cullstudio vs cairn

Every photo session produces hundreds of images – but only a few are worth keeping. Cullstudio helps you find your best shots quickly and without distraction. Whether you’re reviewing portraits, travel series, or entire event shoots, you stay focused on what matters: your photography. Import images directly from external devices or Finder on iPad and start reviewing instantly. Once imported, you can cull freely – the source drive doesn’t need to stay connected. Our ultra-fast & optimised RAW handling makes browsing and zooming through high-resolution files smooth and immediate - even on less powerful devices. With the comparison view, you can display multiple photos side by side and zoom into details simultaneously – reviewing your work feels fast and natural. You always get powerful tools for free to sort, filter, group, and review your photos efficiently — all completely offline. For those who want to go further, the **Pro features** offer advanced filtering, enhanced grouping options, and deeper control over your culling workflow. Spend less time sorting and more time shooting. **Free Key Features** * Ultra-fast RAW handling for smooth navigation and zoom * Import from external devices or Finder (iPad) * Work completely offline – no cloud and no device connection required after import * Automatic grouping by capture time * Compare multiple photos side by side with synchronized zoom * Sort, filter, and organize photos for efficient review * Accept/Reject workflow with “Rejected” folder management * Batch import and export for large photo sets **Pro Features** * Advanced filtering options * Advanced AI grouping options * Advanced AI sorting options * Multi-photo comparison and enhanced culling tools * Innovative ZoomPad for fast & precise detail view * Customizations for a personalized culling workflow **Access to Pro features requires a subscription or one-time lifetime purchase.** **Subscription Information** Access to all features requires a subscription or lifetime purchase. **Terms of Use:** [Apple EULA](https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/) **Privacy Policy:** [https://cullstudio.com/privacy-policy/](https://cullstudio.com/privacy-policy/)

cairn reconciles your iPhone photo library against your own Immich server. When you delete a photo on your phone, cairn moves the matching photo on Immich to Trash. That's the whole job. cairn doesn't upload photos, show albums, edit metadata, or run AI — the Immich app already does those things. cairn closes the one loop the Immich app doesn't: photos that live on the server after you've deleted them from your phone. HOW IT WORKS — Content identity is SHA1 (the same identifier Immich uses server-side). — cairn subscribes to iOS's deletion log, so it sees soft-deletes as you make them. — A configurable quarantine window holds confirmed deletions before anything moves, so an accidental mass-offload has time to be caught. — Every run shows you the candidate list first. Nothing happens on the server until you confirm. SAFETY MODEL — Trash, not delete. cairn moves assets into your Immich Trash — Immich retains them for 30 days, and restore is one tap. — Percent cap + floor. If a single run would move more than a threshold of your matched photos to Trash, it aborts without touching the server. — Breadcrumbs. Every run is tagged on Immich (cairn/v1/run/[id]) so you can find it server-side. — Forensic journal. Local append-only log records every step — planned, tagged, trashed, restored, failed. — Exclusions. Protect specific photos from ever being flagged. — Indexing scope. Restrict cairn to a specific set of Photos albums. Photos outside the scope are silently ignored — never hashed, never proposed for trash. Useful if you want to manage just one album and leave synced family albums alone. PRIVACY — No analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, no ads. — No cairn backend. Your iPhone talks directly to your Immich server using your API key. — Credentials stay in the iOS Keychain. Nothing leaves your device besides requests you configured. REQUIREMENTS — An Immich server you run or control. — An Immich API key. cairn requests these scopes: asset.read, asset.view, asset.download, asset.delete, tag.create, tag.asset, tag.read. The Setup screen lists them when you paste your key. cairn is not affiliated with the Immich project. It talks to Immich over its public API; compatibility only. Source is MIT-licensed at github.com/glarue/cairn.