PicSiftEvery score, explained.
PicSift ranks a pile of photos best-first on your Mac, then shows its working — six named qualities per shot, priorities you can move, and every model credited in the app.
No. 01 · Model Library
Named models
The hood opens.
Every model, credited
PicSift's scoring rests on open, published research. The in-app Model Library lists each model by name with its origin, what it was trained on, its licence, and a link to the paper.
Every score, broken out
A photo's number is not handed down. Open any frame and the six qualities are listed separately, in plain language, so you can see which one placed it where it is.
Every weight, yours
How much each quality counts is a dial, not a secret. Move the priorities and the library re-ranks in front of you; Smart Auto reads the set and sets a strong starting point.
No. 02 · Score and sift
Six qualities
Best-first, in one pass.
What is measured
Overall Appeal, Sharpness, Lighting, Composition, Faces and Subject — six independent scores per photo, not one opaque verdict.
What comes back
Every shot lands in a tier — Excellent, Good, Average, Below Average — and the whole set arrives sorted best-first, whether it is two hundred frames or a few thousand.
What you do next
Import from a folder, a drive or your Photos library; score; sift best-to-worst, keeping or skipping; export the keepers to a folder or a Photos album.
No. 03 · Finding things
Search, people, duplicates
No tags, no setup.
Visual Search
Describe what you remember — “kids playing in autumn leaves”, “Seattle skyline at sunset” — and PicSift finds it. On-device CLIP models, no tagging beforehand.
People
Face clustering groups the library by person, so you can name the regulars and pull everything they appear in.
Duplicates & albums
Near-identical shots are found and offered together, so you keep the sharpest rather than all five. Smart Albums gather your best work as it is scored.
No. 04 · Photos stay yours
On your machine
Private by default.
Scoring, search, face grouping and duplicate detection all run on your Mac, using CoreML and Apple Vision. There are no accounts. No photos, scores or embeddings are uploaded. There is no analytics and no telemetry, and the diagnostic share is something you trigger and send yourself.
PicSift does not contact any Syrinx Ventures server at all — the only connections it makes are to check for updates, download optional models, sync your own curation decisions through your iCloud account if you turn that on, and verify your purchase with the App Store.
No. 05 · Where it runs
Mac today
iPad coming.
PicSift is available on the Mac App Store now, and an iPad version is on the way. It is one app and one purchase: Universal Purchase means a version bought on one platform unlocks the others, and Family Sharing is supported.
Finding and exporting your best shots is free. A one-time purchase removes the session and export limits and adds People browsing, tags and advanced Smart Albums. There is no subscription.
Contact
- [email protected] Questions, bugs and feature requests. Replies are usually same-day during the week.
- [email protected] Privacy and data requests.