Touch-optimized mobile preset editor for Lightroom mobile

Someone editing photos on an iPad or Windows tablet opens Lightroom mobile and immediately hits the same frustration: sliders sized for a mouse cursor, panels that require precise taps on small targets, and a workflow clearly ported from desktop with minimal adaptation. Multiple complaints specifically called this out — 'UI can be more intuitive and easy to use. Can be optimised for touch screens' and 'The UI could be better suited for touch friendly devices since Windows has moved more touch heavy.' This isn't a minor cosmetic issue — on a 12-inch tablet, fighting the interface on every adjustment doubles editing time.

This gap exists because touch optimization requires rebuilding interaction models that desktop software has used for decades, and Adobe's mobile apps are maintained by teams under pressure to maintain feature parity with desktop — meaning they can't diverge the interaction model significantly without fracturing documentation, tutorials, and support. The buyer and user are often the same person (independent photographers), but complaints about mobile UX get deprioritized because the vocal power-user community edits on desktop and mobile is treated as a companion app, not a primary editing environment.

What's missing is a mobile-first editing experience built around gesture interactions — swipe to adjust exposure, pinch patterns for tone curve, large-zone tap targets for common adjustments — that exports directly to DNG or syncs with a catalog. Not a stripped-down app, but one that accepts that fingers are the input device and designs every interaction around that fact from the ground up.

This is a business because tablet use for creative work is growing — iPad Pro is positioned directly at creative professionals, and Windows tablets have become common in photography workflows — but no editing experience has been purpose-built for touch as the primary input rather than a secondary accommodation.

What to build

Build a standalone iOS and Windows tablet photo editor that performs core RAW adjustments (exposure, white balance, tone curve, HSL, masking) entirely through gesture-based inputs sized for fingers, and exports to DNG or syncs to a Lightroom catalog via Creative Cloud.

Where to start

Launch iPad-only with support for Apple ProRAW files from iPhone 15 Pro and later — this is a fast-growing, technically homogeneous file format with a clear user base (iPhone Pro photographers who want more than the built-in Photos editor) and avoids the complexity of supporting every RAW format from day one.

The hard part

The hardest trade-off is deciding how much RAW processing to do on-device versus offloading — full RAW processing on tablet hardware is slow enough that users abandon the app, but offloading requires a backend that adds cost and complexity before you have revenue to support it.

How it makes money

One-time purchase at $19.99 on the App Store, with an optional $4.99/month sync tier that enables Lightroom catalog integration and cloud backup of edits.