Moya

GPU-powered glow and light effects, with a standalone macOS app and a Photoshop round trip.

• Glow/bloom, glare and spectrum, rays, chromatic aberration, and tone mapping.
• Paintable masks with image-based builders, refinement, and undo/redo.
• Presets with live hover previews and import/export.
• Photoshop round trip with editable effect layers and saved settings.
• 8/16/32-bit images; PNG, TIFF, EXR, and flattened PSD/PSB input (JPEG too). Export PNG, TIFF, or EXR.

Install

Requirements: macOS 13 or later on Apple Silicon. The optional plugin requires Adobe Photoshop 2024 or later and Creative Cloud for .ccx installation.

1. Download Moya-<version>-macos-arm64.zip from the latest release.
2. Unzip it and quit Photoshop before installing the plugin.
3. Double-click Install Moya.command. It copies the app to /Applications (or ~/Applications if needed), clears quarantine on that copied app, and opens Moya Photoshop Plugin.ccx for installation. Approve installation in Creative Cloud.
4. Open Moya from Applications. For the plugin, start Photoshop and open Plugins › Moya.

First launch / Gatekeeper: the app is ad-hoc signed, not notarized. If macOS blocks the installer or app, right-click it and choose Open; on newer macOS versions, allow it in System Settings › Privacy & Security if prompted. Only override a warning for a release you trust. If Photoshop was running during installation, quit it and rerun the installer.

For manual installation, copy Moya.app to /Applications or ~/Applications, then double-click Moya Photoshop Plugin.ccx and approve installation in Creative Cloud. The plugin discovers either app location; its Settings panel also accepts an explicit app path.

Using Moya

1. Open or drop an image or project. Use Cmd+O, or drop a supported image or .moya file anywhere in the window.
2. Build your layer stack. The Layers panel sits to the right of the preview. Add, duplicate, rename (double-click), reorder (drag a row, or Up/Down), hide, solo or delete effect layers; each has its own settings and mask. Choose a layer's input (original image or the composite below), blend mode and opacity under the list. Collapse the panel with >> to a narrow strip of layer swatches and widen it by dragging its edge; both are remembered. Select a layer and its settings appear in the left panels. Start with glow, then enable Glare, Spectrum, Chromatic Aberration, or Moya Rays as needed. Disabled sections collapse. Click a value to type it; right-click a slider to reset it. Changed values are tinted green. Hide source in the bottom bar shows the glow without the image.
3. Inspect the preview. Scroll or pinch to zoom around the cursor, drag to pan, and use Fit, 100%, or Split for an original/result divider. Hold Space to see the original. Drag the crosshair to move the rays center. Preview uses Draft while it fits within Draft's pixel resolution; magnifying Draft pixels switches to the sharp viewport described below. Export renders HQ.
4. Shape the mask. White selects where light is taken from. Brush or erase directly in the preview; set size, hardness, and opacity. View the mask as an overlay or grayscale. Build from luminosity, transparency, outlines, or another image; combine with Replace, Add, Subtract, or Intersect. Feather, grow/shrink, invert, clear, and save masks from the same panel. Mask operations and parameter edits share undo/redo.
5. Use presets. Hover a preset to preview it; click to apply. Right-click to rename, duplicate, or delete. Import/export supports the Oniric_Presets.json / userPresets array format. No factory presets are bundled; import your own or save settings you create.
6. Save the project. Cmd+S saves editable layers and masks to .moya; Cmd+Shift+S saves a copy under a new name. Enable Embed source to include the original image for a portable project; otherwise keep the referenced source image available. The title shows the project name and an asterisk for unsaved edits. Opening another image/project or quitting offers Save, Discard, or Cancel.
7. Export. Cmd+E saves a full-quality PNG, TIFF, or EXR, with a choice of full composite or glow only. HQ works at up to a 4000-pixel long side and resamples to the original image dimensions.

