# Inverza

> Landscape photography weather intelligence app for iOS.

Inverza helps landscape photographers plan shoots by combining AI-powered weather analysis with real-time condition detection. It blends multiple weather models, METAR ground observations, and terrain data to predict 16 unique photography conditions - from colorful dawn and ground fog to aurora borealis, cloud inversions, and lenticular clouds over mountain ridges.

Unlike multi-model browsers such as Windy, Inverza is an interpretation engine: the right regional weather model is auto-selected via Open-Meteo's best-match strategy (HRRR in North America, ICON-D2/EU in Europe, ECMWF IFS for medium-range globally, GFS as a global fallback) and a stack of additional non-NWP sources is layered on top - METAR ground observations, Open-Meteo Marine sea-surface temperatures, inland water-temperature estimates from past-air-temp history, hourly aerosol/air-quality data, and previous-run model stability analysis. The output is 16 photographic conditions with confidence tiers (Possible -> Likely -> Very Likely -> Live), not raw model layers users have to read themselves.

For the full concatenated text of every page, see [llms-full.txt](https://inverza.app/llms-full.txt).

## Features

- **AI Weather Chat**: Ask about shooting conditions in plain language. Powered by Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT (bring your own key), or the built-in model: Google's newest Gemini generation (currently Gemini 3.8 Flash).
- **Condition Detection**: Automatically detects 16 photo-worthy weather conditions with confidence scores and predicted times.
- **Smart Alerts**: Push notifications when conditions align at saved locations.
- **Photo Spot Map**: Discover viewpoints using geotagged photos, with sunrise/sunset/moonrise/moonset direction lines and terrain shadow mapping. Live dotted sun/moon lines track the time slider when the shadow map is active.
- **Photo Subjects** *(v1.5+)*: Pair each saved photo spot with a separate subject pin (up to 50 km away - mountain face, lighthouse, lake, castle). OpenStreetMap classifies the subject into one of 22 kinds (peak, glacier, waterfall, lighthouse, alpine hut, …); the AI gets a material-aware photographic playbook per kind. For distant subjects (>20 km) a second weather forecast is fetched at the subject's coordinates so the AI can reason about spotlight conditions when the photographer is in cloud but the peak is in the clear. Subject illumination is ray-marched against the SRTM horizon at the subject's location.
- **Horizon Paths** *(v1.5+)*: 360° terrain horizon strip on each spot detail card with sun and moon arcs across the day, anchored on the moon's upper transit so the position dot never vanishes at the chart edge. Hour/day navigation; Photographer/Subject toggle that re-renders the horizon profile from the subject's vantage.
- **Horizon Paths 3D** *(v1.6+)*: The same spot as an interactive SceneKit diorama - real terrain out to the surrounding peaks, OpenStreetMap buildings, trees and forests, lakes and rivers, and real coastlines with the ocean filled to sea level, under the sun and moon paths drawn in the sky above the pin. Building and mountain shadows, golden-hour tones, and phase-scaled moonlight follow the time slider; orbit around the photographer or the subject. Since v1.6.3 the moon renders at its true apparent size for the date, and an exact eclipse percentage appears when it overlaps the sun, from official NASA/GSFC Besselian elements for every central solar eclipse through 2030 (eclipse predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA's GSFC): it reads 100% only inside the true path of totality.

<!-- planning-update:start -->
- **Find Alignments**: Search for Sun or Moon alignments by azimuth, elevation, date range, moon phase and adjustable photographer/subject heights. Use the controls or describe your photograph in Find with AI, review the settings, then calculate matching dates on your device. Matches describe geometry, not weather or guaranteed visibility.
- **Save & Load Shooting Plans**: Save a shooting plan with its locations, heights, date, time, camera view, field of view, Find settings and notes. Load restores the setup, including its location. Plans stay on your device.
- **Date-correct Moon Phase**: The Diorama shows the Moon’s illuminated phase and lit-side orientation for the selected time and location.
- [Diorama shooting plans](https://inverza.app/#shooting-plans): Find / Load / Save workflow and screenshot.
<!-- planning-update:end -->
- **AR Sky View** *(v1.5+)*: Point the camera at the sky and see sun, moon, Milky Way core, and North Star paths drawn onto the live view, tracked with ARKit. Time scrubbing previews where the sky will be at any minute; lens switching by focal length auditions the exact frame; a deep-red night mode protects dark adaptation; a Calibrate control corrects compass drift; live readouts show sun, moon, and Milky Way core degrees above or below the horizon.
- **Raw Weather Data & Interactive Charts** *(v1.5+)*: A panel surfacing every raw forecast value behind the predictions over a 7-day timeline. Tap any value to explore it as an interactive chart with pinch zoom, weather condition markers, and day / golden-hour / night background shading tied to the real sunset geometry of the location.
- **Raw Data Alerts** *(v1.5+)*: Custom alerts on exact raw weather values (cloud base, wind, snow depth, visibility, and more). Notifications are time-sensitive, so a dawn alert arrives even during Sleep Focus.
- **Shadow Mapping**: See where light and shadow fall on the terrain at any time of day, computed from NASA SRTM elevation data. At city zoom, building shadows from OpenStreetMap outlines are on by default (toggleable); to our knowledge no other photography planning app draws building shadows on the map.
- **Multi-Model Blending**: Auto-selects the right regional model for each location via Open-Meteo's best-match strategy - HRRR (3 km, North America), ICON-D2 (2.2 km) and ICON-EU (7 km, Europe), ECMWF IFS (~9 km, medium-range global), GFS (13 km, global fallback). 15-minute resolution where available.
- **METAR Cross-Check**: Real-time ground truth from the nearest airport weather station (NOAA AWC) cross-referenced against model predictions. Confirmed conditions are upgraded to a "Live" confidence tier.
- **Marine & Water-Body Data**: Open-Meteo Marine sea-surface temperatures power coastal advection-fog detection; inland water-temperature is estimated from recent air-temperature history for steam-fog detection on lakes and rivers.
- **Aerosol & Air-Quality Data**: Hourly AOD, PM10, and Saharan dust readings (Open-Meteo Air Quality) feed Soft Light detection.
- **Forecast Evolution**: Previous-run analysis compares what consecutive model runs predicted for the same hour - drifting forecasts get a confidence penalty.

