Here is a review by Andy Hutchinson Nitro for Mac - Aperture or Craperture?
I think that review partly sucks, he’s riding a long trip on some quirks repeating over and over what’s not good in his eyes, not mentioning what it sets apart from Capture One and Photolab. He stated to have played a month with Nitro, I doubt that. He was too busy with taking photos of same same subjects over and over again. He hasn’t even discovered the weirdness of Nitro’s crop and perspective tool i.e. 
Incomplete and mostly more negative than the app really is.
I don’t plan to use Nitro as a fully featured replacement for either app – I was just happy to be able to use my Aperture libs with not much transit work (the results of “opening an Aperture lib” in Capture One were mindblowingly bad). And most of this transit works is needed because Photos is such a poor app. Compared to Photos, Nitro is a massive progress for Apple users but by far not free of flaws.
Some of its limitations (not working with more than 1 Photos library at a time, lack of lens corrections, AI masking rather disappointing) come from Apple, not from Nitro. Take C1 and PL: How many years of development – and you can’t even search for album names in their DAM part! Nik Bhatt’s mail support is great compared to what C1 and DxO deliver.
He criticises the poor manual and is correct. But in regard of manuals, C1 and PL also don’t shine and have plenty of gaps and false explanations in theirs. Ok, once one finds this forum some questions are answered here better and quicker than from C1 or DxO support, but have you tried out Nitro’s forum? Small, but also efficient although it’s more a “user ask, dev replies” forum.
In fairness, I recall he said the app has promise and that he expected future versions would be much better.
Yes, and he also said some things like “potential”. To me, the positive aspects of Nitro were underrated by him, also I didn’t like his grumpy tone too much. I like to see Nitro becoming a success but I also can’t close my eyes to the functions where it’s just “not there”. My reality is, no other RAW converter is "there where I like to have it, shortcomings everywhere. I hope Nik will be able to even out some of them.
I bought my license just one month ago, he said it’s existing since September 2023 (or I might have misheard?). How does that fit to the © 2024 one can see in app store?
He also states “every good feature has an equally annoying drawback” and “a long way to go until it gets my recommendation”. This part in particular put me off.
Then I also saw he’s doing bracketing of X-T4 RAWs. If somebody is that insecure about exposure, he also has a long way to go until his photography gets my recommendation. To me, he isn’t the app reviewer I trust, as he “forgot” some parts, but that’s because I care about them and did fiddle around with.
that’s the thing with youtube(r), you have to let go a lot of what people think and saying.
Nitro has something for sure, but it’s only a one man show, not a company, all on his shoulder.
For now, I appreciate Nik’s effort. The DAM part is already way better than PL’s (and C1’s) ever will be. Iridient is also a one man show and still existing. I’m not super-confident for “it will mature over some years” but I’m willing to support it.
I agree with your take on the Andy Hutchinson review of Nitro. One of his top complaints for instance is that moving some of the sliders has little or no effect. What he utterly fails to appreciate is that several of the most important sliders must be used in tandem. For example, Boost plus Recovery and/or Highlights to recover highlight details. A rookie’s mistake. This was an immediate red flag for me that he was not as familiar with the app as he purports to be.
BTW the iPhone and iPad versions of Nitro were just released.
Thank you for letting me know 
. It’s rather neat on iPad, although I still think “RAW editing on such a small and not calibrated screen doesn’t make much sense to me”. But as it’s included in the license package. I’ll play around with it.
Editing ProRaw files (not RAW) is my current user case for Nitro on iPad. The app runs buttery smooth on a 13” iPad Air (M2), and the extra display real estate does help. I will try some RAW files as an experiment. However, I too prefer editing RAW files on my larger set-up. There, PL remains top choice.
I was surprised about the speed of the masking tool (AI masking of the subject). Yes, it’s really smooth even on my iPad Air with M1 from 2022. I think I’ll try a bit more with ProRaw, sometimes it’s handy to quick edit images when abroad.
What I did like is the relationship between Nitro and Apple Photos. It all works together pretty well.
my lifetime is too short to plow through the (increasingly expensive) DXO network with all my photos: I use the underrated Nitro Photo much more often. Meanwhile with the hierarchical keywords option (be sure to check it out) and many optimizations. No, I don’t have a mandate from the producer and don’t know him.
