Local · Private · AI-assisted
Cull, develop and remember your best bird photos. On your own machine.
Point Finchory at a folder of RAW and JPEG frames. It finds the bird, develops the RAW, scores every shot against fixed professional references, names the species when it is sure, and stacks near-identical bursts behind their best frame. Nothing uploads. You make every final call.
Many AI culling and scoring tools send your library to the cloud. Finchory does all of it on your machine.
A desktop app that runs on your own computer. In closed beta now, with a public release on the way.
Runs entirely on your own machine · sample photography shown
Sample photography
Built for photos like these
The bird photography below is Creative Commons sample photography, shown for illustration. It is not the app's output. Finchory works on your own frames: it finds the bird, develops the RAW, scores every shot, and names the species when it is sure, all on your machine.
Sample photography, shown for illustration only. Photo credits in the footer below.
01.What it does
From memory card to keepers
One pass over a folder handles the tedious work; fast keyboard-first views handle the judgment calls.
Cull to the keepers
Near-identical bursts collapse behind their best frame, picked by an image-quality model. A rapid keyboard cull and a side-by-side Compare view make the final pick fast.
One honest score
Every photo earns a 0-100 score on an S-F tier scale, anchored to a fixed set of professional reference images. The same shot scores the same for everyone. It is never tuned to flatter your library.
Species ID that admits doubt
Region-aware identification names the bird only above a confidence floor. Below it, the label is "Unidentified" and the frame is queued for your review. It never guesses to look smart.
Develops the RAW
A warm, punchy grade recovers exposure, white balance, tone and color, with noise reduction that adapts to ISO, so you judge each frame at its real potential, not at its flattest.
eBird-aware
Live eBird data sanity-checks identifications against where you actually shot, flags how notable a species is for that spot, and marks your life-list firsts. Optional eBird features use your own free eBird key.
Remember the good ones
A map of where you shot, a profile with a Hall of Fame of your best frames, and keeper exports: path lists, manifests, eBird-ready CSV, and XMP sidecars for Lightroom, Darktable or Capture One, right from the app's export dialog.
The actual app
What you actually use
These are real Finchory screens, captured on a small sample library so we can show them publicly. The interface, scores, and identifications are exactly what the app produces; the photos are demo data, not a real collection.
Rapid, keyboard-first triage. Keep, skip, or reject one frame at a time, with the rest of the burst a tap away.
Confirm the species. Finchory shows its best guess and confidence, and asks rather than guesses when it is unsure.
Every frame developed, scored, and organized. Filter by species, score tier, location, or date, and sort to your best.
See where each frame was shot. Pins are drawn from your photos' own capture data, all read locally.
Before & after
See the develop, frame by frame
Real frames from a personal library, shown before and after Finchory's develop, processed entirely on-device. Drag each slider to compare: recovered exposure, restored color, detail pulled back out of the highlights and shadows, and high-ISO grain cleaned away while the feather detail stays.
A back-lit great egret. The flat, hazy frame opens up into deep water and clean whites.
A washed-out heron regains its blue-grey feathers and rufous neck instead of clipping to white.
A red-bellied woodpecker at its nest gains contrast in the bark and warmth in the crown.
High-ISO noise on a chipping sparrow is cleaned away, ISO-adaptively, while the streaks, cap, and wing bars stay sharp.
Real frames from the developer's own library, processed locally by Finchory. Drag the handle, or focus it and use the arrow keys, to compare.
02.How it works
Four steps, no cloud
Point it at a folder
RAW and JPEG straight off the card. Everything from here runs on your own machine, and nothing is uploaded anywhere.
It works through the folder
One unattended pass does the slow, mechanical work and gets every frame ready for you to judge at its best.
You make the calls
Fast, keyboard-first views hand you only the decisions that need a human, one clear choice at a time.
Hand it off
Send your keepers on to wherever they go next, in a form your editor and your records already understand.
03.Beyond the cull
More than a fast cull
Once the keepers are chosen, the same app helps you sharpen your eye, choose your kit, and hold on to the days worth remembering. All of it local, none of it behind an account.
Train your eye
Short identification drills built from your own labelled shots and clean licensed reference images. Sight and sound rounds, with a mastery board that keeps testing the species you tend to miss.
Field Kit for your gear
A read on your own kit from your photos' EXIF, next to a sourced guide to bodies, lenses, optics, cards and audio gear. Comparison charts and street prices, with no affiliate links.
Moments worth sharing
Finchory picks out the standout shot, a first for your library, or your rarest find from a day out and lays each one into a clean card to keep or post. The location and date stay off it unless you add them.
Head to head
When two frames from a burst are too close to call, put them side by side at full size and set the sharper keeper with a single key.
Sweep the duplicates
The near-identical frames hiding in a big import are found and grouped for you, so the accidental repeats clear out without a hunt through the grid.
Collections that gather themselves
Visually similar shots group into collections on their own, drawn from how the photos actually look, so related frames sit together without a single tag or folder.
04.Local-first, by design
There is no server.
Your photos never leave the folder you point Finchory at, because there is nothing to upload them to. The work happens on your own computer, online or off.
Nothing is uploaded
No account, no telemetry, no cloud sync. There is no Finchory server for your photos to travel to.
Runs fully on your machine
Indexing, developing, scoring, and identification all run locally. An internet connection is optional, used only for eBird checks if you add your own key.
No lock-in
No subscription, no account, and no cloud service you depend on. Your library stays on your machine, yours to keep.
You do not have to take our word for it. Watch your own network monitor while Finchory runs and you will see your photos never leave your machine.
Photos uploaded
On your own device
in · XMP sidecars out
Sample photography
Finchory finds, develops, and scores your own frames. Nothing leaves your machine.
05.Why it's built this way
Fair, honest, and yours
A fair score
Photos are graded against a fixed professional anchor set, so the same shot earns the same score for every photographer. No grading on a curve, no inflation as your library grows.
An honest label
A wrong species name is worse than none. Finchory only names what clears its confidence floor and its location sanity check; everything else is flagged for you, plainly, as Unidentified.
Truly local
No account, no subscription, no telemetry, no upload. Your photos and your data stay on your computer, yours to keep.
Free · Local · Private
Finchory is in closed beta
It runs entirely on your own computer, points at a folder of bird photos, and does the rest. A public release is on the way, and the download will live here when it is ready.