Inverza app icon Inverza app icon
14 days free · then $4.99/year

Inverza - The Landscape Photography Weather App for iOS

AI-powered weather analysis, an interactive photo map, and real-time condition detection - everything you need to chase the light.

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How It Works

From forecast to photograph in three steps

1

Find Your Spot

Browse OSM viewpoints, Flickr hotspots, or save your own favorite locations on the interactive map.

2

Check Conditions

Condition badges instantly show when golden hour, fog, or dramatic skies are forecast. Tap any badge for details.

3

Ask the AI

Chat with the AI about your specific spot. It considers weather, viewing direction, and time to give tailored advice.

Features

Everything you need to chase the light

Inverza combines weather data, maps, and AI into one purpose-built tool for landscape photography.

Photo Conditions Explained
Morning fog filling an alpine valley at sunrise

AI & Weather Intelligence

Ask about shooting conditions in plain language. AI blends weather models, ground observations, and golden hour timing into actionable advice.

💬

AI Weather Chat

Ask an AI assistant about shooting conditions in plain language. The built-in AI (Google's newest Gemini model) is included - try free for 14 days, then $4.99/year. Or bring your own key for Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT.

🌍

Directional Cloud Analysis

The AI analyzes wind direction and cloud movement to predict where the most dramatic skies will form relative to your position.

📡

Multi-Source Weather

Auto-selects the best regional model for your location (HRRR, ICON-D2/EU, ECMWF, GFS) and layers METAR ground truth, marine SST, water-temp history, and run-to-run stability on top - then translates it all into actionable photo conditions.

Dramatic beam of golden light breaking through storm clouds over a mountain valley

Real-Time Condition Detection

Golden hour, dramatic skies, fog, aurora, Brocken spectre, lenticular clouds - Inverza detects 16 photo conditions and shows you exactly when they align.

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Condition Badges

At-a-glance badges tell you when golden hour, dramatic skies, fog, storm light, or clear-sky astro conditions are forecast - so you never miss an opportunity.

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Shadow Map: Terrain & Buildings

Visualize where mountain shadows fall at any time, and at city zoom toggle on building shadows from OpenStreetMap outlines. Scrub from now to 30 hours ahead with quick jumps to sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset. No other photography planner we know of draws building shadows on the map.

☀

Sun & Moon Direction Lines

Select any pin on the map to see sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset direction lines with exact times. With the shadow map active, two extra dotted lines track the current sun and moon position live as you scrub the time slider, so you can see exactly where light will be coming from at any moment.

Northern lights dancing in teal and pink over snow-capped mountains reflected in a frozen lake

Spot Discovery & Alerts

Find the best locations, get notified when rare conditions align - afterglow, ground fog, aurora, Milky Way visibility, and more.

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Interactive Photo Map

Discover photography spots from OpenStreetMap viewpoints, save your own curated locations, and explore Flickr photography hotspots - all on one map.

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Photo Hotspots

Flickr photo density scores every viewpoint - popular spots glow dark green. Hidden clusters of landscape photos appear as camera icons on the map.

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Viewing Direction & Compass

Set which direction a spot faces - point your phone to capture the heading. The AI knows whether sunrise or sunset will be in your field of view.

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AR Sky

Hold up your phone and see the sun, moon, Milky Way core, and the North Star drawn onto the live view, exactly where they sit in the real sky. Scrub time to watch them arc across the horizon, and switch between your lenses by focal length to preview the exact frame before the event. A red Night Mode keeps your eyes dark-adapted for astro work.

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Horizon Paths & Photo Subjects

See the real 360° terrain horizon of any saved spot with sun and moon arcs across it - read off the minute the moon clears a specific ridge, weeks ahead, from anywhere. Pair a spot with a subject up to 50 km away and flip the whole chart to the subject's vantage. Or tap Diorama for Horizon Paths 3D: the spot as an orbitable model with real terrain, buildings, trees, and coastlines, shadows that follow the time slider, and a NASA-grade eclipse percentage whenever sun and moon overlap - built in for every solar eclipse through 2030.

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Raw Weather Data & Charts

Every raw forecast value behind the predictions, in one panel. Tap any value to explore it as an interactive 7-day chart with pinch zoom, weather condition markers, and day, golden-hour, and night shading tied to the real sunset geometry of the location.

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Raw Data Alerts

Build custom alerts on the exact values you care about - cloud base below the summit, wind under 10 km/h, fresh snow above 5 cm. Notifications are time-sensitive, so a dawn alert reaches you even during Sleep Focus.

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Flickr & Wikimedia Photos

See real photos of any spot from Flickr and Wikimedia Commons. Flickr works out of the box - or bring your own Pro key.

