What imagic Does, and What It Does Not Do
imagic is a desktop app for Windows and macOS built around one specific job: getting a photographer from a folder full of unsorted images to a clean, confirmed set of selects as quickly as possible. It scores every photo it imports for sharpness, closed eyes, and composition, and it groups near-identical burst frames automatically, so a first-time user spends their review time on judgement calls rather than scrolling past hundreds of near-duplicate shots one at a time. All of that analysis happens locally on your machine; photos are never uploaded anywhere as part of the process.
It is worth being clear about scope before installing anything. imagic does not do cloud sync, does not have a mobile app, does not support tethered shooting or printing, and does not include layers, plugins, or generative retouching tools. It also does not merge HDR brackets or stitch panoramas, and it is not a full digital asset manager for cataloging a decade of archives. What it does well is the specific stage most photographers find tedious: sorting a large shoot down to the frames worth editing, then handling basic batch adjustments and export for those selects. This guide walks through that process end to end, from install to your first exported gallery, using the same five-step sequence, Import, Analyse, Review, Cull, Export, that the app is built around.
Step 1: Install and Start Your Free Trial
Download the installer for Windows or macOS from imagic.ink/desktop and run it. The 7-day free trial starts automatically and includes every feature in the app, with no card details required to begin. Once installed, opening imagic for the first time lands you on the Import screen, ready to point the app at your first shoot.
If you only need to edit a single photo and are not ready to install anything yet, imagic also offers a free single-photo web editor at imagic.ink/editor, which runs directly in the browser. It is a good way to get a feel for the editing tools before committing to the desktop app's full culling workflow.
Step 2: Import Your First Shoot
The first stage in imagic's workflow is Import. Point the app at the folder containing your photos, whether that is a folder of RAW files copied straight from a camera card, or any existing folder of images you want to cull. imagic reads files in place rather than moving or copying them without your instruction, so your originals stay exactly where they already are on disk. For your first session, a folder of a few hundred images is a reasonable size to learn the workflow on before running a full multi-thousand-frame shoot through it.
imagic supports nine RAW formats directly: CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, ORF, RW2, DNG, and PEF, along with standard JPEG, PNG, and TIFF files. Mixed folders containing several formats at once, common if you shoot with more than one camera body, import without any extra configuration.
Step 3: Let Analyse Score Every Photo
The Analyse step is where the AI does its work, and it is the stage that changes the shape of your review time most. imagic processes every image in the imported folder, scores each one for sharpness, closed eyes, and composition, and groups near-duplicate and burst frames using perceptual similarity so that a ten-shot burst of the same moment is treated as one group rather than ten separate decisions. For a folder of around 1,000 images, this step typically takes somewhere between five and fifteen minutes, and it runs unattended, so it is a reasonable point to step away rather than watch a progress bar.
Step 4: Review the AI's Suggestions
The Review step presents imagic's analysis results for your confirmation. You will see individual scores for each image, burst groups with the highest-scoring frame from each group already highlighted, and an overall ranking across the shoot. This is the stage where your own judgement matters most: go through the results and confirm, override, or reject the AI's suggestions as you see fit. The scoring is measuring objective technical quality, sharpness, whether eyes are open, basic compositional signals, not artistic intent, so a deliberately motion-blurred creative shot may score low on sharpness even though you know it is a keeper. That is expected behavior, not a flaw in the scoring, and it is exactly why the Review step keeps a human in the loop rather than fully automating the decision.
For your first session, resist the urge to second-guess every single frame. Trust the pre-selected best shot within each burst group unless you have a specific reason to override it, and focus your attention on the images sitting in the middle of the quality range, the ones that are neither obviously strong nor obviously weak. Very high and very low scoring images tend to be easy, fast decisions; the middle tier is where a photographer's judgement actually adds value over the raw score.
Step 5: Cull and Export Your Selects
The Cull step confirms your selections and separates selects from rejects. Confirmed selects can be copied to a dedicated folder, processed through imagic's own built-in RAW engine, or prepared directly for batch export. The Export step handles output to JPEG, TIFF, or PNG at whatever resolution and quality setting you configure, and that configuration can be saved as a preset so you are not rebuilding export settings from scratch on your next shoot.
imagic also includes batch editing and one-click styles, so a consistent look can be applied across your whole set of selects in one pass rather than adjusting each image individually. For your very first session, keep this step simple: export at full resolution in your usual delivery format, and save exploring the style presets for once you are comfortable with the core Import, Analyse, Review, Cull, Export sequence.