As the activity in a thread brings it to the recent threads list and there was also some activity in Nitro development I just like to notify those interested in Nitro, there’s now also keywording with some neat features. Comes with some advantages, especially if you maintain your keywords in English, and some disadvantages as well.
Nitro 2025-05(96) comes with a ready made default keyword list in English, German, French, Spanish*, Japanese*. (* about those I’m not sure). It’s also accepting customized lists which can be imported as txt-files. Functionalities you can find here in the manual.
Nitro can keyword images with AI and it’s not worse than Excire’s attempts. Often better and faster, and most importantly: it actually considers the edited photos. Excire (standalone) only looks into the JPG preview of the unedited RAW and pollutes the list with “unsaturated, colourless, low contrast” keywords.
Downside of Nitro’s AI keywording: Only in English 
The German default keyword list contained some weird translations like stock photos = aktienfotos and some other false friends or less common terms, so I offered help to the dev and he accepted. Together with another user we improved the list, and I still can use my own list independently. It’s more than what I’ve seen delivered by C1 or PL or Phocus. And it’s working pretty good on my Hussleblood files which is nice because Nitro has some features Phocus has not.
You might not see it, but everyone else will and that’s good enough for me. Chanced upon your amazing commentary while I was here on other business related to the software that DXO actually develop. Figured that someone as ‘knowledgeable’ as you would want to defend their well-informed opinions - I guess not. 
@JoJu @andy_hutchinson I appreciate the enormous effort being expended on the Nitro Photo app by its talented developer Nik Bhatt. The tools and approach to photo adjustments often seem odd to me but he shares a lot of valuable information in his user guide, YouTube videos, and forum. The oddity and limitations I put down to the Apple raw demosaic engine. I often get good results with photos that need only global adjustments. I find the local adjustments still weak at this point in their development. Probably related to that is my difficulty sometimes correcting skin tones. But I am maintaining a reasonably priced annual subscription to Nitro as I want to keep an eye on the development of the software.
The DxO PhotoLab 8 app is still my go to app for all photos coming out of my FUJIFILM X-T4 and X-T5 cameras.
Your comments regarding Nitro and its developer are spot on. I’ve tried just about everything and have not found a better global editor for Apple photo files. As a Windows PC user who needs to move files around, I also appreciate that Nitro integrates with the iPhone and iPad Files app and not just that blasted Photos app. I do bring full-size TIFFs into DxO PL from Nitro for some local adjustments, and I do use PL for most non-phone RAW files, if supported.
As regards @Andy_Hutchinson, he is one of the few independent and experienced reviewers out there, and one who covers most of the photo editing landscape. Maybe his Nitro review was a bit early, both for him and for Nitro, I don’t know. I do know that he has engaged online with me and others, and more importantly with Nik regarding some of his comments, and that’s all one can ask of a reviewer.
… and his reviews have grown on me. I was a little put off at first. Thought he was especially rough in his Nitro review, but after re-watching it, and using Nitro more myself, I see what he was talking about. But it is early days and Nitro’s capabilities, as well as my understanding of Nik Bhatt’s software, grows everytime I return to it for another look.
So, you’re using the iPad version? As there is thankfully no Windows desktop version of Nitro.
A reviewer should always be aware of his own review’s flaws and mistakes if he’s about to publish the review. And there were plenty of untold things as well as plenty of repetitions. Considering the size of dev teams of other RAW developer apps and their shortcomings, I found and still find it disrespectful to attack the work of a very small team in such a poor way. Anyways, the good thing was the reviewer’s tone was an invitation to switch off and forget it. 16 months after his “review”, Nitro is still around and improved in many, sometimes unique ways.
As regards @Andy_Hutchinson, he is one of the few independent and experienced reviewers out there and one who covers most of the photo editing landscape.
Thank-you. There’s a lot of marketing content masquerading as reviews on YouTube, but I come from a commercial magazine background with over 20 years working on newstand computer and technology magazines and I like to do things the right way because I see myself working for the viewers, not the companies buying Adsense blocks.
In my review I did say “I think there’s the beginnings of a good photo editor in Nitro and I’m sure it will mature and improve over the coming years.” For that reason, and given that it’s been about 18 months since I first tested it, I’ll be downloading the latest version and putting it through its paces within the next couple of months.
Apple Raw HAVE NO LENS correction for many brands, in particular Canon. It will apply a profile only if that profile is embedded in the raw file since it has no lens database of its own. A no go for me.