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Every once in a while you see something that makes your jaw literally drop. That was my experience when I first saw Peakto from CYME.

Image a software program where you:

• use natural language search using an AI that understands what it sees in your photos and videos (including the dialog)
• never need to add keywords (but can if you want)
• can simultaneously search across multiple Lightroom catalogs, Apple Photos, On1, Adobe Premier, Final Cut Pro, etc – even loose photos, videos, and PDFs not in any catalog
• lets you jump quickly between Lightroom catalogs to edit images
• can search based on AI-assessed quality of your images (technical scores, aesthetics, too dark / bright, saturated, monochrome, etc)
• can see analysis of color harmonies (split complementary, analogous, etc)
• can search even when your content is on an offline / disconnected drive
• get highly useful results in seconds

That’s just the beginning of what Cyme’s Peakto AI-driven photo organizer for MacOS offers. This is one of the most interesting uses of AI for photography I’ve seen (and for the purists – this AI is not editing your art, just helping you organize and search it). In this tutorial, you’ll learn what it can offer you and how to make the most of it.

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How to use Peakto to find anything:

Ways to search:

• Camera settings like aperture, shutter speed, and ISO: click on “metadata” and then type in only the number and pick from the options that show. For example, type in 100 and then pick “ISO 100” or “1/100s” – but do not type “ISO 100”.
• File type: Use the video / photo dropdown to target formats like AVIF. Note that PDF is available under the photo formats.
• Color (label): as Peakto supports more than just LR, it has some colors which won’t ever match for an LR catalog (such as pink). Just stick with the relevant colors. Note that you can apply a color to an image in Peakto at the bottom. I would avoid this, as it does not sync back to Lightroom.
• Keywords: Click the tag icon near top left, then click “in sources” (rather than AI)
• Use the dropdown right of the filter input to choose “strict“, “balanced“, or “broad” depending on how literal you wish to use your search terms.
• Exposure: in the metadata section, start typing things like “bright” or “dark”.
• Video dialog: search in the speech section and it will review the AI-generated transcript. When you hover a thumbnail in the search results, you will show a blue bar at the top indicating times in the video where it detected a likely match.
• Date:
  • Open the timeline, then click and drag to isolate a time range to search (which is great for rough timelines).
  • Use the date icon near top left (which is handy for searching specific years, or perhaps months).
  • Or, in the metadata section, start typing a year and then pick the year or month below (click … if you need to see more months in that year).
• Folder: click the folders icon near top left and type in your search value there (the “file info” section is for the file name only, not folders).
• Collections: use structure filter.
• People: click the person icon near top left and click on a person or search by name (note: you may use the person view at the bottom to add name annotations if desired).
• To search for AI-generated categories (color-harmonies, etc):
  • At bottom left, click the panorama icon and then explore various tabs to find what you need – or click “see all” to filter in the grid (which is much easier to see a large number of images).
  • Or if you know the name, you can use the metadata section. For example, start typing things like “analogous”, “compound”, “complimentary”, “square”, or “triad” and then picking from the options listed.
• Limit searches to a specific catalog by using sources (icon at left).
• Create saved searches by using smart albums (icon at left).

Showing the info you need:

• Change the sort order at top-right to “relevance”, date, or smart filters like “technical score” (to find good photos), people count, or saturation score.
• Show detailed file info like EXIF, stars, keywords by clicking the file info icon at top right.
• The AI tab in file info is loaded with interesting analytics including:
  • Peakto’s scoring of image aesthetics (such as aesthetic score, technical score, brightness, etc). These inform the sort order.
  • AI content analysis, which offers the ability to improve the AI by adding or removing tags for category, style, and people.
  • analysis of your color harmonies (complementary, split, etc and actual dominant colors).

