AKS
GPU Photo Editor & Instagram Story Maker
Lightroom-class editing without the subscription or the bloat. Aks (Urdu for 'reflection' or 'image') is a GPU-accelerated photo editor and Instagram Story maker built as a fast, private, native macOS app — now shipping as a signed, Apple-notarized download that just opens, no Gatekeeper warnings.
Origin Story
As a photographer who codes, I got tired of renting my tools. I wanted something I owned outright — fast, offline, and mine — that could both grade a photograph and lay out a Story without ever touching the cloud.
How It's Built
The editing core is a WebGL2 fragment-shader pipeline, so every adjustment is GPU-accelerated and renders in real time, wrapped in a Rust / Tauri 2 shell with a React 19 front end for native file access and export. On top of the grading studio sits a full Instagram Story Maker with text, stickers and procedural pattern backgrounds.
Engineering Notes
A GPU pipeline, not CPU filters
Adjustments run through a WebGL2 fragment-shader chain, so the heavy per-pixel work happens on the GPU in real time rather than blocking the main thread. It's what makes a browser-tech editor feel like a native one.
RAW, owned and offline
A Rust/Tauri shell handles native file access and RAW decoding, and nothing leaves your machine. As a photographer who codes, the point was to stop renting the tools and own every pixel of the pipeline.
Gallery
Aks is what happens when a photographer who codes gets tired of renting their tools — so they build a studio of their own, ship it properly signed and notarized, and own every pixel of it.
What It Does
GPU Pipeline
A WebGL2 fragment-shader chain renders adjustments in real time — the heavy per-pixel work runs on the GPU, not the main thread.
Pro Grading
Curves, an eight-band HSL mixer, three-way colour wheels, split toning and parametric tone bands — the controls a photographer actually reaches for.
Film Looks & Masks
A film-LUT filters browser for instant stock emulations, plus radial, linear and brush masks for local adjustments.
Instagram Story Maker
A built-in 9:16 design studio: text, emoji, recolourable vector stickers, procedural pattern backgrounds with a seed shuffle, templates and PNG export.
Native & Private
A Rust / Tauri desktop app — your photographs never leave your machine, and there is no account to create.
Signed & Notarized
Distributed as a Developer-ID-signed, Apple-notarized DMG — it downloads and opens cleanly on any Apple-Silicon Mac.
Changelog
- +Editor — Non-destructive light and colour controls (exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, temp, tint, vibrance, saturation) in a sleek, off-white native panel.
- +Tone & Colour — Tone curves (RGB + per-channel), an eight-band HSL mixer, three-way colour-grading wheels, split toning and parametric tone bands.
- +Looks & Masks — A film-LUT filters browser for one-click stock emulations, plus radial, linear and brush masks for local adjustments.
- +Instagram Story Maker — A full 9:16 / 4:5 / 1:1 design studio: text with web fonts, emoji and recolourable vector stickers, procedural pattern backgrounds (dot-matrix, mesh, halftone and more) with a seed shuffle, reusable templates and one-tap PNG export.
- +Deliver — 40+ grouped export size presets (Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, print at 300 DPI and screen masters) across PNG, JPEG, WebP, AVIF and TIFF.
- +Inspect — Live histogram, clipping warnings, before/after compare, soft-proofing and a command palette.
- +Distribution — Shipped as a hardened-runtime, Developer-ID-signed and Apple-notarized DMG for Apple Silicon.
Where It Stands
Aks is a working GPU RAW developer running its full shader pipeline natively. The roadmap is breadth of RAW formats and a preset system, all riding the same WebGL2 chain that already keeps adjustments real-time.
Aks is Tauri 2 + Rust with a React 19 front end. The editing engine is a WebGL2 fragment-shader pipeline (with Canvas2D for select operations) so adjustments are GPU-accelerated; Framer Motion drives the interface. It ships as a hardened-runtime, Developer-ID-signed and Apple-notarized DMG for Apple Silicon, and sits in my family of Urdu-named native apps.