📤

Share Individual Spots

Share any spot via Messages, email, or any app. Includes an Apple Maps link and a one-tap import deep link.

📊

Condition History

Track which photo conditions appear most often at each location, broken down by season. The AI uses this data for smarter recommendations.

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Multi-Language Support

Use Inverza in English, German, French, Spanish, or Italian. Switch languages instantly in Settings.

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Diagnostics & Offline Mode

Built-in diagnostic screen shows background check status, cache usage, and network health. Cached data keeps the app usable offline.

Weather Engine

An interpretation engine, not a model browser

Apps like Windy give you a model picker - flip through ECMWF, GFS, ICON, HRRR and read the raw output yourself. Inverza takes the opposite approach: the right regional model is consulted automatically, and a stack of additional non-model sources is layered on top before anything reaches your screen as photographic guidance.

🌍

Auto-selected regional models

Inverza taps Open-Meteo's best-match selection so your forecast is built from the right model for your latitude: HRRR (3 km, hourly) in North America, ICON-D2 (2.2 km) and ICON-EU (7 km) in Europe, ECMWF IFS (~9 km) for medium-range globally, GFS (13 km) as a global fallback. No manual model switching - the right one runs for where you are.

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METAR ground truth

Real-time observations from the nearest airport weather station (NOAA AWC) cross-check the model. When the METAR confirms what the forecast predicted, the badge gets upgraded to a Live tier - "this isn't a forecast anymore, it's happening right now." When METAR contradicts the model, scoring is penalised accordingly.

🌊

Marine & water-body data

Sea-surface temperatures from Open-Meteo Marine drive coastal advection-fog detection (warm humid air over cooler seas - SF Bay, the UK coast, the Pacific Northwest). For inland lakes and rivers, water temperature is estimated from the last few days of air temperature history, powering steam-fog detection on calm autumn dawns.

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Run-to-run stability

Open-Meteo's previous-runs API lets Inverza compare today's forecast for a given hour with what yesterday's run predicted for that same hour. When the cloud forecast has shifted by more than 25 percentage points between runs, the detection score is gently penalised and the reason string flags the drift - so you can see when the atmosphere hasn't quite settled on what it's doing yet.

🌫

Aerosols, dust & air quality

Hourly aerosol optical depth, PM10, and Saharan dust readings (Open-Meteo Air Quality) feed the Soft Light detector - the dreamy, particle-softened golden hour that photographers love only forms when there's enough fine material in the atmosphere to diffuse the sun without smothering it.

⛰

Pressure-level winds & terrain

700 and 500 hPa winds, temperatures and humidities feed lenticular-cloud detection, combined with a real-time ridge analysis of NASA SRTM elevation data near your spot. Mountain-wave clouds need strong winds nearly perpendicular to a prominent ridge and a stable lapse rate - all three are checked before a Lenticular badge surfaces.

The result: instead of a wall of model layers you have to read like a meteorologist, you get one answer per condition - Ground Fog: Likely (steam-fog pattern); Lenticular: Very Likely (NW wind perpendicular to ridge, 65 km/h at 700 hPa); Milky Way: Live (METAR clear sky, no moon). The underlying models are the same ones Windy lets you browse - they just feed an interpretation layer instead of being shown raw.

Aerial view of dramatic mountain shadows across a valley at golden hour
Privacy

Your data stays on your device

Inverza has no backend server, no accounts, and no tracking. Here's exactly how your data is handled.

Information the App Uses

  • Location: Sent directly to Open-Meteo (weather) and Overpass API (map data) to fetch forecasts and nearby spots. Never stored on any server we operate.
  • Compass heading: Read locally when using the viewing direction feature. Never leaves your device.
  • Camera: Used only by the AR Sky view to show the live scene on screen while celestial markers are overlaid. The feed is processed in real time on your device. Nothing is photographed, recorded, saved, or sent anywhere.
  • API keys: The app includes a built-in AI model and Flickr key. If you bring your own, keys are stored in iOS Keychain and sent only to the provider. We never see them.
  • AI chat messages: Sent directly from your device to the AI provider. No proxy server, no logging.

Data Storage

All data - saved spots, preferences, API keys - lives on your device. Delete the app and everything is removed. No cloud sync, no accounts.

Third-Party Services

  • Open-Meteo - Weather forecasts (receives coordinates)
  • Overpass API - OpenStreetMap data (receives map region)
  • Open-Meteo Elevation API - Terrain elevation grid (receives coordinates)
  • NASA SRTM - High-resolution elevation tiles (receives tile coordinates)
  • Flickr - Photos and hotspots (receives coordinates)
  • Wikimedia Commons - Spot photos (receives coordinates)
  • AI providers - Chat responses (receives your question + weather context)

Analytics & Tracking

None. No analytics SDKs, no crash reporting, no advertising frameworks, no tracking pixels.