Getting to the content from search results:

• Right-click an image and “open with Lightroom” (shortcut: <cmd>-E)
• Or right-click and use “show in Finder”

 

 

Other tips for working with Peakto:

• It works best as an alternative to images by content / subject when you don’t habitually add keywords to your images. In other words, the most value comes from combining content search (“waterfalls”), in combination hard parameters (star rating, dates, etc) to narrow things down. As much as I’d love to use the AI scoring to find the best photos, it isn’t something I expect to use heavily without further refinement.
• Take some time to get comfortable with the new approach offered here. You should expect a learning curve to find the best ways to search. This is a very powerful application and works differently from probably anything you have used. It isn’t difficult, but it isn’t something you’re going to master in 10 minutes either.
• ??? Combine smart albums with search terms to create custom searches on the fly without having to retype common values into the search bar.
• Make sure you have standard previews built in LR before you ask Peakto to sync – otherwise it will build very pixelated previews and the AI scoring values will be erroneous as a result. (tip: enable Preferences > General > Replace embedded previews with standard previews during idle time to help ensure LrC stays updated in the background).
• Similarly, make sure you have your original media connected (if on an external drive) when you first sync with Peakto. This helps access the original if needed (such as if a preview is missing).
• Do not bother setting stars, color, etc in Peakto. It does not sync back to Lightroom at this point. This would be nice (especially when using smart filtering to help set rejected or starred images).
• Even with a fast computer, the interface can be a little slow when doing such complex search. When you enter a search term, give the computer a few seconds to update results. I would expect performance improves over time, but this is a gargantuan task for any computer. The fact that this level of searching is even possible now is amazing.
• Use the menu bar icon to control Peakto’s background refresh rate and how much resource you’d like to allow it to use. I wish Lightroom had a similar control, this is quite nice to prioritize other work you want to do vs letting the tool work as fast as possible.
• Settings / Applications / External editors is where you can deselect any program you don’t want to see in the “open in” options when you right-click a thumbnail.

 

Which version of Peakto should you buy?

Peakto is offered with a few different versions, both as a lifetime purchase or a subscription. I recommend photographers get either of the following:

• Best long-term value: standard LIFETIME version (which costs slightly more than two years of subscriptions and includes one year of updates, and you could keep using it indefinitely with no further payments).
• Latest features long term: standard version with a two-year subscription for 40% off the monthly pricing. Note that only subscriptions offer a trial, so you might start there and then convert to a lifetime license.

I don’t see a reason for individual photographers to opt for either the professional or enterprise options. The higher price tiers are designed for teams or those who wish to add a Premier plugin.

 

What could be better in Peakto?

No tool is perfect, especially one with an ambition to help you find content through AI across nearly all possible photo and video sources.

I’d like to see support added for the following:

• When you “open in Lightroom”, you may not see the image if you have a filter (ie if LR is filtering for 5 star images and the one you opened isn’t one, the filter is not cleared and you will see nothing).
• Negative searches. For example, not “very colorful” to help find muted images (perhaps there is a category for this, but I couldn’t guess one).
• An ability to sync changes back to Lightroom. For example, it would be nice if could search for low quality images and mark them all as rejects from Peakto.
• AI scoring to help reject shots for events with people (closed eyes, no focused subject, etc)
• A count showing the number of matching search results would be very nice.
• It would be nice if rejected images showed greyed out like they do in Lightroom.
• A way to hide rejected images (you can filter for picks, but then unflagged images will be hidden too).
• Davinci Resolve, which is very popular for video editing. I contacted Cyme and they confirmed that this is on their roadmap (to add support similar to how they would handle a Final Cut database now). Additionally, you can already export a collections of photos and videos from Peakto to Davinci.

I’d like to see the following refined / improved:

• AI scoring could be more accurate / relevant. Low technical scores often flagged images which are fine.
• Speed could be better (but is understandably a challenge with the massive ambitions of this product).
• Search filter inputs are a bit buggy. Sometimes you change something and it does not stick, things like that.
• Video search results are a bit clunky.
  • When you search for speech, it also returns content results. For example, if I search for “rock” in speech, I see results showing a beach where there is no dialog (though it does accurately find the point where I pan past a rock).
  • The blue area showing matches for your search result don’t show in either the large viewer or transcript, making it hard to immediately find the area of interest.
  • Starting / stopping is cumbersome. There is no keyboard shortcut for playback (or at least no tooltip to indicate it). You cannot pause playback when when you click the play button in the transcript. Clicking <space> in most video apps would play/pause but here it toggles large/small views.

 

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