There are plenty of photo cataloging programs out there. Lightroom and Bridge from Adobe are the key products in the category, but there are many other entrants, including Skylum with its Luminar Neo, On1, and Apple Photos on the Mac side. There are even more for Windows users.
What Is Peakto?
For Mac users, Peakto has advanced the state of the art by giving you the ability to describe a photo you are looking for with text, and in my tests, it really works well. With Peakto's conversational search, users can now simply describe an image, and the AI will analyze their entire photo database to retrieve matching images.
According to the company:
This new Conversational Search is performed locally, ensuring the privacy of users’ photos. It can be done in English (or any language, as long as Peakto has access to an internet connection). This prompt search can be associated with Person and Place tags, making it possible, for example, to efficiently find '@Lisa eating ice cream in #Barcelona.' This Conversational Search is complemented by two additional functionalities: similarity search and suggestion search.
Peakto for macOS is a meta-cataloger compatible with the best editing software, including Apple Photos, Lightroom Classic, Luminar AI/Neo, Capture One, Pixelmator Pro, DXO PhotoLab, DXO PureRAW, Aperture, and iView Media.
It seamlessly integrates with all photo folders and even Instagram.
Using Peakto
New users will need to have all their photos cataloged, so point Peakto at folders or existing catalogs. It could take a while, depending on the size of your combined files. Then, it's a matter of bringing up the new Conversational Search dialog. Here are a few examples:
First, since I do a lot of night sky photography, I asked for some nebula photos:
Then, I asked for nebula with blue coloring, and got an excellent set of hits:
With more mundane subjects, I easily got boats at a dock:
And canyons at sunset:
Sometimes, the photos displayed will be dark, maybe part of an HDR group, or some that are just the unprocessed raw files. You can adjust the tolerance of the search to further hone in on what you are looking for, but I found the standard search almost always got what I was looking for.
Of course, like many catalogers, you can search by camera, f-stop, and a myriad of parameters, but in working with Peakto, I found myself mostly coming back to Conversational Search, which is the really unique offering here. Once you have found your photo, you can launch it into any editor you choose.
Here's a search by filename of Milky Way. It found everything. (The list is scrollable, so there are many more hits in this search.)
Is Peakto Worth It?
I'm surprised that this first version it does so well. It seemed to always figure out what I was looking for, with the benefit that it was finding photos I had forgotten I had. This would be a tremendous time-saver for photographers, and as Peakto has features that standard catalog apps have, you're not giving up anything to get the Conversational Search. There are some catalog apps that use AI to generate keywords from identifiable objects in photos, but I've not seen one that does as well as Peakto, especially with some esoteric images, like the astronomical images above.
Peakto is for macOS only, available by subscription or one-time purchase on CYME.io and on the Mac App Store.
Peakto can be tested for free for 15 days (no credit card required). Peakto is available on a monthly plan
at $9.99/month, a new yearly plan at $59.99/year, or for a one-time purchase of $189.
It's an oft-used word, but I think Peakto will be a game changer for photographers with a lot of images that aren't being served well by current catalog programs.
I've given a pretty quick overview of what's new here. If you're interested, I'd suggest the free trial and going through the documentation to see what Peakto will do.
I am very impressed with how Peakto works. I think many of you will be too.
