AlphaView

A native desktop RAW photo browser and developer for Sony .ARW files, built with Tauri (Rust) + React.

Point it at a folder of Sony RAW files and it decodes them natively — no external RAW engine, no cloud upload — with a real-time adjustable develop pipeline (exposure, white balance, contrast, highlights/shadows, saturation) and export to full-resolution JPEG/PNG.

Features

• Folder browser — open a folder, virtual-scrolling grid of every .ARW file inside, with fast EXIF-embedded thumbnails (no full RAW decode needed just to browse)
• Metadata panel — camera make/model, lens, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, focal length, resolution, file size
• Native RAW decode — Sony ARW sensor data decoded and demosaiced directly in Rust via rawler, parallelised with rayon
• Adjustable develop pipeline, applied live on top of the raw sensor data (debounced re-decode as you drag):
  • Exposure (EV)
  • Contrast
  • Highlights / Shadows (tone-region specific)
  • Saturation
  • White balance — temperature and tint
• Auto-exposure baseline — interquartile-mean metering targets linear middle gray before your manual exposure adjustment is applied, so a fresh RAW doesn't open black or blown out
• Export — bake the current adjustments into a full-resolution JPEG or PNG and save to disk

Stack

• Tauri v2 (Rust backend + React/TypeScript frontend, native webview — no Electron)
• rawler — RAW file parsing (Sony ARW / TIFF-based formats)
• kamadak-exif — EXIF metadata + embedded-thumbnail extraction for the browser grid
• image — JPEG/PNG encoding
• rayon — parallel per-row pixel processing

Honest notes on quality

• The demosaic step is an area-averaged nearest-block reconstruction, not a full AHD/VNG-class algorithm — it favors decode speed over maximum per-pixel sharpness.
• Auto white balance and auto exposure are simple heuristics (camera as-shot WB coefficients + interquartile-mean metering), not a scene-aware algorithm.
• Only tested against Sony .ARW files from a full-frame body (7008×4672). Other Sony sensor sizes and other manufacturers' RAW formats are not verified.
• This is a personal project, not a commercial product — no installer/auto-update, run it from source.

Running it

npm install
npm run tauri dev

Requires the Tauri prerequisites (Rust toolchain + platform WebView).