The Shadowmap alternative for photographers

LightPlan is built so you can plan a shot without a tutorial. Your first plan takes three steps:

1. Put the marker on your subject. Search for a place, or tap the map.
2. Pick the day and time. Tap Date, then drag the timeline to the hour.
3. Read the light. The lines point to the sun and moon, and a chip on the map says when it's golden or blue hour.

There are no panels to decode before you start. Times are always in the place's own time zone, the timeline is coloured like the light, and Product Tour replays the tips on the real controls whenever you want a refresher.

Shadowmap is organised around property and solar analysis, with its tools spread across four plans (Free, Explorer, Home and Studio). LightPlan is organised around one photographer's question, where and when the light will be, and answers it on one screen.

A shadow tool tells you where the sun's light falls. A photographer also needs to know where the moon will be, when the light turns golden, and what the frame will look like from the spot where you'll set up your tripod. Here's a crescent moon framed in the rotunda of San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts, planned in LightPlan:

1. Put the marker on the rotunda, switch to Photorealistic 3D, tap the eye, and tap where you'll stand across the lagoon.
2. Set Track to Moon, step through the dates and drag the timeline until the moon sits in the arch.
3. Set the Lens to your focal length, then send the plan as a link that opens in LightPlan or on the web.

Checked with an independent ephemeris: at 4:53 PM on 8 October 2026 the moon is 7.9° above the horizon at an azimuth of 263°, a 3% crescent, lining up with the rotunda, which lies at 257° from where you stand.

The same City Hall, on the same morning as the Shadow Map captures above, now on LightPlan's main map. Lines point to sunrise, sunset and the sun at the time you pick, each with its time, and a chip says it's golden hour, 7:05 to 7:40 AM.

• Golden hour runs while the sun is between 6° above and 4° below the horizon; blue hour from 4° to 6° below. Both are timed by the sun's height, so they stretch and shrink with the season and the place.
• The timeline is coloured like the light, with gold and blue bands for each window.
• The moon gets its own lines and times. Set Track to Moon and everything follows it.

Read more in our golden hour guide, including the colour temperature of the light at each sun angle.

On location, hold up your phone: the sun's path is drawn across the real sky with a time at every hour, the moon's in blue, and the day's sunrise, sunset, golden hour and blue hour sit underneath for exactly where you're standing.

• Arrows point the way to a sun or moon that's off screen.
• Compass accuracy is always shown (±10° here); calibrate against the real sun or moon in the crosshair when it drifts.
• Drag the timeline to see any other hour.
• With Pro, the Milky Way core's path across tonight's sky.

AR Sky View is free in LightPlan on iPhone, iPad and Android. Shadowmap's site and listings don't mention AR.

A great Milky Way night needs three things at once: real darkness, the galactic core above the horizon, and the moon out of the way. LightPlan's planner finds where they overlap and tells you, in plain numbers:

• Dark window: when the sun is at least 18° below the horizon.
• Shoot window: dark, with the core up, and with the moon down if it's half lit or more.
• The core: when it rises, peaks and sets, and which way to face.
• A score from how long it's dark, how high the core climbs and how little moonlight there is.

Best Milky Way Nights ranks the next 30 nights at your location (the top 3 are free), and an alert can warn you one to three days before a great night at any saved spot. Shadowmap's site and listings don't mention the Milky Way.