p.1 #1 · Anyone used AI, like Claude Code, to build Photo Management app
I don't know about you, but I have always found image management to be a hassle. So many cameras, models, RAW formats over the years, stored on various drives. I have tried to keep a Master, images stored by years and then dates as a Master Archive, then with backup, but it is never 100%. For example, as I go through some old Lightroom catalogues, I find that LR has made double imports, or LR has created duplicates over time. I don't need or want 2-4 copies of certain images, seemingly randomly over the years.
I haven't found a solution that really works in terms of identifying duplicates and managing it over time.
Enter Claude Code. I am writing an application in Phyton to do just that. Give me an inventory of all photos, in all folders - on the computer SSD, external SSD and Synology backup solution. The goal is not only to find any and all duplicates but also take the action to move those into a separate folder (which I can then keep as an extra backup on an external SSD just in case machine or human made an error. The next step is to create a Master File all my images, from all disks and devices, to create a Master folder where every single images in stored and organized by Yearly folders, then by date in the image. This will work reasonably well with all the digital images, scanned film images is a bigger issue, but will be solved eventually.
Then the goal is to have this Master file to work out of, and keep it on an external SSD, then have copies continously in sync, with exact and ongoing copies stores off-site and on the Synology.
p.1 #2 · Anyone used AI, like Claude Code, to build Photo Management app
It could be worth noticing that
a) I don't have any Python coding skills, Claude helped me select and install python, along with needed scripts and libraries, on my Mac
b) Once it is all specified and created, the python script runs locally on your machine - there are no extra costs because the it doesn't need to connect to the cloud, no API calls, etc.
Essentially, I have created an app, but it doesn't have a GUI, buttons or drop downs - it runs scripts via Terminal function.
Again, I am not an engineer or all that technical - just frustrated with all the issues my master folders have compounded over years, rewriting and/or moving of image files by Lightroom, etc. It was time to clean this up.
Everything is running right now. It will take a few hours. I sure how this works! :-)
p.1 #3 · Anyone used AI, like Claude Code, to build Photo Management app
I trust neither myself nor AI to deal with something I’m too afraid to screw up.
While, like you, I have duplicates of files, my main issue is the fact that my LR catalogues and images are pretty well organized and backed up, the images in Apple’s Photo app are stored in the typical opaque manner Apple seems to love and I hate. This makes it hard to have one Master folder with all images I care about.
I hope your effort succeeds and if you find a solution for what I described, I’m curious.
As a sidenote, the only times I’ve screwed up my files and deleted a bunch by mistake was always when I thought I was consolidating them and accidentally deleted or ‘misplaced’ them. It’s a good thing I have Backblaze with backups being kept for one year…
p.1 #4 · Anyone used AI, like Claude Code, to build Photo Management app
This definitely sounds like a useful project. I would caution you to backup and isolate all your data before letting an AI coding agent run wild on your machine. This is doubly true if you are not comfortable reviewing the AI generated code for potential flaws. Claude should be treated like a junior level developer who is very clever but needs adult supervision to keep him on target.
p.1 #6 · Anyone used AI, like Claude Code, to build Photo Management app
With your AI created app, be sure it also moves XMP sidecar files with their corresponding RAW files, otherwise you may lose relevant metadata such as caption information you may have added and/or LR edits.
Theoretically all of this can be done with off the shelf software. I'm not super well versed with DAM applications but I would approach your situation in the following way with the apps I currently use:
I would mount each drive and then open it as one massive contact sheet in Photo Mechanic (or open each major image folder as a contact sheet). I would then copy (not move, which deletes the files at the original location) all of the images to a fresh, high capacity drive using the {datesort} copy variable, which would put each image into a dated folder (YYYYMMDD) on the destination drive.
As you progress through all of your drives, the destination drive will fill with folders for each YYYYMMDD, which you can then put into year and month folders. Well, you could have Photo Mechanic do this as part of the copy process by describing the copy path to the new drive as {year4}/{month0}/{day0} where "/" creates a new subdirectory (new sub-level of folders).
