Alternative · Aftershoot
An Aftershoot
alternative.
A browser tab that groups the bursts, finds the shut eyes and develops what you keep. Free to use one photo at a time, $6 a month for the whole shoot.
Rawnd runs on a desktop browser — it needs access to the folder your RAW files are in. Open this page on your computer.
No install · No account · Nothing uploaded
01 The short answer Before the table
What Rawnd does instead.
Rawnd is a RAW culler and developer that runs in a browser tab. It opens a folder straight off the card, groups each burst by when it was taken, ranks the softest frames of the shoot, flags the ones where somebody has both eyes shut, and then develops the keepers — exposure, tone curve, colour, HSL, linear and radial masks — before writing JPEGs or XMP sidecars for Lightroom. There is nothing to install and no account.
One thing has to be said before the table, because it is the claim this site usually leads with and it does not apply here: Aftershoot processes on your own computer too. Your photographs do not go to anybody's server in either program. The differences that are real are the other three. Aftershoot is a desktop application you install and license; Rawnd is a URL. Aftershoot learns your editing style from your own catalogue and applies it to a whole wedding; Rawnd has nothing of the kind and does not pretend to. And the two are not priced in the same category — Rawnd is $6 a month, Aftershoot runs from $9.99 to $59.99 depending on how much of the job you hand it.
02 Side by side Aftershoot
The two, on the facts.
| Rawnd | Aftershoot | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free; Pro $6/month or $69 once | $9.99 to $59.99/month, by plan |
| Free to use without paying | For ever, one photo at a time | A 30-day trial |
| What you install | Nothing — a browser tab | A desktop application |
| Runs on | Any desktop browser | macOS and Windows |
| Photos leave your machine | Never | Never |
| Groups bursts and duplicates | Yes — by capture time | Yes |
| Finds shut eyes | Yes | Yes |
| Ranks the soft frames | Yes | Yes |
| Learns your editing style | No | Yes — a profile trained on your catalogue |
| Skin retouching | No | On the higher plans |
| Develops the RAW | Yes — tone, curve, colour, HSL, masks, crop | Yes — by applying a profile |
| XMP sidecars | Yes | Yes |
| Works offline | Yes, after the first visit | Yes |
Aftershoot pricing checked in September 2026, on annual billing. Monthly billing is higher.
03 Where each one wins Honestly
Where Aftershoot wins
Volume, and the whole job in one pass. Five thousand frames from a wedding, culled and then edited to look like your own work, with skin retouching on the upper plans — that is a different scale of tool from a browser tab reading a folder, and if it is your Sunday evening every week the arithmetic against $20 or $40 a month is not close.
And the style profile is the real product rather than a feature. It is trained on your own edited catalogue, so a shoot comes back already looking like you edited it. Rawnd has nothing equivalent and is not building it: what it has is presets you set by hand, pasted across a selection. That is a smaller claim, and it is the honest one.
Where Rawnd wins
There is nothing to install and nothing to activate, so it runs on a machine that is not yours — a borrowed laptop, a locked-down work desktop, a Chromebook at a venue. A licence sitting on the computer at home is no use in any of those, and that is the situation a browser tab was made for.
It is also free to use properly rather than for thirty days. Opening, culling, comparing, developing and exporting a photograph — XMP sidecars included — costs nothing, for ever, on any number of files. What Pro adds at $6 a month is the whole shoot at once: exporting a selection, pasting an edit across one, the assisted pass, and evening out a series.
And it develops rather than only sorting. The keepers get a real tone curve, HSL, linear and radial masks and a crop, decided by you on sliders you can see — then leave as finished JPEGs, or as sidecars that drop into Lightroom beside the originals.
04 Which one you want By what you do
Pick by the job, not the price.
| If this is you | Open this |
|---|---|
| You shoot fifty weddings a year and want your own edit on all of them | Aftershoot |
| You want the retouching in the same pass | Aftershoot |
| You are not sitting at your own computer | Rawnd |
| You want to cull a real shoot before paying anyone | Rawnd |
| You already own Lightroom and want the culling done elsewhere | Rawnd, then XMP into Lightroom |
| A few shoots a month, and $20 a month is not obvious | Rawnd |
05 Questions Before you switch
Common questions
Does Aftershoot upload my photographs?
No. It runs on your own computer, as Rawnd does — this is one of the few comparisons on this site where both answers are the same, and it is worth saying plainly. What differs is what you install, what you pay, and what each program does once the folder is open.
Is Rawnd free, or is the culling a trial?
Free, with no clock on it. Rating, rejecting, comparing, developing and exporting one photograph at a time — sidecars included — stays free on any number of files. The paid tier, $6 a month or $69 once, only changes what happens to a whole selection at once.
Can Rawnd learn my editing style like Aftershoot's profiles?
No, and that is the largest gap between the two. Rawnd has presets you build yourself and can paste across a selection, plus a tool that evens out a series — you correct one frame and the rest take the exposure and white balance that make them render like it, each with its own correction. That is useful and it is not the same claim.
Does Rawnd find closed eyes the way Aftershoot does?
Yes, since September 2026. A face model runs on your machine, downloaded once from this site, and it also judges sharpness on the subject's eyes rather than on the whole frame — so a portrait shot wide open is no longer called soft because its background is. It needs both eyes shut before it says anything: a wink or a glance to the side is not a blink. And it shortlists rather than rejecting anything for you.
Will Lightroom read what Rawnd exports?
Yes. The sidecars use Camera Raw's own schema, so ratings, the reject flag, the crop and the basic develop settings arrive on import. White balance, the tone curve, HSL and masks are deliberately not written — mapping those accurately is worth doing properly rather than approximately.
Also compared:
Open a card. Nothing to install.
Ten seconds from now you are culling. Close the tab and your ratings are still here next time.
Rawnd runs on a desktop browser — it needs access to the folder your RAW files are in. Open this page on your computer.
No account · nothing uploaded · free to cull