mess

A big fast table for your photos

Drop a whole shoot on it, push the pictures around, keep the good ones. Then, if it turns into a post, frame it and export at 1080px. Everything stays on your Mac.

Version 0.1 · Apple silicon (M1 or newer) · macOS 13+ · 4.2 MB download

FE4: 146 photos, 10 slides

Recorded from the app: Z dives into a photo, Z again pulls back out to the whole table.

tl;dr

What this actually is

mess is a big table on your Mac. Drop photos on it and move them around. Pan, zoom, make piles, spread them out. It stays fast with hundreds of full-size photos.

Sort with two keys: keeper or out. Outs fade, nothing is deleted. Open a photo full screen, compare two side by side, write a note. Make as many tables as you want.

Plain files on your Mac. No account, no server, no subscription. Made by one photographer for himself, not for sale.

Extras on top of the table

  • Create and export Instagram-ready carousels
  • Crop and rotate photos, without touching the originals
  • Put a photo in a coloured frame, in colours picked from the photo itself
  • Line photos up with exact gaps, or spread them evenly
  • Sticky notes
  • Import HEIC straight from the iPhone, and video clips
  • Export the whole table as one image, or copy out your keepers as the original files
  • Archive finished tables to get the disk space back
  • Demo mode: the camera hops photo to photo on its own, full screen, for showing a table to someone
  • Press I on any photo for its camera, lens and exposure, read from the file itself

Built around one job

Moving a photo over a pile of hundreds must never stutter. That is where the engineering went. The rest is a short list of tools that sit on the table.

500+ photos, no hitching

Every photo is drawn by the graphics card from a right-sized preview, swapped as you zoom. 60fps panning a 200-photo board, measured in the real app.

Sorting on two keys

1 is out, 2 is a keeper, 3 is undecided. Keepers glow, outs fade to a whisper. Nothing is deleted, everything is one undo away.

Carousel frames

Fixed-ratio windows that sit over the photos. Slide pictures underneath until the crop reads right; ⌘E exports each slide as a 1080px PNG, named in order.

Non-destructive crops

Crop and rotate on the table; the original file is never touched. Exports render from it, byte for byte, at full resolution.

Reads your files as they are

HEIC straight off the iPhone, .mov and .mp4 clips as playable posters, paste from anywhere. Press I for camera, lens and exposure from the file itself.

Plain files, atomic saves

Boards are readable JSON in ~/Documents, written to a temp file and renamed so a crash cannot corrupt them. Archive a finished table for about 90% of the space back.

Real tables

Straight out of the working vault. No staging, no sample content.

One table, whole story

A club night start to finish: the raw pile sorted and dimmed at the left, contenders enlarged for a closer look, and the ten-slide carousel taking shape through the middle. Nothing left the table; it just found its place.

A full table: dimmed photos at the left, enlarged picks, and a ten-slide carousel through the middle

Zoom out to think, dive in to look

A studio shoot mid-sort: 128 photos, 113 already faded out, the gathered keeper pile at the bottom. Press Z and the camera flies to the selection; press it again and you are back over the whole table.

A finished carousel, exactly as it exports

Ten fixed-ratio slides composed over the pile. The contact sheet is still visible behind slide five, because the mess stays until you are done with it.

A ten-slide carousel strip fully composed with concert photos

Keyboard first

Press ? in the app for the same sheet. The full map is on the features page.

Navigate
scrollpan and zoom
Zfly to selection, again for the table
⇧1 / ⇧2fit table / fit selection
⌘0zoom to 100%
Ddemo mode
Sorting
spacelightbox on the selection
1 · 2 · 3out · keeper · undecided
Ccompare 2 to 4 side by side
Ztrue pixels, drag to pan
Icamera, lens, exposure
Create & arrange
Fnew carousel
Nnew note
Stoggle snapping
⌘Dduplicate
[ / ]z-order back / forward
Tables & files
⌘Ktable switcher
⌘Nnew table
⌘Zundo, for everything
⌘Eexport slides at 1080px
?cheatsheet

No account, no cloud, no price

Built by one photographer for his own shoots. Nothing leaves your machine, and there is nothing to subscribe to. If you want the notes on what changed each week, leave an address.

Download for macOS

Occasional notes on what changed. No spam, unsubscribe whenever.

Not notarized by Apple — macOS blocks the first launch. Install notes ride along in the zip.