## Core pages

- [Homepage](https://inverza.app/)
- [All 16 Photo Conditions](https://inverza.app/conditions)
- [Blog](https://inverza.app/blog) - notes on weather and light for landscape photographers
- [Blog RSS feed](https://inverza.app/blog.xml)
- [Press Kit](https://inverza.app/press)
- [Privacy Policy](https://inverza.app/privacy)
- [Terms of Use](https://inverza.app/terms)
- [Legal Notice (Impressum)](https://inverza.app/impressum)

## Blog posts

- [The anatomy of a rainbow](https://inverza.app/blog/the-anatomy-of-a-rainbow) (2026-09-13) - Rainbow physics and photography: refraction and reflection, the observer-centred 42-degree bow, sun elevation, double rainbows, Galen Rowell’s 1981 Potala Palace alignment, and an Inverza planning workflow. Includes Nigel North’s AI-made historical rainbow episode; the illustration is clearly distinguished from Rowell’s photograph.

- [Chasing the shadow - how to plan and photograph solar eclipses through 2030](https://inverza.app/blog/photographing-solar-eclipses-through-2030) (2026-08-14) - Total vs. annular ("ring of fire") explained by lunar distance (perigee moon ~6% larger than the sun, apogee ~8% smaller); 2-5 solar eclipses per year somewhere on Earth but ~375 years between totalities at any one spot; photography guidance (certified glasses + solar filter for all partial phases, filter off only during totality, low-horizon composition as the key creative move); planning workflow with the 3D Diorama (NASA/GSFC Besselian eclipse geometry built in through 2030, exact eclipse percentage readout, true apparent moon size since 1.6.3) and on-location verification with AR Sky; spot guide with coordinates, local times, sun altitudes, and compass directions for the 2027 annular (Patagonia), 2027 total (Luxor, Cadiz, Tangier), 2028 sunset annular (Cadiz, Seville, Galapagos), 2028 total (Sydney, Queenstown), 2030 annular (Athens), and 2030 total (Windhoek, Durban)
- [Plan the frame to the minute - Horizon Paths at home, AR Sky in the field](https://inverza.app/blog/plan-the-frame-to-the-minute) (2026-07-16) - The two-part composition-planning workflow: Horizon Paths computes, from anywhere, the minute the moon/sun/core clears the real terrain of a saved spot (and what the other body is doing at that minute); the AR Sky view then verifies the frame on location with a time scrubber and per-lens focal-length preview. Framed by the story of Ansel Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez (exposure minute reconstructed by an astronomer 50 years later) and the AI-made short film Stealing Moonrise
- [Composing the Milky Way before you can see it](https://inverza.app/blog/compose-the-milky-way-before-you-can-see-it) (2026-06-16) - The galactic core needs true darkness to be visible, by which time the foreground is black; the AR Sky view in Inverza 1.5 draws sun, moon, and core onto the live camera feed with a time scrubber, so the composition can be locked at blue hour on the real horizon; includes compass-drift caveat and Calibrate control
- [Standing in shadow, photographing in light - Set Subject and Horizon Paths](https://inverza.app/blog/set-subject-and-horizon-paths) (2026-05-23) - Where you stand and what you're photographing have different terrain horizons; the sun can set for you while still lighting your shot. Walkthrough of the v1.4 Set Subject picker (paired subject pin up to 50 km away, OSM-classified into 22 feature kinds) and the Photographer/Subject toggle in the Horizon Paths chart, using a real alpine meadow scene as the worked example
- [How Inverza sees the sky - eight data sources behind every forecast](https://inverza.app/blog/how-inverza-sees-the-sky) (2026-05-14) - Walk-through of the eight streams behind every Inverza forecast: Open-Meteo global model, directional horizon clouds along the sunrise/sunset azimuths (40 km near sample, 150 km twilight sample, and 300/450 km far-path ray probes gated by the grazing ray's height; updated August 2026), air quality, marine SST, Overpass/OSM landcover, live METAR, high-res regional models (HRRR/ICON-D2/ICON-EU), and previous-run drift; plus the fail-silent blending principle
- [What storm chasers know about photographing thunderstorms](https://inverza.app/blog/photographing-thunderstorms-what-storm-chasers-know) (2026-05-10) - Storm-photography lifecycle, two prime windows (approach and departure), inflow vs outflow, golden-hour overlap, lightning safety; covers Inverza's CAPE/lifted-index/WMO storm-cloud detector upgrade
- [5 apps that belong on every landscape photographer's home screen](https://inverza.app/blog/five-apps-on-every-landscape-photographers-home-screen) (2026-05-09) - Ranked list of planning and weather apps: PhotoPills, Inverza, Windy, Viewfindr, Apple Weather, Sun Surveyor
- [A moving picture is worth ten thousand words - so we made one](https://inverza.app/blog/watch-inverza-in-60-seconds) (2026-04-16) - Inverza in 60 seconds on YouTube Shorts
- [The galactic core is back - what that actually means for European photographers](https://inverza.app/blog/galactic-core-returns-to-europe) (2026-04-16) - Milky Way season, European vs southern-hemisphere view

