Exposure, properly
A RAW histogram, focus peaking, shadow boost, highlight inspection. Lamplit has none of it. If you cull on clipped highlights rather than on the picture, this is not a close call.
Comparison
Lamplit vs FastRawViewer
They cost less than we do. That is not a detail we are going to bury at the bottom of the page.
What each one costs
- FastRawViewer
- Lamplit
- $23.99
- $79
- once, forever
- a year
Their licence covers two computers and works on either operating system. Ours is a subscription. Run the arithmetic over three years and it is $23.99 against $237 — we are an order of magnitude more expensive, and no amount of feature comparison makes that go away.
So the only question worth answering on this page is what the extra money buys, and whether you need it. If you don’t, they have built a genuinely excellent tool and you should go and buy it.
The actual difference
These are not the same tool
One judges a file. The other moves a shoot. Almost every disagreement about which is better is really a disagreement about which job you have.
Judging the file
FastRawViewer
- Renders the actual RAW data rather than the embedded JPEG
- A RAW histogram, not a histogram of the camera’s guess
- Focus peaking and over/under-exposure straight from RAW
- Shadow boost and highlight inspection for recoverability
Moving the shoot
Lamplit
- Card to primary and backup in one pass, every byte SHA-256 verified
- IPTC stationery with {variables} and =code= replacements, in batch
- Captions written as synchronised XMP and legacy IPTC-IIM
- Ratings, eight colour labels, picks and rejects, then transmit
Their own site puts it as “Why Bother Shooting RAW if Culling JPEGs?” — the argument being that a JPEG preview is not what the sensor recorded. That argument is correct, and it is the thing we do not do.
Read this part twice
Where FastRawViewer wins
Three of these will not change this year, and the first one may never change.
The price, and the model
Paid once, kept forever, on two machines, either platform. No renewal to forget and nothing to cancel. That is worth real money to a lot of people and we cannot match it.
A decade of camera coverage
They have been shipping since 2014 and their format coverage reflects it. We publish 17 formats because our back catalogue is short enough to publish honestly. Theirs is not, and that is the point.
It exists
You can download and buy FastRawViewer this afternoon. Lamplit is in closed beta with no public build and no checkout. Shipping software beats unshipped software.
A reasonable answer
You can run both
This is not a diplomatic gesture. Lamplit writes standard XMP sidecars beside RAW files and synchronised XMP plus legacy IPTC-IIM inside JPEGs, and writes patch in place rather than rewriting the metadata block. Ratings and labels set in one tool survive the other.
So a workflow that ingests and captions in Lamplit and judges exposure in FastRawViewer is not a compromise, it is just two tools each doing the thing it is good at. The test costs you nothing: cull a folder in one, open it in the other, and check the ratings are where you left them.
Questions
The ones that actually decide it
Which is cheaper?
FastRawViewer, without qualification. It is $23.99 once and it stays bought. Lamplit is $79 a year. After the first year we cost more than they ever will, and that gap widens forever. If the tools did the same job, the answer would be simple and it would not be us.
So why would I pay more?
Only if you need the part before and after the cull. FastRawViewer is built to judge a RAW file — and it judges one more rigorously than we do. Lamplit is built to move a shoot from the card to the client: verified dual-destination ingest, then stationery and captions written where every other tool can read them, then transmit. If you already have an ingest tool you trust and you just want to look at RAWs properly, buy FastRawViewer.
Does Lamplit have a RAW histogram?
No. There is no exposure analysis in Lamplit at all — no histogram, no focus peaking, no highlight recovery preview. That is a real gap and it is the reason a lot of photographers should use FastRawViewer instead of us, or alongside us. We are not going to soften that.
Can I use both?
Yes, and some people should. Lamplit writes standard XMP sidecars and patches metadata in place rather than rewriting the block, so ratings and labels set in one tool survive the other. Ingest and caption in Lamplit, judge exposure in FastRawViewer, and nothing you do in either gets clobbered.
Do you support the same cameras?
We support 17 RAW formats, verified against 40 real camera files, and we publish the two that do not work along with the technical reason. FastRawViewer has been shipping since 2014 and its camera coverage is far broader than ours. Check our format table against the bodies you actually shoot before you assume anything.
Is Lamplit a subscription?
Yes, $79 a year, and we know that is the least popular answer in this category. FastRawViewer is a one-time purchase and that is a genuine advantage for them. Our reasoning is on the pricing page; if renting software is a line you do not cross, that settles it and you should buy theirs.
Still think we might be worth it?
The beta is free, so you can settle the question on a shoot you have already delivered rather than on our say-so.
The signup form isn’t connected yet — we’d rather show you a dead button than quietly drop your address. It goes live with the first beta wave.