Every score, explained.

What is measured

Each photo gets six separate scores. The qualities are Overall Appeal, Sharpness, Lighting, Composition, Faces and Subject. PicSift does not merge them into one opaque verdict.

What comes back

Every photo lands in a tier: Excellent, Good, Average or Below Average. The whole set arrives sorted best-first. This holds for two hundred photos or a few thousand.

What you do next

Import photos from a folder, a drive or your Photos library. Score them. Sift from best to worst as you Keep or Reject them. Export the keepers to a folder or a Photos album. Delete the rest from the Delete Tray.

Every model, credited

PicSift scores with open research models from Google, Apple and university labs. They run on the device through Core ML beside Apple's Vision framework. The in-app Model Library lists each model by name with its creator and license.

Every weight, yours

You decide how much each quality counts. Move the Priorities to re-rank the photos on your screen right away, or leave Smart Auto on to tune the mix to each photo’s scene.

Every quality, sourced

By default, ARNIQA scores Overall Appeal on a Mac or an M-series iPad, and MUSIQ on other iPads. Apple’s Vision framework scores Faces, Subject and Composition. Sharpness and Lighting are measured from the image itself.

Visual Search

Describe what you remember, for example “kids playing in autumn leaves” or “Seattle skyline at sunset”. PicSift finds those photos. Visual Search needs a one-time download first. No tagging is needed beforehand.

People

Face clustering groups the library by person, so you can name the regulars and pull everything they appear in.

Duplicates & albums

Near-identical shots are found and shown together. PicSift suggests the frame with the best score. Smart Albums gather your best work as it is scored.

Gather what goes

As you sift, send the photos you don’t want to the Delete Tray. Add them one at a time, or move every reject in one step.

Check it over

Before anything is deleted, PicSift shows every photo in the tray. Uncheck any photo you want to keep.

Delete in one step

Photos from your Photos library go to Recently Deleted in the Photos app for 30 days. With iCloud Photos or a Shared Library, they are deleted from every synced device. On a Mac, files from a folder go to the Trash. Undo puts them back.

On the device

Scoring, Visual Search, face grouping and duplicate detection all run on the Mac or iPad. They use open research models through Core ML and Apple’s Vision framework. Nothing syncs between your devices. Scores and decisions stay on the device that made them.

Nothing collected

There are no accounts. No photos, scores or embeddings are uploaded. There is no analytics and no telemetry. A diagnostic report goes only where you send it.

Only these connections

PicSift contacts no Syrinx Ventures server. It connects only to:

• GitHub, for the current list of models and for the models you choose to download. If GitHub can’t be reached, the list comes from its mirror, jsDelivr.
• Apple Maps, to look up place names and draw maps. It receives a photo’s coordinates. It does not receive the photo.
• The App Store, to verify the purchase.