I've been playing with Peakto for two days. Lots of fun!

I like: 

- Relatively easy setup and ingestion. For the first time ever I know exactly how many pics I have on my computer (137 654). Then I saw that's not counting my Apple photos, so add another 56 000 or so. Is there no way of seeing a grand total?

Edit: This is an interesting one. Since yesterday when I made a note of the totals above, my All Sources total has now jumped to 248 138 versions, or 96 846 "Instants" which I assume are the same photos in various formats if I understand correctly, and is the total for both photos on my hard drive and in Apple photos. So does the ingestion sort of 'mature' or does it simply take time to collect everything? Either way, nice to see everything in one place. 

- Very, very nice to see photos I've forgotten about! Also quite a few I have no idea where or why they're here. 

In general I like the AI categories. But it's fickle and very open to error. Of those 137K the AI thinks only 32 have people in them. Why? And what is "Double Split Complementary? There's a lot of refinement to do here, see my note below. But it's a VERY good start.

The interface is well-designed and I like the grey background.

- Large collection of sort modes, although I have no idea what a 'technical score" etc is.

What I'd like to see:

- An easy way to gather, view and delete duplicates. the trash can option is cumbersome and doesn't really improve on a standard delete function. I Like the way Apple does it in iOS, one click and thousands of duplicates disappear.

- The obvious requests and I'm sure you're working on it: Editing metadata, including adding keywords.

- Use of the Esc key to switch views, like in Lightroom. 

- Also on your to-do list I'm sure, keyboard shortcuts and programmable use. Photomechanic is brilliant at this. Tooltip hints.

- I know everyone's saying people don't read manuals, but if you did compile one (or at least a glossary), I would be forever grateful because too much of what's in Peakto is not obvious. It feels like I'm learning a new language without a dictionary.

The negatives: 

Lots of features don't work, or maybe I don't use them, correctly. Eg the Filter By Keyword section only includes AI keywords, not keywords pulled from Lightroom.

Peakto crashed my 2023 16Gb Mac Mini, which was a first. Seems Peakto is a real memory hog. Also slows down my computer noticeably. Internal SSD is 40% full, so that's not the problem.

General

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm sceptical about AI here. The implementation is too general, to unfocused. The keywording is one example. How did the AI missed that I have 20 000 photos taken in Venice? And if the AI picked out the food photos with spaghetti in them, I'd be impressed. Perhaps it's early days, I'm sure the implementation will improve with time.

I'm sure Peakto is on a major development trajectory. I'll be checking back every now and again to see how it goes. But to fork out $10 right now a month on top of my Adobe, Spotify, Apple Music, online storage,  Netflix, Youtube and I don't even know how many more subs, it's simply not that compelling enough (yet). Maybe think of a pay-one solution as an (affordable!!) option. Perhaps for professional photographers it's no issue, but I think it puts Peakto out of the reach of most hobbyists.

Good luck and watching Peakto's progress with interest.

Charl Durand