Window size, the last selected layer's parameters, and the last open folder are remembered. Opening a new standalone image or a Photoshop session without a saved project starts with one effect layer using those parameters, without painted masks; only opening a saved project restores a layer stack. User presets are stored in the platform config directory (~/Library/Application Support/Moya/userPresets.json on macOS).

Image and mask-file decoding runs on one background worker: newer requests replace queued work and stale results are discarded. Project loading also decodes embedded original images without changing their depth or profile. HQ encoding and file writes run in the background. Layer, parameter, and mask edits share a bounded undo/redo history.

If the preset file cannot be read, a persistent warning remains visible. Before the first subsequent preset write, Moya preserves the original as userPresets.json.bak-<timestamp>; if that backup fails, it does not overwrite the original. Cancelling a Photoshop send removes any result produced by that send.

Preview and zoom

Fit uses the Draft preview while the fitted image stays within Draft's pixel resolution. The magnification threshold governs even in Fit, so a large or high-density viewport can cross it. Once zoom magnifies Draft pixels, the viewport samples the full-resolution source immediately and overlays bilinearly enlarged Draft glows; it does not enlarge a low-resolution composite. The original remains sharp in Split and while holding Space.

The status chip next to the zoom percentage describes the rendered result:

• Preview (grey): sharp source with Draft glows, or an approximate refined result below 100% zoom.
• Refining n/N (amber): after 0.5 seconds without an edit, pan, or zoom, visible layer glows refine to HQ, at most one layer per frame; n/N counts ready/required layers.
• Exact (green): at 100% zoom or above, every visible layer's HQ glow is ready. The native-resolution region uses export's depth and quantization, so the pixels are identical to the export, and is displayed with nearest-neighbor sampling.

Edits restart refinement. Returning below the Draft-pixel magnification threshold, invalidating the result, or changing documents releases refined glows. Only a screen-sized region is composited for the zoomed viewport, not a full-size output image.

Photoshop

1. Choose Plugins › Moya › Edit in Moya, or Edit in Moya in the plugin panel. The visible document is exported at its current bit depth with its color profile. Moya starts if needed; approve Photoshop's permission prompt on first use.
2. Build your layer stack in Moya, then click Send to Photoshop (Cmd+Enter). Cancel ends the session without placing a result.
3. The result is placed in the original document as a Moya group with one pixel layer per Moya layer, preserving each layer's name, visibility, opacity, and blend. Auto blend uses Screen at 8/16-bit and Linear Dodge at 32-bit. Enable Return full composite in the plugin for a single Normal layer instead.
4. To change it later, select the group or any layer inside it and choose Re-edit selected Moya group. Its project restores the full layer stack, settings, and masks. The returned group replaces the old one at the same stack position, retaining the group's visibility, opacity, and blend.

The panel shows connection status and an app-path override under Settings. Moya must be running for the local connection; no external server is needed.

Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+O	Open image or .moya project
Cmd+S	Save project
Cmd+Shift+S	Save project as
Cmd+E	Export HQ image
Cmd+Enter	Send to Photoshop
Cmd+Z / Cmd+Shift+Z	Undo / redo
Hold Space	Show original
F / 1	Fit / 100%
[ / ]	Smaller / larger brush
Shift+[ / Shift+]	Decrease / increase hardness
X	Swap brush / eraser
Hold Option	Erase temporarily
Esc	Stop painting

Painting shortcuts apply while painting. Shortcuts are ignored while a text field has focus.

Build from source

Install Apple's command-line tools (xcode-select --install) and Rust using rustup, then:

git clone https://github.com/reiserFSs/Moya.git
cd Moya
cargo run -p moya-app --release
# Or open an image directly:
cargo run -p moya-app --release -- path/to/image.png

To build the app bundle and install the development plugin (quit Photoshop first):

sh scripts/bundle-macos.sh       # installs ~/Applications/Moya.app
sh scripts/install-ps-plugin.sh  # registers the local Photoshop plugin

See Development for crate layout, CLI rendering, calibration, performance, and the bridge protocol; Photoshop operation mathematics documents the measured operation models and remaining approximations.

License

MIT — Copyright (c) 2026 reiserFSs.