Reading Your First Quality Scores Correctly
New users sometimes expect the AI scores to match their own gut reaction to every single image, and get thrown off when they occasionally disagree. It helps to understand what the scoring actually measures: sharpness looks at fine detail and edge definition, the closed-eyes check flags frames where a subject blinked, and composition scoring looks at proxy signals like subject placement and framing rather than making a subjective artistic judgement. None of these dimensions capture mood, storytelling, or the specific expression that makes one frame from a burst the obvious choice over a technically similar one next to it.
Because of that, the scores are best treated as a fast, reliable first filter rather than a final verdict. They are very good at correctly identifying blur, closed eyes, and duplicate frames, the mechanical problems that used to take up most of a manual review session, which frees up your attention for the decisions that actually require a human eye. If you want to understand the mechanics behind the scoring in more depth, see how AI photo culling works and the broader introduction to what photo culling is and why it matters.
Choosing a License Once Your Trial Ends
imagic is licensed as a one-time purchase rather than a subscription, across three tiers priced in EUR: Lite at 19, Plus at 49, and Max at 99. There is no recurring fee at any tier. The table below gives a rough sense of how the tiers differ, though checking the current feature breakdown on imagic.ink before purchasing is worth doing since tier details can be refined over time.
| Tier | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Lite | EUR 19 | Occasional shooters culling smaller sets |
| Plus | EUR 49 | Regular working photographers |
| Max | EUR 99 | High-volume users, adds the MCP server and CLI for automation |
The Max tier's MCP server and command-line interface let AI agents and scripts drive imagic directly, which is useful for photographers building automated batch pipelines around their culling workflow rather than running everything through the standard interface. That is a more advanced use case than a first session calls for, but it is worth knowing it exists once you have the core five-step workflow down.
Troubleshooting a Slow or Confusing First Import
A few things trip up first-time users more than anything else in the workflow. Pointing imagic at a folder with deeply nested subfolders rather than a single flat folder of images can make the Analyse step take noticeably longer and makes results harder to scan afterward; for your first few sessions, a flat folder structure is easier to work with. Importing an entire multi-year archive on your very first run is another common mistake: start with a single recent shoot instead, so you can see how the scoring behaves on images you already know well before trusting it on your full library.
If the Analyse step seems to be taking longer than expected, very large RAW files from high-resolution sensors, or an unusually large batch of several thousand images in one import, will naturally extend processing time. This is expected behavior rather than a problem with the software, and the step is designed to run unattended in the background regardless of how long it takes.
Building the Habit for Your Next Shoot
The five-step workflow, Import, Analyse, Review, Cull, Export, stays consistent whether you are culling fifty images or five thousand. The main thing that changes with practice is your own speed through the Review step, as you get a feel for how the scoring behaves on your particular subject matter and camera, and how much you can trust the pre-selected burst choices without double-checking every single one. Most new users find their second or third session noticeably faster than the first, simply from familiarity with where things live in the interface rather than any change in what the software is doing.
See the full guides category for more step-by-step walkthroughs, including deeper dives into specific parts of the workflow covered briefly here.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to know anything about RAW files before using imagic?
No prior RAW editing experience is required. imagic handles the technical side of quality scoring and RAW processing automatically; you mainly need to make judgement calls during the Review step, which does not require deep technical knowledge of demosaicing or sensor data.
What happens to photos imagic rejects during culling?
Nothing is deleted automatically. The Cull step separates selects from rejects into distinct groups, but rejected images remain on disk exactly where they were unless you choose to archive or delete them yourself afterward.
Can I use imagic without a fast or expensive computer?
imagic runs as a standard desktop application on Windows and macOS. Very large shoots or high-resolution RAW files will naturally take longer to process on older hardware, but there is no special hardware requirement beyond what a normal modern desktop or laptop already provides.