Your Rights (GDPR)

If you are in the EU/EEA, you have the right to access, correct, delete, and port your data. Use the Export/Import feature for data portability.

Read the full GDPR-compliant privacy policy →

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

No API key is needed. The AI chat works out of the box with a built-in AI model: Google's newest Gemini generation (currently Gemini 3.7 Flash). Flickr photos also work with a built-in key. If you want more powerful AI models (Claude, Gemini Pro, or ChatGPT), switch to "Bring Your Own Key" in Settings.
If you choose "Bring Your Own Key" in Settings, each provider offers API keys through their developer platforms. Links are provided directly in the app. Most providers offer a free tier that is sufficient for personal use. If you prefer not to set up an API key, the built-in fast AI model works without any configuration.
Inverza has no backend server. Your location goes directly to the services that power each feature: Open-Meteo (weather), the Overpass API (OpenStreetMap data), NOAA's aviation weather service (nearest airport observations), and Flickr and Wikimedia Commons (spot photos). AI messages go directly to the provider. Your API keys and saved spots stay on your device. Details are in the privacy policy.
When you save a spot, you can set the direction it faces. The AI then knows whether sunrise or sunset will be in your field of view and gives more specific advice.

Inverza is an interpretation engine, not a model browser. It uses Open-Meteo's automatic best-match selection so the right regional model is consulted for your location:

  • HRRR (3 km, hourly) in North America
  • ICON-D2 (2.2 km) and ICON-EU (7 km) in Europe
  • ECMWF IFS (~9 km) for medium-range globally
  • GFS (13 km) as a global fallback

On top of those numerical models, Inverza layers METAR ground observations from the nearest airport, Open-Meteo Marine sea-surface temperatures for coastal advection-fog detection, inland water-temperature estimates from recent air-temperature history for steam-fog detection, aerosol and air-quality data (PM10, AOD, Saharan dust) for soft-light scoring, and previous-run model stability analysis that compares consecutive forecast runs to penalise predictions that have drifted significantly.

Apps like Windy let you browse the raw output of every model and interpret it yourself - invaluable for meteorologists and pilots. Inverza takes the same models, blends them with all the non-NWP sources above, and translates the result into 16 photographically meaningful conditions with confidence tiers (Possible → Likely → Very Likely → Live).

