Apertin

Ultra-fast, zero-cloud RAW image culler for photographers who shoot thousands.

Crafted with ❤️ by Mustafa Erdem Köşk

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✦ What is Apertin?

Apertin is a local-first, blazing-fast RAW image culling app built for photographers who come back from a shoot with 400+ RAW files and need to triage them in minutes — not hours.

It works like a card-swipe workflow for your photos. Swipe right to keep, left to trash. Every operation runs entirely on your machine — no cloud uploads, no subscriptions, no waiting.

The core engine is written in Rust and uses memory-mapped file I/O to extract embedded JPEG previews directly from RAW files at native speed. Your full-resolution RAW files never have to be decoded during culling.

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⚡ Key Features

Feature	Details
🚀 Zero-decode preview extraction	Reads the embedded JPEG directly from RAW binary — no full decode needed
🔥 Swipe Mode	Keyboard-driven keep/trash workflow with animated card transitions
↩️ Undo	Instantly reverse the last keep/trash/star decision with ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z or the dock button — works even from the summary screen
👁️ Browse Mode	Classic gallery browser with instant prev/next navigation
📂 Grid Mode	Full-screen interactive lazy-loaded thumbnail view of files with status badges
📊 Split Compare View	Compare up to 4 images side-by-side with synchronized zoom/pan
📈 RGB & Luma Histogram	Live-rendered high-performance exposure graphs inside EXIF panel
⚡ XMP Sidecar Export	Toggle to write ratings/reject tags directly to .xmp files, leaving originals in place
🎨 Adobe Lightroom Link	Right-click sidebar files to reveal in Finder or open directly in Lightroom Classic
🔍 Focus Check Zoom	Press Space to enter pixel-level zoom mode across all images (including inside Grid Mode)
⭐ Star Rating	Mark hero shots with ↑ for selective editing
🔗 Smart Grouping	Automatically cluster burst shots and similar scenes before you cull
📊 EXIF Sidebar	Camera, lens, shutter, aperture, ISO, focal length at a glance
🗂️ macOS "Open With"	Right-click any folder in Finder → Open With → Apertin
🖱️ Drag & Drop	Drag a folder onto the app window to start instantly
🗑️ OS Trash	Trashed files go to your system recycle bin
✅ Selected_to_Edit export	Kept files moved to Selected_to_Edit/ ready for Lightroom/Capture One
💾 Session persistence	Progress is saved per folder — close and resume at any time
🌑 Dark mode only	Premium dark UI — built for low-light post-production environments
🔒 Fully local	Zero network requests, zero telemetry, zero cloud

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📸 Supported Formats

Format	Camera Brand
.ARW	Sony (α series)
.CR3 / .CR2	Canon (EOS series)
.NEF	Nikon
.RAF	Fujifilm
.DNG	Adobe / Leica / DJI
.ORF	Olympus
.RW2	Panasonic
.PEF	Pentax
.HEIC / .HEIF	iOS / Modern mobile
.JPG / .JPEG	Any camera
.PNG	Any source

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🎯 Workflow

📁 Open Folder
    │
    ▼
⚡ Rust scans directory & extracts embedded previews (parallel, memory-mapped)
    │
    ▼
🔥 Swipe Mode
    ├── → Keep    (moves to Selected_to_Edit/)
    ├── ← Trash   (sent to OS recycle bin)
    └── ↑ Star    (moves to Starred/)
    │
    ▼
📋 Review Decisions
    ├── Inspect thumbnails
    ├── Restore from trash
    └── Demote keeps to trash
    │
    ▼
✅ Apply — done. Open Selected_to_Edit/ in Lightroom.

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⌨️ Keyboard Shortcuts

Swipe Mode

Key	Action
→	Keep image
←	Trash image
↑	Toggle star
⌘Z / Ctrl+Z	Undo last decision
Space	Toggle focus zoom (persists across images)

Browse Mode

Key	Action
→	Next image
←	Previous image
↑	Toggle star
⌘Z / Ctrl+Z	Undo last decision
Space	Toggle focus zoom

Grid Mode

Key	Action
Space	Fullscreen sharpness zoom of selected thumbnail
Double Click	Select thumbnail and switch to Browse Mode
Right Click	Open file context menu (Lightroom / Finder Reveal)

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🔗 Smart Grouping

Apertin can automatically group similar photos before you start culling, so you can make one keep/trash decision for an entire burst instead of reviewing each frame individually.

Two grouping modes

⏱ Time-based grouping runs entirely in the browser — no Rust invocation needed. It reads the DateTimeOriginal EXIF field from each photo and clusters consecutive shots taken within a configurable time window.

Preset	Gap	Typical use
30 s	30 seconds	Tight bursts, bracketed exposures
2 min	2 minutes	Scene changes during a walk-around
5 min	5 minutes	Different locations in the same session

⬡ Visual similarity grouping is powered by a Rust backend algorithm that analyses the pixel content of each photo's embedded preview thumbnail using a DCT-based perceptual hash (pHash) and complete-linkage clustering.

