from within the app on my iPad Pro. Thank you.

Finally - something that’s affordable for a normal person that can replace Lightroom! Once I figured out a workflow, I’ve been very happy with it. I absolutely love how I can adjust the preview thumbnail size, which is something Lightroom can’t do. I also love how easy it is to batch edit and export. Two things I would love to see improvement on: File management system (folders for different events…. Not tied to Apple Photos), and better RAW processing (I seem to have a little more grain in my pictures with Photomator vs. Lightroom). Overall though, very happy with it and I don’t regret the change.

For a novice photographer, this is all I need. All the controls I would use in Lightroom are easily found here and I find it much more intuitive to manage photos over other apps. My one gripe is this bug where when working in the color adjustments tab, it will periodically jump to the top of the menu, even when I’m actively adjusting another setting. Similarly, it closes the crop menu mid crop on accession. This kind of bug is an absolute flow killer. I’ve seen some posts online about how you just need to wait it out but at that point, my attention span and motivation is gone. I don’t understand how a bug like this can exist for as long as it has and until it’s fixed, I can’t recommend the app.

The Zeta Project