## Individual condition guides

- [Colorful Dawn](https://inverza.app/conditions/colorful-dawn) - intense pre-sunrise color on high clouds
- [Afterglow Sunset](https://inverza.app/conditions/afterglow-sunset) - post-sunset pink and purple on high clouds
- [Golden Clouds](https://inverza.app/conditions/golden-clouds) - partial cloud cover lit gold during golden hour
- [Ground Fog](https://inverza.app/conditions/ground-fog) - thin fog layer hugging the surface
- [Hoarfrost](https://inverza.app/conditions/hoarfrost) - ice crystals on branches and grass after a cold calm night
- [Aurora Borealis](https://inverza.app/conditions/aurora) - the northern lights; from v1.5, detection requires sun below −12° (civil twilight) and factors in local light pollution via the bundled global VIIRS Bortle raster (milder penalty than Milky Way, with strong-storm modulation that halves the penalty when Kp is ≥ 2 above the local threshold)
- [Fresh Snow](https://inverza.app/conditions/fresh-snow) - unbroken snow under clear sky
- [Dramatic Storms](https://inverza.app/conditions/dramatic-storms) - storm clouds, rainbows, lit rain shafts
- [Cloud Inversion](https://inverza.app/conditions/cloud-inversion) - sea of clouds filling valleys, ridges above
- [Milky Way](https://inverza.app/conditions/milky-way) - galactic core on a dark sky; from v1.5, detection factors in local light pollution via a bundled global VIIRS Bortle raster
- [Belt of Venus](https://inverza.app/conditions/belt-of-venus) - pink band opposite the sun at twilight
- [Reflecting Waters](https://inverza.app/conditions/reflecting-waters) - mirror-calm water at dawn and dusk
- [Soft Light](https://inverza.app/conditions/soft-light) - overcast diffusion for forests and waterfalls
- [Full Moon Silhouette](https://inverza.app/conditions/full-moon-silhouette) - full moon rising or setting against landscape
- [Brocken Spectre](https://inverza.app/conditions/brocken-spectre) - your shadow projected on a cloud with a glory ring
- [Lenticular Clouds](https://inverza.app/conditions/lenticular-clouds) - stacked lens-shaped mountain-wave clouds over ridges

## Pricing

14-day free trial, then $4.99/year. No ads, no tracking, no data collection.

## Technical details

- Platform: iOS (iPhone)
- Weather sources: Open-Meteo (multi-model auto-select: HRRR, ICON-D2/EU, ECMWF IFS, GFS), Open-Meteo Marine (sea-surface temperature), Open-Meteo Air Quality (AOD, PM10, dust), Open-Meteo Previous-Runs (forecast stability), NOAA AWC METAR (airport ground observations), NOAA SWPC (Kp index for aurora), NOAA VIIRS VNL (global Bortle light-pollution raster, bundled with the app at 1 km resolution)
- Elevation data: NASA SRTM, Open-Meteo
- AI providers: Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, OpenAI ChatGPT; built-in default model: Gemini 3.8 Flash
- Languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian