I’m opening 50 TestFlight spots for Iris, a new photo and video library app for Mac. It works with your existing libraries, whether they’re in Apple Photos or folders of images stored locally or on external drives.
https://retina.studio/iris/preview/
Feedback very much appreciated.
@tylerhall Turning Iris loose on my NAS archive drive, excited to see what it pulls up!
(and how long it takes)
What a great use case. I think I'll do the same!
@emorydunn For my own info...is your NAS connected directly to your Mac or over the network?
My library has ~250,000 items. When importing from an external ssd, a full analysis (which includes all the ML tagging and face detection) will take around 24-36 hours. The initial import (file scanning + EXIF data) is much faster.
Looking forward to hearing how it goes for you.
@tylerhall It's connected through a 10GbE switch at my desk, so as close to direct as possible. I don't have nearly that many items, but it seems to be plugging away nicely.
Doesn't appear to be reading any DNGs from my Leica though, but there are still activities running.
@tylerhall woah, this is very interesting!
Say I have a library stored on an external SSD, does Iris copy over everything to create its library or does it only read the files that are on the external drive?
@nileane Iris never modifies or moves your files. When you add a new source (you can have multiple sources!), the app generates thumbnails and indexes everything it can about your photos and videos.
Once that's done, you're free to eject the drive and go hide it in your attic or bank vault. You can then keep browsing and searching your library with Iris. Only need to re-attach the drive if you want the original files.
It's designed this way for folks (like me!) who don't have enough internal Mac storage for all their photos. It's also super helpful because when you do go looking for a specific photo, Iris can tell you which drive it's on.
@tylerhall sounds good. I read your website about the app before joining Testflight and it listed why it needs network connections and that sounded very clearly spelled out. But when launched seeing these two extra connections were surprising. Understanable, but surprising.
On separate note — when importing from Photos library: do you copy photos to another location, or just going over each photo and collecting info? (Sorry if I missed explanation)
@sashk I should probably starting using "indexing" rather than "importing" in my documentation.
Iris never modifies, moves, or copies your (original) files. It indexes all the data it can about each one and generates a private cache of thumbnails.
@tylerhall Love the Insight section. idk, maybe I want too much, but would it be possible to click on “Golden hour" photos number to see all of them? or, let’s say photos taken at 11am? On Wednesday? and, most importantly, This day in history.
Is it too much to ask? :)
Also, somehow it doesn't show my current phone (17 Pro Max) in list of cameras, despite I've been using it for awhile already so it should have some photos. Or is it because import still didn't complete? (EXIF was done)
@sashk Insights is desperately in need of some love - and will get it soon.
In the meantime, have you discovered the Filter command? You can build simple (or advanced!) search queries. Including filtering only to show golden hour photos.
@tylerhall Ah, nice! Will definitely try.
Another issue I run into is Import getting stuck. I see bunch of ML/Transcription/Search running, but after a while it will stop updating. Restarting app will restart until next time it will get stuck. Is there a log which can help you to debug?
I missed the beta this time round, but can I still just say, the feature to show certain people at specific ages looks amazing. I’m currently creating smart folders to achieve this, but it’s incredibly messy.
I’m looking forward to seeing this come to market.
I am having issues with signing into Apple which is restricting me doing a bug report. So dropping it here instead (i think it is my issue not a problem with iris).
Iris is showing capture time for “most photos” as 4am. Even allowing for time difference to where I am currently (2 hours behind home). 6am would not be correct. More likely to be 6pm.
It’s my Apple photos library, which is local on my M1 MacBook Pro Max (running 26.4) with full files saved local.
@tylerhall I’ve just tried the beta and I love it! I’ve wanting something like this for years. I have a couple of questions:
a) existing image/video metadata (keywords & descriptions) are not imported into Iris. I don’t know if that is a bug or it’s just by design but would be great to be able to preserve that manually input data and use it on search’s
@tylerhall
b) again, maybe a bug or maybe not even possible but when adding a folder as a source that contains iPhone images with Live Photo and/or portrait data, iOS photo library merges all the files into one but on Iris each is a different file (the short video, the normal image and the portrait image). Would be great if those items are merged into one on the library
Anyway… I love the app, congrats!
@tylerhall Basically mirror what the macOS app does, like the stock Photos app. I just want something simple, future proof, safe and private.
No need for “Memories” or other generated content. No need for many views, just a grid of photos with zoom options. Hidden and password protected items would also be great.
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