Photo & Video

Opens PSD without a fuss

Layered PSDs come in with their layers intact, which is the part most cheap editors quietly flatten. Text layers arrive rasterised, so keep the original if you need to re-type a headline.

Non-destructive where it counts

Curves, Levels, Hue/Saturation and Exposure all land as adjustments you can re-open days later. Undo is linear, so a long session is hard to walk backwards through.

Fast on big files

A 40-megapixel edit stays responsive on an M-series Mac. Documents with dozens of groups take a moment on first open; after that it is smooth.

Your folders stay the library

Nothing is imported into a proprietary catalogue - the folder tree on disk is what you browse. Written from the brief; to be re-checked against the shipped build.

Built for large local collections

The promise is Picasa's speed on a modern Mac, with no cloud step in the middle. How it handles a hundred thousand files is the thing to test first.

Offline by design

No account, no sync service, nothing phoning home. That also means no web gallery - sharing is exporting.

One file out of many

Merging screenshots for a bug report or a listing is a two-minute job in an editor and a five-second one here. Written from the brief; re-check on release.

Layout without a canvas

Rows, columns and grids are pickable rather than something you arrange by hand. Fine typographic control is not the point of this tool.

Local and quick

No upload step, which matters when the screenshots are of your own work. Batch merging across many sets is the obvious thing to look for.

Print-ready is the whole point

Export sizes and margins aimed at a real print rather than a screenshot of a map. Written from the brief; to be verified against the shipped export.

Styling without cartography skills

Palettes and label choices do the design work. How much control there is over which roads and labels appear is the thing to check.

A gift you make in ten minutes

The use case is narrow and honest - one poster, one place. Not a mapping tool for anything else.

Faces found on-device

Vision does the detection locally, so a family photo or an interview clip never leaves the machine. Detection is as good as Vision is: profiles and small background faces need a manual pass.

Three ways to cover a face

Soft blur, chunky mosaic, or one of 32 system emoji dropped on as a sticker - the emoji option is the one people actually enjoy using.

Photos and video in the same window

Drop a file on the left, see the masked result on the right, save. Long clips take real time to re-encode; it is not instant on 4K footage.

Precision without the ceremony

Snapping and dimensions behave the way a drafting tool should, and it opens instantly. It is a layout tool, not a parametric CAD package - don't expect constraints.

Offline and file-based

Your drawings are files on your disk, openable without an account. Collaboration is send-a-file.

Export that survives the print shop

PDF out at real sizes. A wider set of export presets would save a round-trip for anyone sending to a plotter.

No confirm step, no queue

The window is the drop target and compression starts the moment files land - the reason it replaces the web tools people paste screenshots into. There is no per-file quality dial before the run.

Originals are never touched

Compressed copies land beside the source, so a bad result costs you nothing. Output naming is fixed, which matters if you script around it.

Free, and it stays free

No account and no upload, on a job most sites charge for by the megabyte. Formats are limited to PNG, JPEG and WebP - AVIF is not in the list.

Opens the folder, not just the file

One image in and every image beside it lists in a thumbnail sidebar, with inline rename, duplicate and move-to-trash - which turns it into the viewer you actually browse with. It reads a folder rather than a library, so there are no tags, albums or search across your whole disk.

Crop and resize by eye or by number

Drag a selection or type exact X / Y / W / H, pick a ratio, and resize with the aspect lock while the preview shows the real output pixel count. Rotate and flip are written straight to the file, so the session reset is your safety net rather than a file history.

Annotate, filter, and lift the text out

Arrows, boxes, free-draw and text arrive as layers you can reorder and undo, there are nine preset looks with an intensity slider, and text can be selected out of any image and copied. It is a light editor by design - compositing work belongs in CremaStudio above.

The looks are graded, not stickers

Each preset is a colour-science look rather than a flat overlay, and it shows on skin tones. Ninety of them is a lot to scroll - favourites would help you get back to the four you use.

Live preview on a full-size photo

Flipping presets on a 40-megapixel frame is instant, which is what makes browsing them bearable. Stacking several heavy effects warms up older Intel machines.

Develops a whole roll

Point it at a folder, pick a look, export the lot. It is one look per run - per-photo tweaks inside a batch aren't possible yet.

Nothing leaves the machine

The whole reason to use it over the web services: product shots and portraits stay on your disk, and there is no credit counter. Model quality is fixed - no choice of engine per image.

Good on clean subjects

Hard-edged products and clear portraits cut out cleanly. Fine hair and glass still need a manual pass, as they do everywhere.

Fast enough for a batch

A folder of product shots goes through in one sitting on Apple silicon. Older Intel Macs are noticeably slower.

Never the same desktop twice

Art is generated locally on a schedule, so the wallpaper hunt simply stops. If you fall in love with one, save it - it will not come back on its own.

Palettes make it yours

Feeding it your own colours is what separates it from a wallpaper pack. The styles are eight fixed generators; you tune them rather than write your own.

Quiet in the menu bar

It runs offline with no account and stays out of the way. Multi-display setups are handled, though per-display styles are limited.

Hardware acceleration, locally

Conversions use the Mac's media engine rather than a server queue, so a folder of clips is minutes not hours. Quality settings are presets rather than a full encoder panel.

Eight formats covers the job

The formats people actually get handed - and it batches them in one run. Anything exotic still belongs in ffmpeg.

Nothing uploaded

Client footage and personal video stay on your disk, which rules out most of the online converters. There is no editing here beyond conversion.

The timeline is the product

Cut and trim are meant to feel immediate rather than modal. Written from the brief; the honest test is a 20-minute clip on a mid-range Mac.

Export without a render farm

Local export at sensible presets is the promise. How many codecs and presets ship is the thing to check on release.

Scope kept narrow

Cut, trim, export - no colour suite, no audio mixer. That is a feature until the day you need one of them.