Preset	Hamming ≤	What it matches
Burst	6	Near-identical frames, only shutter timing differs
Normal	10	Same scene with varying exposure, slight reframe
Loose	15	Similar subject from a different angle

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🏗️ Architecture

Apertin is built on a Rust + Svelte + Tauri stack. The separation of concerns is clean:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│           Svelte Frontend               │
│  - State machine (welcome/cull/summary) │
│  - Card stack animations                │
│  - Keyboard event bus                   │
│  - Blob URL preview rendering           │
└────────────────┬────────────────────────┘
                 │ Tauri IPC (invoke)
┌────────────────▼────────────────────────┐
│           Rust Backend                  │
│  - scan_directory (parallel WalkDir)    │
│  - parse_raw_file (EXIF + preview)      │
│  - get_raw_preview (mmap byte read)     │
│  - execute_culling_actions (fs moves)   │
│  - analyze_groups (pHash + clustering)  │
│  - select_folder (rfd native dialog)    │
│  - get_initial_path (CLI arg / Open With)│
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

Why Rust for the core?

• RAW files range from 20MB–100MB each
• Parallel preview extraction via Rayon (one thread per file)
• Memory-mapped I/O means preview bytes are read without loading the full file
• Result: 400 Sony ARW files scanned in ~1.2 seconds on M-series Mac

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🛠️ Installation

Prerequisites

• Rust (stable toolchain)
• Node.js 18+
• Tauri CLI v2

# macOS dependencies (if not already installed)
xcode-select --install

macOS — First Launch (Gatekeeper)

Because Apertin is not yet notarised with an Apple Developer certificate, macOS will show:

"Apple could not verify 'Apertin' is free of malware…"

One-time fix — run this in Terminal:

xattr -cr /Applications/Apertin.app

Then double-click the app normally. macOS will not ask again.

Tip: If you haven't moved the app to /Applications yet, drag the .app from the mounted .dmg into Terminal instead of typing the path.

Windows — First Launch (SmartScreen)

Because the installer is not yet signed with an EV certificate, Windows SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC."

One-time fix: click More info → Run anyway. Right-clicking a RAW file → Open with → Apertin opens its folder ready to cull, and Reveal in Explorer highlights the file directly.

Linux — First Launch (AppImage)

Make the AppImage executable, then run it:

chmod +x Apertin_*.AppImage
./Apertin_*.AppImage

Or install the .deb on Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo dpkg -i apertin_*.deb

On Linux, "Reveal in file manager" opens the containing folder (most desktops have no portable verb to pre-select a file).

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Clone & Run

git clone https://github.com/erdemkosk/apertin.git
cd apertin

npm install
npm run tauri dev

Build for Production

npm run tauri build

The .dmg / .app bundle will appear in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/.

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📂 Project Structure

apertin/
├── src/                    # Svelte frontend
│   ├── App.svelte          # Main application component
│   ├── global.css          # Design system (HSL tokens, glassmorphism)
│   ├── logo.png            # App icon
│   └── main.js             # Vite entry point
│
├── src-tauri/              # Rust backend
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── main.rs         # Tauri commands + CLI arg handler
│   │   └── parser.rs       # RAW EXIF + preview parser
│   ├── Cargo.toml          # Rust dependencies
│   └── tauri.conf.json     # App config + macOS file associations
│
├── index.html              # App shell
├── vite.config.js          # Vite bundler config
└── package.json

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🎨 Design Philosophy

Apertin's UI is built around a single principle: the photo should fill your vision, not the interface.

• Dark-first: Deep volcanic slate backgrounds (#07090e) chosen to match how photographers work in dimmed rooms
• Glassmorphism panels: Sidebar and EXIF strip use backdrop-filter: blur() so they feel like HUD overlays, not UI chrome
• Amber accent system: The #f97316 amber is the only persistent color — everything else is monochrome or semantic (green = keep, red = trash, gold = star)
• Plus Jakarta Sans: Chosen over system fonts for its optical regularity and premium weight range
• Zero animations for the photo itself — only chrome elements animate. The photo is always sharp and still.

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🔩 Tech Stack

Layer	Technology	Why
Desktop shell	Tauri 2	Smaller than Electron, native webview, Rust backend
Frontend	Svelte	Zero-overhead reactivity, no virtual DOM
Backend	Rust	Memory safety + parallel performance
File walking	walkdir	Efficient recursive directory traversal
Parallelism	rayon	Work-stealing thread pool for parallel file parsing
Image decode	image	JPEG decode for pHash thumbnail generation
OS trash	trash	Cross-platform recycle bin integration
Native dialogs	rfd	Cross-platform Rust file dialog
Typography	Plus Jakarta Sans	Premium UI typeface

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🗺️ Roadmap

• Windows support — .msi / .exe installers, Explorer "reveal & select", file associations
• Linux support — .deb / .AppImage builds, GTK file dialog
• Collection view — grid browse with zoom
• Virtualized grid — windowed rendering keeps 5000+ file folders smooth
• Undo — reverse the last keep/trash/star decision with ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z
• Color label system — reject / 1-star / 2-star / pick
• In-app auto-update — one-click update via the Tauri updater
• Smart grouping — pHash + complete-linkage clustering for burst and similar-scene detection
• XMP sidecar export — write ratings back as metadata without moving files
• Lightroom Classic integration — open Selected_to_Edit directly in catalog

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🤝 Contributing

PRs are welcome. Open an issue to discuss large changes first.

# Run in dev mode
npm run tauri dev

# Lint frontend
npx svelte-check

# Check Rust
cd src-tauri && cargo check

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📄 License

PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 © Mustafa Erdem Köşk

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If Apertin saved you an hour of culling, give it a ⭐

Built for photographers, by a photographer.