mess
a macOS canvas for photographers · built for one, shared with friends

Make a mess.
Find the post.

Dump the whole shoot onto an infinite canvas. Spread it out. Push things around. Try the order six different ways, until the carousel is suddenly just there.

Follow the build Every feature →

Runs on your Mac. Your photos never leave it. No account, no cloud, no subscription.

last night's set · sorting in progress
1 · out
2 · keeper
∞room to spread the entire shoot out and actually look at it
500+full-res photos on one board; moving one over the pile never hitches
6 waysyou'll try the order before it clicks, and ⌘Z every one of them
0accounts, servers, subscriptions, or photos leaving your machine

How the mess works

Dump. Sort.
Let the post surface.

No project setup, no import wizard, no timer. A huge table, your photos, and room to think with your hands.

01

Dump everything

Drag the export folder straight out of Finder. Five hundred photos land as a contact sheet, in shooting order. HEIC straight off the iPhone, clips as playable posters. Nothing is organised yet. That's the point.

The canvas holds it all without flinching: panning over the pile is butter, at any zoom, however big the mess gets.

gather the keepers
Gather 6 photos here
02

Sort the shit out

Walk the shoot full-screen with Space and the arrow keys. 1 out, 2 keeper, 3 undecided. Keepers glow on the board, outs fade to a whisper. Nothing is deleted, nothing is final.

Then play: C compares near-twins side by side, Z drops to true pixels, right-click gathers the scattered keepers into a pile wherever you want them. The sidebar quietly sorts itself while you do.

sorting · 1 out · 2 keeper · 3 undecided
2 · keeper
1 · out
03

Let the post surface

Drop fixed-ratio carousel frames over the board and slide photos underneath until the crops read right. Frames are windows, not boxes, so composition stays a matter of nudging, snapping, trying again.

When it clicks: ⌘E ships every slide as a 1080px PNG named in order, and your keepers copy out as untouched originals. The mess stays on the board; the post leaves clean.

post-1 · 3 slides
1
2
3

See all of it, in detail →

Built around one photographer's mess.
Sharpened every week it gets used.

No roadmap, no feature votes, no growth targets. When something feels wrong on a real shoot, it gets fixed that evening. That is how a tool ends up with exactly what the work needs and nothing it doesn't. This page exists so friends can watch it happen.