Lowkey Studio

Lowkey Studio is a video and image compositor that runs entirely in the browser using WebGPU. It's built for the moment when a clip is almost right but needs a color tweak, a blur, a retro CRT effect, or some keyframed motion. Rather than launching heavyweight desktop software for a quick adjustment, you drop media onto a timeline and work through seventy eight bundled effects without installing anything.

The interface follows a familiar pattern. A multi track timeline holds clips you drag in, and you layer effects on top. Keyframing works across position, scale, rotation, opacity, and individual effect parameters, so you can animate changes over time the way you would in After Effects or DaVinci Resolve, just in a browser tab. The effect library covers categories like blur, bloom, color grading, dithering, CRT and retro displays, and stylization filters.

What sets this apart from simpler browser editors is the live shader editor. You can write GLSL or Slang code directly and watch it compile to WebGPU in real time. That opens up custom effect authoring without leaving the app. If the bundled effects don't cover your use case, you build your own and see results immediately. For technical users who already think in shaders, that's a meaningful capability.

Masking is included too. Paint masks, chroma key colors, or use another layer's alpha or luma as a matte. There's also an audio reactivity feature that lets procedural property drivers respond to frequency bands in your audio, which is useful for music visualizers or synced motion graphics.

Export options include real time recording to WebM, offline rendering, and PNG screenshots. Nothing gets uploaded anywhere. Files stay on your machine, and when you run the tool inside the Lowkey desktop app, edited media saves back to its original location.

The project is MIT licensed and open source, developed by Steve Castle. A Patreon page exists for supporters, but the tool itself is free. It's still evolving, and the interface reflects that with some rough edges, but the core functionality works. If you need quick, dependency free compositing in a browser and you're comfortable with timeline based editing, Lowkey Studio is worth testing. The shader editor is the hook for anyone who wants to go beyond preset effects.