Adobe Lightroom is getting a new competitor from a surprising place. BlackMagic has added what looks to be a shockingly complete set of photo editing tools to the latest version of its Davinci Resolve software, which has traditionally been designed primarily for video editing, color work, and sound design.

Resolve 21 gains a new “Photo” mode, which lets you organize a collection of stills into albums, apply ratings and labels and even search through all your images with an AI-powered tool that you can use to find photos of certain kinds of subjects. The company says it “worked closely” with camera manufacturers to support Raw stills from Canon, Sony, Nikon, Fujifilm and Apple, but you can also use it to edit JPEGs and HEIC files. There’s even a tethering mode for certain Sony and Canon cameras.

Node-based editing will take some getting used to, but can be a powerful tool, depending on how you edit.

The company’s main pitch for Resolve as a photo editor centers around its color tools. They’re extremely robust, as they’re designed for editing movies, but offer a lot of flexibility for stills too. The editor uses what’s known as a node-based approach, which lets you add adjustments as independent effects that can either chain together or not affect each other. For example, if you select part of your image using Resolve’s “Magic Mask” feature, you can have your base color adjustments apply to the entire image, but have certain edits only applied to the masked area.

While nodes can take a little bit of practice to wrap your head around, they can be a powerful and flexible way to edit. Using them isn’t absolutely required, though; the software also has built-in “Film Looks” presets that you can customize, and supports applying Look Up Tables, or LUTs, to your photos. And if you just want to edit basics like lightness, color temperature, saturation, etc., you can use more traditional sliders. Resolve also includes basic crop and rotation tools, too.

Resolve’s Raw editing tools will be more familiar than its color editing ones.

BlackMagic also says that edits and adjustments can be accelerated by your computer’s GPU, which it claims allows Resolve to process photos “dramatically faster than conventional photo applications.”

During a livestream announcing the update, BlackMagic’s CEO said that the Photos mode will probably receive a lot of tweaks and improvements over time. But if it provides anything like the capabilities that BlackMagic has promised, it could be a viable competitor to more established programs like Adobe Lightroom and Capture One Studio right off the bat.

That’s especially true given the price. Davinici Resolve is available for free, though to get all of its features, you’ll have to pay $300 for the “Studio” version*. It’s currently unclear what, if any, of the photo features will be gated behind that paywall, though on the video side, you’ll need to upgrade if you want to export at resolutions above 4K, which many photos are.

Davinici Resolve 21 is being released in beta today, though it’s worth taking that label seriously. We weren’t able to successfully export a photo while testing to see if there were any obvious limitations, with the software just giving us an error message about not being able to decode it, so it seems like there’s still definitely some work to be done.

The company also announced plenty of features for video editors, too, which largely center around AI. The software now has a suite of built-in AI-powered effects, such as voice generation, “CineFocus,” which lets you add customizable blur to your video, actor aging/deaging tools, blemish removal and more. Many of those, and the software’s other video-focused tools, such as AI-upscaling and noise reduction, can also be used when editing stills.

* – Currently, that’s a one-time fee, with Studio owners getting free upgrades to each subsequent version. However, during the livestream, BlackMagic’s CEO mentioned that the company may need to start charging for upgrades someday.

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