Peakto 1.0

This sounds like a super useful app, but also one where a trial with my own data is absolutely necessary, especially at this not-insignificant price.

Photo Mechanic Plus (https://home.camerabits.com/tour-photo-mechanic-plus/) is $40 more but offers a free trial and the peace of mind of an old reliable Mac & Windows app.

"Statistics show that 95% of software downloads do not result in actual use."--Way to sound like a complete jerk! Seriously, just when I think marketing folks have too much say on most websites someone comes along and intentionally uses isolating language. Why not just say, we can't afford the bandwidth to give trial downloads or, maybe even use the App Store.

My guess: the 700Mb comes from their deep learning model, because quite honestly software like that should be >1000x smaller otherwise.

So I think they want it to not run like molasses when processing your photos the first time you run it. So they don't want to send every picture to a server, which would also cost money. Instead they want to run it on your computer.

They also don't want to pay for people to give it a shot, and go "meh!", and delete it.

And may not want people downloading their software, and reusing the deep learning model's parameters without paying them... because that could be a neat opensource project on GitHub. ('installation step 2: install peako but don't run it')

The real issue is that since Aperture, no one application can do everything, for every camera. Everything, being defined as:
- import images direct from camera to the catalog structure.
- view all those images chronologically, so I can browse my life vis photography.
- manual and saved search automatic organisation of images.
- RAW processing / editing.
- automatic export for iOS devices, where scaled quality versions specific to the device that made them, can be synced back to the device - so my iPhone images go back to my iPhone, iPad images to iPad etc
- achieve all of this without using a cloud service.

Capture One: supports all my image types, from iOS devices, my DSLR, has great image processing engine etc, but can’t import from iOS devices directly, nor can it integrate with iTunes etc to export back to the iOS device.

Photos: Lacks multidisplay workflow(?) and advanced organisation, doesn’t handle referenced libraries the way Aperture could, but can import / export from iOS devices.

Peakto looks like it solves the problem of needing a meta-library that can see all the images in all your different post-Aperture solutions.

Though, currently I’m solving this by using saved searches / smart folders stored on my external photo storage drive, which physically stores images in folders based on camera, then year, month, day. My suspicion is my next step from here is to use Hazel or Folder actions to create an automatic scale-and-copy action, for each iOS camera folder, when it receives new entries, to generate the lower-res versions, and syncing those back based on Folder, rather than Aperture / Photos libraries..

Thanks folks for all the very interesting comments.
We are the makers of Peakto and here are some answers:
- an AppStore version will be available soon (it has been accepted by Apple) after some final polishing. Comes with a trial period.
- a lightweight version (120Mb) of Peakto will ba available probably next week with a trial too. So everyone will be able to download it.
- we can afford the bandwidth. Our position has nothing to do with that. It is about making sure that every bit counts. Since one of our future direction is to help people manage the copies/duplicates and get rid of the unnecessary storage or unnecessary images, we cannot start our journey without being consistent.

Keep up the good work @mjtsai