Image Management Apps

Rather than trying to consolidate all the image tools I use into one giant app with hundreds of features, I prefer to use smaller, specialized apps that are single-purpose or that have a small feature set. They are easier to learn, faster to launch, and often maintained by a very experienced developer with years of experience. Here’s a collection of such apps that you might find useful.

Toyviewer, My Default App for Opening & Viewing Images

Dating back to the 90s, Toyviewer (free) can open just about any image format you throw at it, including ones that Preview won’t touch. You can view images one at a time or use its slide show mode. For simple, one-off edits, ToyViewer can adjust the brightness, contrast, and color tone of images, and perform enhancements, embossing, etc. It does file conversions, and you can also print from it.

ImageOptim, My Go-To for Shrinking File Sizes

ImageOptim (free), a powerful compression app, can be accessed by dropping images on its icon in the dock, through integration with macOS services, or by opening the GUI and dropping a single file or a batch of files into the interface. It is essentially a wrapper for a powerful set of compression tools. It’s capable of reducing file sizes by up to 90% with no discernible quality loss. It does its work quickly, even on older Macs. If you are a Qspace user, you can add ImageOptim to the right-click menu. You can recover the original files without losing access to the converted ones.

XnConvert for Batch Image Operations

If you come across a folder of RAW photos, a collection of giant TIFF files, or maybe some PSD files that never got finished in Photoshop, you can use XnConvert (free) to turn them into something manageable and useful all at once. Not only can you batch convert them into a new format, but you can also do resizing, renaming, adjusting colors, applying filters and effects, and editing metadata all in one go.

Digikam for Management

I keep one canonical collection of photos for myself and my wife in the file system of my daily driver that gets synced to other computers, a couple of backup drives, and two cloud services. I still use iCloud for the photos I take with my phone, but just for the sake of convenience in viewing and sharing; I don’t try to make it the comprehensive, go-to source for my entire photo library. Digikam (free) is a huge app with more features than Adobe Lightroom. I use it for facial recognition, tagging, filtering, and file management, but it can do a whole lot more. I installed the Linux version on two old 24-inch iMacs just to use them as extra-large digital photo frames.

Immich for Sharing and Remote Access

I use Immich (donationware) in a Docker container that reads the file structure I maintain in Digikam. Using the companion iOS app, I can remotely access my entire photo collection on my phone using its powerful search features, albums, and tags. I can also use its built-in web server with a domain I own to get to my photos from any Internet computer. The Immich developers give you access to the entire feature set right off the bat, but they do ask that you help support the app financially if you continue to use it.

Some Other Useful Tools

• Better Finder Attributes ($24.95) - I am relentless about the way I organize my photos. All my file names contain the date the photo was taken. I have digital photos dating back to 1995 that have lived on many, many computers, drives, and servers through the years. Periodically, the EXIF data gets corrupted or missing or overwritten, but I can always fix it with this app.
• Better Finder Renamer ($29.95) - This is the most powerful and fastest renaming utility in the Mac world. If you can come up with a renaming concept in your mind, the chances are that you can accomplish it with this app. Like I said, my naming system is at the heart of my whole management workflow. This makes it easy.
• Parachute Backup ($4.99) - If you stay in the Apple Photos world, but you want a good backup option, this is the one to use. Remember, iCloud is a syncing service, not a backup service.
• Syncthing (free) - If you manage your own photos in your file system like I do, this is the tool to use to sync them in real time to other computers (e.g., a self-hosted server) within your network.
• PhotoSweeper ($15) - The fastest and most full-featured duplicate manager for Macs.
• PowerPhotos ($39.95) - If you want to use Apple Photos but need features it doesn’t provide, this is the tool to get to manage multiple iCloud libraries, to batch edit metadata, to search multiple libraries at once, and to copy and move files between libraries. If you don’t use PhotoSweeper, the PowerPhotos duplicate finder is also pretty solid.
• Acorn ($19.95) - If you want to do real editing work on images but don’t want to buy an 800-page book of instructions or get an Adobe subscription, the app I suggest is Acorn. A two-time Apple award winner, it’s a one-time purchase and you get access to extensive online documentation, a user forum, and tech support. The current version is a universal binary compatible with macOS 14 and 15, but earlier versions can still be downloaded.