--- title: Introducing: PhotoStructure! url: https://photostructure.com/about/introducing-photostructure/ description: Learn why we're building PhotoStructure. date: 2019-03-26 keywords: deduplication, library, backup, metadata --- A long time ago, in a different millennium, a young nerd convinced his beautiful wife to give up her [SLR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-lens_reflex_camera) film camera, and switch to digital. Boy, was _that_ a mistake. ## 📷 Physical vs Digital With physical, printed photos, you put them in a box or in an album, and they're on that shelf, over there. You can walk over and touch them. {{< figure src="/img/2019/01/IMG_20190114_095856.jpg" caption="Let's be real, though, when do you ever open those boxes of photos?" >}} Digital photos are different. Hard drives fail. Backups break. Online and desktop photo services [are doomed to disappear](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/29/style/digital-photo-storage-purge.html). _Entropy always wins._ ## 💾 My digital disarray {{< figure src="/img/2018/12/IMG_20181208_214145.jpg" caption="hard drive overflow from only one of my boxes of old drives" >}} In my fight against entropy, over the last 20 years I've amassed several boxes stacked full of old hard drives from backups and old laptops and crashed servers. My family and I only had access to a small fraction of our photos and videos. **What I had** was a disorganized mess: - many, many duplicates from old backups strewn across thousands of directories - lower quality images from online photo service backups - a bunch of unreadable or corrupted photos from failed backups and [bit rot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation) and buggy photo service exports **What I wanted** was a single, [automatically organized](/getting-started/automatic-library-organization/) and [de-duplicated](/faq/what-do-you-mean-by-deduplicate/) folder structure with all my original photos and videos. I couldn't find software that did this, so I built it. When I got this working, though, I found that I was back to the boxes-of-photos problem: sure, you have the photo, _somewhere_, but it's almost impossible, and _certainly not fun_, to find anything other than the latest photos you've taken. Your memories get ignored; you might as well have them in a dusty box next to your old photos. I resolved to make browsing a lifetime of memories fast, simple, and delightful. After a lot of experimentation and some innovation, I realized that the rich [metadata](/metadata-what-lurks-inside-your-photos/) in these files could automatically provide **structure** to your library (see? Photo*Structure*), and this led to inventing both **streams** and **samples**. ## 📚 Related streams of photos With physical photos, you have to decide what box or album to put the photo in. But digital photos don't need to live in only one place. PhotoStructure tags all your photos and videos automatically with _paths_, like - `When/2019/January`, and - `Camera/Apple/iPhone XS`, and - `Where/France/Paris/Musee d'Orsay`. When viewing a specific photo or video, it's easy to browse "nearby" photos and videos _for all related tags._ It makes for much more expressive and fluid navigation. ## 🎨 Samples to keep you interested If you've used photo management software, the "home page" typically shows you your last-captured images. When I initially built PhotoStructure and used it on my own photos, I followed this approach. And I was surprised to find it uninteresting. The human brain is amazing at image recognition and pattern matching. We recognize patterns effortlessly, so easily that we find repetition boring. We find new patterns and images interesting. I had quickly tired of seeing those same last-20-odd photos. I never opened up PhotoStructure because, just like that box of photos on the shelf, it was _work_ to see what was in my library. I changed PhotoStructure to show a random "sample" of images, and it felt like _serendipity_. When you click `When`, you'll get a "taste" of images from every year. Every PhotoStructure page is different, and **you'll find yourself rediscovering and enjoying memories you haven't seen for years and years.** ## 🌟 How else is PhotoStructure different? PhotoStructure is designed to be a safe, permanent home for all your photos and videos. Things run a bit differently than you're used to. **1. You're running the show.** - PhotoStructure runs on _your_ computer. The [laptop you've got on the shelf](/where-to-install/) will happily run PhotoStructure as long as it runs macOS, Windows 10+, Linux, has at least 4GB of RAM, and has [lots of free disk space](/how-much-disk-space-do-i-need-for-my-photostructure-library/). - This isn't yet another cloud-based photo service that will go away in a year, along with your library. Your photos and videos safely stay with you, and always will. **2. If you have a spare 2 minutes, you could be using PhotoStructure.** - PhotoStructure has **no learning curve.** The installation takes less than a minute, the welcome page has a couple of questions, and you're done. You won't need any hour-long YouTube tutorials to get started. - Library imports run automatically and **politely** in the background so you can still use your computer. If you start a game, for example, PhotoStructure background jobs will automatically pause. - Updates are installed automatically. **3. I don't have investors pushing unsustainable business economics.** > If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold. - [Andrew Lewis](https://www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven-discontent#3256046) - PhotoStructure hasn't taken any [venture capital](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital). I'm 100% [bootstrapped](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrepreneurship#Bootstrapping). - PhotoStructure's revenue only comes from you, our users. I don't make money through advertising, or any other forms of "data sharing." **4. I embrace existing open standards and tools**. - PhotoStructure doesn't hide all your photos and videos in a proprietary library. PhotoStructure _can_ [organize your files](/automatic-library-organization), but you can opt out of automatic organization, and still enjoy the other features of PhotoStructure. - PhotoStructure doesn't require any proprietary or expensive hardware. - PhotoStructure libraries are cross-platform: you can create your library on an external drive attached to a Mac, move the drive to your Windows computer, and import the photos on that computer, and everything _just works._ **5. If _PhotoStructure, Inc._ goes away, _PhotoStructure_ won't.** - The code that powers your library will be open-sourced in the event of business closure, so you can continue to run PhotoStructure on your own hardware. I've written a lot of [open source software](https://github.com/mceachen) in the past, and substantial parts of PhotoStructure are already open source, including [exiftool-vendored](https://photostructure.github.io/exiftool-vendored.js/), [mkver](https://photostructure.github.io/mkver/), and [batch-cluster](https://photostructure.github.io/batch-cluster.js/). ## 🚀 That all sounds great. What's ready now? The first edition of PhotoStructure is focused on high-quality metadata extraction and inference, and has a simple web-based interface that implements hierarchical tags, streams, and samples. PhotoStructure for Desktop runs on macOS, Windows 10, and Ubuntu Desktop. Updates are automatic. I'm currently building out [secure sharing, simple editing, location tagging, and face tagging](/about/whats-next/). New features will be driven by beta user feedback. {{< figure src="/img/2018/12/ps-bg-2.jpg" caption="PhotoStructure's home page. \"Tag samples\" show different thumbnails every time." >}} ## ❤️ Mea culpa; [sign up today](/#mc_embed_signup). I've spent more than a decade of my life working in the internet ads business (commonly called "adtech"). There's one constant in adtech: **more data = more money**. The ability to monetize a visitor is directly proportional to the amount of information an advertising platform has for that given visitor. Photos and videos are [richly personal, valuable data for advertisers](/metadata-what-lurks-inside-your-photos/). It astounds me that we freely share our most intimate images, and the data within, with companies that are _not_ aligned with our best interests. **The images of your life should stay yours and not be used to classify you into some consumption demographic.** PhotoStructure isn't just an effort of love. It's also a small act of penance. Update August 12, 2021: **The first stable release of PhotoStructure, [v1.0.0](/about/v-1-0/), is [now available to install](/install/).** _Thanks to all the friends and family that read drafts of this post and shared their feedback!_