Adding Images and Videos into Peakto - Getting Started

1.3 Adding images and videos to Peakto

You can add 2 types of content to Peakto:
  1. Files inside folders
  2. Catalogs of one of the supported types (Aperture, Lightroom, CaptureOne Pro, iView Media, all flavours of Luminar)

1.3.1 Adding folders

Simply drag any folder from the Finder to the Peakto user interface or alternatively, choose File → Attach Folders... from the File Menu. You can also use the global “+” button at the top of the interface to reveal the Add menu and click on the Folder icon. Your folder can contain images or any of the video formats natively supported by macOS (mov, mp4, etc.).

1.3.2 Adding catalogs

If you know the location of your catalogs, you can simply drag the catalog file into the Peakto user interface. It works for :
  1. Apple Aperture catalogs
  2. Apple Photos libraries
  3. Lightroom .lrcat catalog files
  4. Capture One Pro .cocatalog catalog files
  5. Capture One Pro .cosessiondb session files
  6. Luminar catalog files
  7. iView Media Pro .ivc catalog files
  8. Etc...


Note: you don’t need a running copy of these apps for Peakto to be able to open the catalogs/libraries as Peakto natively understands these formats. This is especially important for older apps (Aperture, iView Media) that do not run on modern Macs anymore.

Alternatively you can choose File → Attach Catalogs... from the File Menu or use the global “+” button at the bottom of the interface to reveal the Add menu and choose “Attach Catalogs...” item. Both actions will reveal the catalog browser that will scan all your attached drives for catalogs.


From the Catalog Browser you can select any detected catalog from the list on the left and attach it to Peakto.

Peakto 2.0 introduces robust support for videos, making them first-class citizens in the Peakto ecosystem. Videos can now be integrated seamlessly, whether they come from files and folders or existing catalogs that support video formats, such as Lightroom, Capture One, and Apple Photos.

If you have previously ingested a Lightroom catalog with videos in Peakto 1.0, those videos would not have been visible. To make them appear in Peakto 2.0, you will need to perform a deep sync. Once synced, videos from your catalogs will be displayed in Peakto.

1.3.3 Validating catalogs

Before attaching a catalog, Peakto will perform some tests on the content to detect possible issues such as missing image volumes, catalog version incompatibilities. All issues are displayed in the Preflight dialog. You should take a moment to read about the detected issues and decide whether it is OK to proceed or whether you should perform some actions before. Peakto tries to suggest some possible actions.



The most common issue is ‘offline masters’. This happens if you ingest a catalog that is on an attached disk but the referenced files are on an off-line media. It is highly recommended to have all referenced media online when adding content in Peakto as Peakto will sometimes need to access the original media for situations where:
  1. no preview exists in the catalog
  2. some metadata is missing in the catalog and Peakto considers that it is safer to grab it from the file itself (this is the case for dates in Capture One videos, as these dates are missing in Capture One, but present in the file itself)
  3. you are ingesting videos. Peakto will build a small summary video by scanning the original media
It is however fine to proceed if the media cannot easily be put online. The results will be:
  1. less accurate previews, or smaller previews
  2. missing metadata (all the catalog metadata will be present, but some additional metadata will be missing)
  3. missing summary videos

1.3.4 Viewing all the sources

Once ingested, all sources appear in the sidebar and are grouped by type. Next to the source name, Peakto will display some status icons (see below) indicating:
  1. if the source is online / offline
  2. if the source requires synchronisation
  3. if the source is open
Many commands can be accessed from the source’s contextual menu:


Note: As discussed above, Peakto can now run in the background when the main window is closed, maintaining synchronization with source folders and catalogs. Frequency Control: Users can set synchronization intervals (e.g., every 15 minutes, hourly). Minimal Resources: Background operation uses minimal resources, ensuring Pictor is up-to- date upon opening.

1.3.5 Understanding the ingestion process

When a source of images (folders or catalogs) is ingested in Peakto the following happens behind the scenes:
  1. The source is fully read and the metadata of all images is retrieved. This includes metadata that is embedded in the image files, or metadata present in sidecars (XMP,...)
  2. The source organisational structure is fully read. This includes folder hierarchy for folders, and full catalog structure (albums1, folders, projects, ...) for catalogs.
  3. Some thumbnails are constructed for each version present in the catalogs or folders.
  4. The instants (see later) are resolved.
Once these tasks are finished, the source can be viewed, searched, filtered, etc...

However, another long running task is spawned that will analyse all images and run some AI-based detections in order to build all keywords, scores used by Panorama. This long running task can be cancelled and resumed at any point later on.

1.3.6 The Peakto catalog

Peakto builds its own catalog with the ingested data. The design principles behind the Peakto catalog are the following:
  1. We do not create copies of the master images: when reading a catalog we do not copy any of the images.
  2. We minimise the amount of disk space used: the thumbnails that we create are small and we rely on the ability to access higher resolution previews inside the underlying catalogs or folders on demand.
  3. We allow working with offline data: you can index catalogs or folders that are on external drives and disconnect those drives. Peakto will let you annotate, organize, search,... even if the content is offline.
  4. We try to create previews of the images that most accurately reflect the aspect of the image in the source catalog. If you ingest a Luminar catalog with heavy edits on all the images, we will try to access the previews that Luminar has generated in order to display the versions in Peakto. When such previews are not available we indicate it.
The location of the Peakto catalog is by default the Peakto folder inside your Pictures folder. This folder can be moved to another location and Peakto will ask you to point to the new
location upon restart.

You can also have multiple catalogs in multiple locations if you prefer to work this way. Peakto mimics the behaviour of the Apple Photos app when it comes to switching catalogs:
  1. you can use the Option key pressed when launching Peakto to display a dedicated dialog allowing you to choose a catalog location or pick an existing location
  2. You can access the current location in the preferences screen and change it from there.


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