The high prices of subscription plans for professional software and the cumbersome interfaces of some of the established free platforms have led to the emergence of an extremely intriguing project in the digital world. Robbie Tilton, whose career includes serious experience as a designer in technology giants such as Apple and Google, presented his latest work - the Compositor graphic editor. The program is completely free, has open source and focuses entirely on layer support, compositing and precise post-processing of digital images.
The idea behind the project crystallized from Tilton's own personal need. The graphic specialist says that he was looking for a functional solution that would save the financial burden of Adobe Photoshop, but at the same time avoid the compromises with ease of use that are often found in platforms such as GIMP. As a result, he constructed software that follows the proven logic of interaction and familiar tools from the industry, but with a minimalist archive size of just over 13 megabytes.
Despite its compact size, Compositor offers an extremely rich arsenal for creative work. Users have the ability to simultaneously manage multiple projects in separate tabs, layers, folders, masks and complex blending modes. Adjustment layers are provided for fine-tuning hues, saturation, levels, curves, exposure and gradient maps, as well as functions for adding artificial grain. Non-destructive scaling, moving, rotating and warping are supported, and the list of tools includes the familiar brushes, point healing, clone stamp, lasso and magic wand selections, as well as automated background removal.
For maximum comfort for those switching from popular commercial products, the software integrates full support for familiar Photoshop-style keyboard shortcuts. The architecture works smoothly with formats such as JPEG, PNG, HEIC and TIFF, although support for WEBP is still pending.
Currently, Compositor is available exclusively for the macOS operating system. The author has uploaded the entire project within Xcode, giving the community complete freedom to customize, add or remove functionality according to their specific needs. The only requirement for users to compile the code is macOS 26 and the corresponding version of the Xcode 26 environment.