Sixteen: colorful dawn, afterglow sunset, golden clouds, ground fog, cloud inversion, hoarfrost, fresh snow with clear skies, dramatic storm clouds, aurora borealis, Milky Way visibility, Belt of Venus, reflecting waters, soft light, full moon silhouette, Brocken spectre, and lenticular clouds. Each detector has its own physics - cloud layers, humidity, terrain, aerosols, sea temperatures, geomagnetic activity - and every detection comes with a confidence tier, a predicted time window, and a plain-language reason. The condition guides explain each one in detail.
The best weather app for landscape photography is one that predicts photographic conditions, not just rain and temperature. Inverza was built specifically for this: it forecasts 16 conditions photographers actually chase - ground fog, cloud inversions, colorful dawns, aurora, Milky Way visibility - by blending high-resolution weather models (HRRR in North America, ICON-D2 and ICON-EU in Europe) with live airport observations, terrain data, and an AI chat that explains whether tomorrow is worth the alarm.
Yes, these are two of the core detectors. Ground fog forecasts combine humidity, dew point spread, wind, terrain, and water-body data to catch radiation fog, coastal advection fog (via sea-surface temperatures), and steam fog over lakes. Cloud inversion forecasts look for the temperature inversions that trap cloud in valleys, so you can stand above the sea of clouds at sunrise - the condition the app is named after.
Yes. Save any spot on the map and open Horizon Paths: Inverza computes the real terrain horizon for that exact point from elevation data and draws the sun's and moon's arcs across it, so you can read off the minute the moon clears a specific ridge from your sofa, weeks ahead. Once you are on location, the AR Sky view takes over: scrub to the planned minute and see exactly where the sun, moon, or Milky Way will stand in the real scene before it happens.
The app downloads NASA SRTM elevation data and uses ray marching to calculate which areas are blocked from sunlight by surrounding mountains. Zoomed into a city, building shadows from OpenStreetMap outlines appear by default (a toggle can switch the layer off), so you can see which streets and squares catch light, hour by hour. Scrub from now up to 30 hours ahead, with quick jumps to sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset. With a pin selected, two extra dotted direction lines (one for the sun, one for the moon when above the horizon) track the slider time live alongside the static sunrise/sunset lines, so you can see where light is coming from at any moment.
Zoom into a city on the shadow map and the buildings appear on their own (the layer is on by default; a toggle switches it off): Inverza fetches building outlines from OpenStreetMap, reads their tagged heights or storey counts (with a sensible default for untagged buildings), and casts each one's shadow for the selected time, street by street, along the same 30-hour slider as the terrain shadows. Fetched buildings are cached on your device, so areas you have viewed once render instantly and offline afterwards; you can inspect and clear that cache per continent under Settings. Accuracy follows OpenStreetMap coverage: in well-mapped cities the shadows are remarkably faithful, and complex roofs are simplified to their outlines. To our knowledge, no other photography planning app draws building shadows on the map.
Tap the Diorama button in Horizon Paths and the spot opens as an interactive 3D model: the real surrounding terrain out to the distant peaks, OpenStreetMap buildings, trees and forests, lakes and rivers, real coastlines with the ocean filled to sea level, and the sun's and moon's path circles drawn in the sky above your pin, in the same colours as the AR view. Building and mountain shadows, golden-hour tones, and moonlight scaled by the lunar phase all follow the same time slider, so you can scrub through the next 30 hours and watch the light move through the scene. The moon is drawn at its true apparent size for the date, and when it overlaps the sun an eclipse percentage appears, powered by NASA/GSFC predictions for every solar eclipse through 2030. Drag to orbit around the photographer's or the subject's pin and pinch to zoom. The terrain reuses elevation tiles the app already has, so the view opens immediately and the buildings, water, and trees stream in.
Yes. Every central solar eclipse through 2030 is built in with official NASA/GSFC eclipse geometry (eclipse predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA's GSFC). Save a spot anywhere on Earth, open the 3D Diorama, and scrub to the eclipse date: the sun and moon travel their real arcs over the real terrain, both drawn at their true apparent size for that day, and the moment their discs overlap an exact eclipse percentage appears. It reads 100% only inside the genuine path of totality, accurate to the kilometre at the path edges, so you can slide along a coastline from your sofa and find exactly where totality meets a foreground worth photographing. The Diorama also shows the sun's altitude and compass direction at that minute, and once you are on location the AR Sky view draws the same overlap onto the live camera so you can fine-tune the tripod position. The upcoming ones: totality from southern Spain to Egypt in August 2027, a sunset ring of fire over southern Spain in January 2028, and totality over Sydney in July 2028. A full spot guide with coordinates and times is in our eclipse guide on the blog.
Point your phone at the scene and Inverza draws the sun, moon, and Milky Way onto the live camera, anchored with ARKit. Drag the time scrubber and the sky runs forward: you see exactly where the moon will hang at the planned minute, walk until it sits over your subject, and switch between your phone's lenses by focal length to preview the crop before anything happens in the sky. Compact readouts above the time controls always show how many degrees the sun, the moon, and the Milky Way core stand above or below the horizon. Frame, focus while there is light, and wait for the sky to catch up.
The celestial positions themselves are computed astronomically and are exact. The overlay's anchoring uses ARKit plus the phone's compass, and phone magnetometers can drift a few degrees near cars, tripod heads, or iron-rich rock. AR Sky is built for planning compositions, not for polar-aligning a mount: read it as "the moon will track through this gap." If the markers look slightly rotated, a Calibrate control lets you nudge the overlay until the compass marks sit where north really is.
They are complementary, and many photographers run both. PhotoPills and The Photographer's Ephemeris are geometry planners: where the sun, moon, or Milky Way will be. Inverza answers whether the sky will be worth photographing - conditions, light quality, confidence scores - and adds its own planning tools: an AR Sky view with sun, moon, and Milky Way paths on the live camera, Horizon Paths terrain charts, and 3D shadow mapping of both terrain and buildings, which no other photography planner we know of offers on the map. Our blog has an honest ranked comparison of the apps we actually use.
Inverza is free to try for 14 days with full access to every feature. After the trial, it's $4.99/year (less than a cup of good coffee). Your subscription covers the built-in AI model, the Flickr API, and ongoing maintenance. All features included - no tiers, no paywalls. Cancel anytime.
Yes. Share a single spot from the map (includes Apple Maps link + one-tap import), or go to Settings → Export / Import Spots for bulk backup.
All data is stored locally on your device. Deleting the app removes everything.
Serene mountain lake at blue hour

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Start planning your next landscape shoot today. Try free for 14 days, then just $4.99/year. Rated 5.0 on the App Store.

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