PhotoStructure v0.6

We’re excited to announce a new release of PhotoStructure! 🔗

This is the biggest update to PhotoStructure ever, containing over 30 new features and bug fixes, many of them driven by beta user feedback.

If you’ve signed up for beta access, expect an invitation email with installation instructions soon.

🍎 macOS Catalina support 🔗

PhotoStructure is now notarized, supports light and dark modes, and has a new spiffy icon.

🎉 Improved asset merging 🔗

As your photos and videos are imported into your library, your files are checked against your current library’s contents to see if the file is something new, or if the file is a variation of a previously-seen file. Examples of variations include:

  • JPEG+RAW pairs. Digital SLRs support capturing both a smaller JPEG image as well as a much larger “digital negative,” or “RAW” file that offers more dynamic color and exposure information for post-capture editing. Same image, different format, and different files.
  • Edits. If you’ve made edits to an image, the version that will be shown in PhotoStructure will be the last-updated version. If you’ve made substantial edits to the image (for example by cropping, or changing to grayscale), PhotoStructure will consider it a different image.
  • Cloud-based photo services. Many cloud photo services will only store a reduced-resolution, or “lossy,” version of your original image. Some services delete the majority of metadata associated to your original file, and some even change the values of the tags they retain, including time zone information.

In prior versions, PhotoStructure used 2 “file fingerprints” to match files: the file’s SHA, and a carefully chosen subset of metadata values. Unfortunately, several scenarios have proven this approach to be insufficient for correct merging.

This new version of PhotoStructure generates more than 10 different fingerprints for every image and video. These are taken from both metadata as well as actual image contents. New heuristics were added to compare those fingerprints during library imports. This new approach has proven to be robust even against the worst lossy cloud-based photo services.

If you’ve got an existing PhotoStructure library, depending on the contents of your library, we may not have correctly matched images together in all circumstances.

Existing libraries will be upgraded automatically, but requires PhotoStructure to visit every file in your library. This will repair previously mismatched assets, as well as optimize preview images and transcoded videos. Please plug in or mount any drives you have imported previously to make sure your library’s metadata is updated, and know that this process will take some time, given the size of your library and the speed of your computer and hard drives.

Thank you for your patience! ⭐

🔁 Rotations! 🔗

See an image or video with the wrong orientation? Click on an asset, and hit r (or use the rotate icon in the header bar) to rotate counter-clockwise 90 degrees. Hit r or click the rotation icon multiple times in a row to rotate more than 90 degrees. Saving happens in the background, and is non-destructive, storing the correct orientation in a sidecar file.

🔍 Zoom on desktop 🔗

✨ When viewing an image full-screen, you can now type ‘z’, or single-click in the middle of the photo, click the new zoom icon in the upper right corner, or mousewheel-up to zoom into the image. Moving the mouse pans the position of the zoomed-in image. Mousewheel controls the scale of zoom. Typing z, the esc key, clicking in the middle of the screen, or clicking the zoom icon will return to normal mode.

🔍 Zoom on mobile 🔗

✨ To zoom into an image or video on a tablet or phone, just pinch out on the image. As you zoom in, higher resolution images will be loaded in-place of the current image.

🗃️ Improvements to the info panel 🔗

View asset information by typing ‘i’ in the asset view, or clicking the “i” in the upper-right corner of the screen. This version adds a couple new features to this panel:

  1. File-specific metadata is included by each asset file, including resolution and file size.
  2. A new “…” button by each asset file, which allows you to either download that file or open the file in the Finder (on Mac) or the Explorer (on Windows)
  3. When you hover over a file, the full-screen preview changes to render the original file, so you can compare different variants of the current asset.

🎥 Lens tagging 🔗

✨ If a photo or video has lens metadata, that will be added as a tag, and is navigable via the new root tag, “Lens”.

🏁 Are you in the beta yet? 🔗

Please share your feedback and ideas with us, both good and bad at [email protected]. Your opinion and experience is super valuable to us.

The beta will be ending soon! 🔗

This version will be one of the last released before PhotoStructure becomes generally available. There will be free and paid tiers.

If you aren’t yet in the beta, sign up today!

But wait, there’s more 🎉 🔗

Check out the improvements in version 0.8!

Photo of Matthew

Hi! I’m Matthew, the author of PhotoStructure. I’m a dad, amateur photographer, and author of open source, adtech, fintech, and edtech software since the turn of the millennium. He/him. I am building a self-hosted, safe, and fast new home for all your photos and videos.
Your memories deserve PhotoStructure. Try it out for free!