Have you been thinking…
“I came home with 2,000 photos and no evening to sort them.”
“Why is my photo editor a monthly bill?”
“Why do my photos have to go to the cloud?”
“I just want the sharp ones. Edited. Done.”
yeah.. I’ve been there.
Luke, who built imagic
Built by one photographer who got tired of culling thousands of frames by hand, and shaped by the people who use it.
imagic is built by Luke Fenech, a hobby photographer who got tired of spending entire evenings culling thousands of frames by hand after a day out shooting. He wanted software that did the boring part, finding the sharp, well-composed keepers in a huge folder of RAW files, without asking for a subscription or a copy of every photo he owned.
imagic is local-first: your photos never leave your machine, culling and editing run on your own computer, with no cloud processing. You pay once, with no subscription.
If something breaks, looks wrong, or you just have a question, email snap@imagic.ink. Luke reads every message himself and replies personally. There is no support queue.
Pay once. Keep it. Your photos never leave your computer.
Your photos never leave your machine. No cloud uploads: culling and editing run on your own computer. The app checks its licence and, unless you switch off "Share usage data" in Settings, sends usage counts and crash reports linked to your licence key, never your photos or file names.
Start with a free 500-export trial, no card required, full imagic Max access included. Keep it for a one-time payment from €19, no subscription. Upgrade any time for just the difference.
The roadmap is shaped by real photographers. Your feedback directly influences what gets built next.
Launches in seconds, handles thousands of photos without lag. No Electron bloat, no browser wrapper — native desktop performance.
The scoring engine tracks your editing style and keep/trash decisions, aligning its recommendations with your personal taste over time.
We ship early, ship often, and never break what's working. Every release comes with a detailed changelog and migration notes.
Everything you need for a complete desktop photography workflow.
Four steps, start to finish, with real screenshots from the app. Import, cull, edit, export.
Culling and editing are free to try without limit. The only thing imagic counts against your trial is a finished export, so there is no clock running while you are still deciding what to keep.
Open 1. Import, browse to the folder with your shoot, and click Import Photos. imagic reads JPEG, PNG, TIFF and RAW (CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, ORF, RW2, DNG, PEF and more), subfolders included if you leave Scan subdirectories checked.
Nothing here counts against your trial. Import as many shoots as you want.
The AI scores every photo on sharpness, exposure, noise, composition and detail and sorts them into Keep, Review and Trash. Work through the Review pile with Keep / Trash, or the arrow keys and J, K, L in the Detailed Culling View, and overturn anything the AI got wrong.
Also free: culling thousands of photos costs nothing against the trial.
Pick a colour grade or an experimental look, then adjust white balance, exposure and the rest of the Basic sliders. Apply to This Photo keeps the change on one photo; Apply to All Photos carries it across the whole kept set.
Editing previews your changes live. It does not save a file and does not touch your trial count, exporting is the step that does both.
Open 5. Export and click Export All Kept. The first time, this opens the Export Options dialog: file format (JPEG, PNG or TIFF, with a quality slider for JPEG), an optional resize on the long edge, and a destination, either a fixed export folder or the same folder as your originals.
Leave the subfolder field blank and imagic names one for you per shoot, so exports from different sessions never mix in one folder. If a file with that name already exists, the default is Keep both (rename the new file), not overwrite; switch to Overwrite or Skip in the same dialog if you want different behaviour. Check Auto: export immediately once you are happy with your settings and future exports skip the dialog and reuse them.
This is the step that counts. The free trial covers 500 exports, counted one per photo that finishes exporting, no card required. Importing, culling and editing never use any of it.
I culled and edited a shoot but nothing ever got exported.
Culling and editing only prepare photos, they do not write files on their own. Open 5. Export and click Export All Kept (or Ctrl+E from anywhere). If you have analysed or edited photos but not exported any yet, Home shows a reminder with a Go to Export link, use it, that is exactly the step it is pointing at.
I exported, but the folder I'm looking in is empty.
imagic groups every export into a subfolder named for that shoot, inside your export folder (or inside an "edited" subfolder next to your originals, if you chose "Same as source folder"). The files are rarely loose in the top-level folder you set in Settings. Use Open Folder on the Export page, it always opens the subfolder from your latest session.
Re-exporting the same shoot is leaving numbered duplicates like photo_1.jpg.
That is the Keep both conflict policy working as designed, it is the default so a re-export can never silently overwrite a file you meant to keep. If you want a re-export to replace the previous files instead, open the Export Options dialog and switch "If a file already exists" to Overwrite, or to Skip to leave existing files untouched and only write the new ones.
Export is taking a long time on a big batch.
TIFF files, a large resize, and a watermark each add processing per photo, so they slow a batch down more than a same-size JPEG export. If you only need the originals of your kept photos and not a re-render, turn on Copy originals in the Export Options dialog, it copies the source files byte-for-byte instead of rendering them, which is the fastest path and the one to use for a culling-only pass.
imagic is scriptable from the command line and, as of this release, reachable by AI agents through a built-in MCP server. Full setup guide: imagic.ink/mcp.
Requires imagic Max (the free 500-export trial includes it). Headless CLI and MCP are not available on Lite or Plus.
The headless CLI has been part of imagic for a while, no AI client required:
--headless Run without opening the GUI--scan DIR Catalog every photo in the given folder, including subfolders--analyse Run AI quality scoring and duplicate detection on the scanned photos--export Batch export the kept photos with your current settingsClaude Code (pip install, MCP is an optional extra):
Claude Code (packaged Windows app):
Claude Desktop, Cursor, and other clients that read a JSON config file all accept the same shape, add it to that client's MCP config, full snippets on the MCP setup page.
Once connected, an AI agent can call the same actions available in the app: scan a folder and cull it with reasons attached, list and inspect photos, apply adjustments or a saved preset across a set, export the keepers, and run or apply your style calibration. See imagic.ink/mcp for the full breakdown.
The first time you connect an AI agent, imagic runs a short guided calibration. It pulls up to 8 scenario photos from your own library (fewer if your library does not cover every scenario type yet) and asks you to edit them as you normally would. It learns the exposure, color, and crop pattern from those photos and applies it on future automated passes. Re-run the calibration any time your style changes. Start with the guided 8-photo session, then train the same profile on your whole imagic-edited library with the learn_style_from_library tool, as many photos as you want. Within a single shoot you can also edit five and match the rest: the match_style_from_examples tool copies the look of your edited examples onto the shoot's remaining photos without changing your saved profile.
"imagic-mcp" isn't found. There is no separate command to install: the app is the server. Use the full-path form instead ("C:\Program Files\imagic\imagic.exe" --mcp on Windows, /Applications/imagic.app/Contents/MacOS/imagic --mcp on macOS) and re-run the claude mcp add command.
The agent connects but tools fail with a licensing error. Headless and MCP access both require an activated license, the same trial key or paid license used by the desktop app. Activate it once from the normal desktop app, headless and MCP mode reuse that activation automatically. There is no separate headless activation flag.
"This feature is part of imagic Max." Headless and MCP access are Max-only. If you activated a Lite or Plus license, or your trial expired, the app blocks the tools and shows this message with a link to imagic.ink/mcp. Start a free 500-export trial (full Max access) or upgrade your existing license for the difference from the same page.