Once you've done this, you could easily find duplicates manually because each dated folder will contain all the image files for that date and any duplicates. PM doesn't overwrite files with the same name but instead appends A, B, C to the end of the file name. This assumes duplicate images across various drives are all named the same. If they're not, you can still identify them visually by doing a contact sheet sort by capture time. You could, if you wanted to, rename them all with a string such as {year4}{month0}{day0}-{hour24}{minute}{second}{subsecond} and duplicates will be appended A, B, C, etc. You'd still have to confirm if each set of duplicates are all the exact same file via file size comparison, etc. If they have XMP sidecar files, you'd want to know if they're all the same and if not, which has the most recent editing metadata embedded in it.
I also use an app called NeoFinder for finding where all my image files are located. It's a DAM app and I think it can also find and manage duplicates, but I have never used it to eliminate duplicates. I use it to verify that files/folders across various drives are the same size and therefore properly backed up.
The above however doesn't touch on preserving LR edits in RAW files... I believe making metadata edits external to LR and then reimporting those files into LR may wipe the previous LR edit information saved in the XMPs, but I'd have to test this to confirm.
If reorganizing the files in the new folder system doesn't change anything with the files themselves, that shouldn't affect LR edit metadata in the XMPs and it would be simplest to make a new LR catalog. Otherwise if you want to preserve the current catalog with its edits histories, you'd have to point LR to the new location for each existing folder in the LR catalog. I think before I'd start moving files around, I'd first do a metadata save for every image in the LR catalog to be sure it's saved to each original file (or its corresponding XMP file).
With regard to film scans, software such as LR should allow you to edit the capture date/time information. PM definitely can do this. DAM software likely as well.
p.1 #7 · Anyone used AI, like Claude Code, to build Photo Management app
I just had Grok help me setup and move data to a Synology NAS and UGreen NAS and we (can we be used when including an AI agent?) spent days going down the rabbit hole to dead ends and I suggested just as many paths to solutions as Grok. For example, I wanted my family members to be able to view NAS videos from anywhere and offload all of their photos to the NAS and yet view them on their phone as if the images were local. Well, the good news is that my daughters are now in Japan and all works, but so many dead ends. Next, I wanted to pull images from 50TB of backups from at least twenty computers over two decades and all backups from all family devices and then I wanted to eliminate duplicates and use the final collection to restart Lightroom Classic. I discovered that many programs and processes did not function as documented. It really was maddening. Those two projects took me seven days per week for two months.. Maybe I’m just a technical moron, but AI isn’t infallible and many things aren’t documented, or like running Terminal on different devices, there really isn’t a standard. Many commands just don’t work on certain versions of Linux..etc. To make it worse, moving TBs of data and then find out that things aren’t working is not life affirming..Good Luck.
p.1 #8 · Anyone used AI, like Claude Code, to build Photo Management app
If you can make this work on a sustainable, ongoing basis, congrats. I personally don't trust AI to do that on my computer.
However, the old wisdom says you never know what's possible until you try. Im going to follow this thread. I might learn something.
p.1 #9 · Anyone used AI, like Claude Code, to build Photo Management app
bwcolor wrote:
Maybe I’m just a technical moron, but AI isn’t infallible and many things aren’t documented, or like running Terminal on different devices, there really isn’t a standard.
AI isn't actuslly intelligent. It just regurgitates what it found in a bajillion Google-like searches. But there really isn't any true intelligence behind it.
p.1 #10 · Anyone used AI, like Claude Code, to build Photo Management app
Thanks for the input so far.
@rscheffler - XMP sidecar - exactly one of those points that you might be taking for granted, thinking it is obvious, but you have to give clear instruction to Claude helping your write the script. There have been several things I forgot to give instructions about, but the good thing is that I have updated the script as we run along. And thanks for your input on alternative ways to do this project - should have talked to you beforehand... ;-)
Interesting what you say about PM. I haven't used it. I have tried some other solution, I haven't found anything so far that can do the type of inventory against drives, specific folder, etc and then, on my command, match it against another storage point, and reconcile them (move missing files back and forward between 2-3 places, move dupes over to a different folder, nothing gets deleted).
Regarding 'running AI on my machine'... to those folks, it really isn't AI running on your machine. AI, in this case Claude Code, is helping you to write and run Python scripts to do what you want. There is no cloud storage, API calls, or an AI agent running around on your machine raking havoc.
I would gladly pay for a software to do this, get real support, etc but I didn't quite find the right tools, one that didn't involve me spending 3 days infront of a screen drag and dropping files manually back and forward.
p.1 #11 · Anyone used AI, like Claude Code, to build Photo Management app
patotts wrote:
Regarding 'running AI on my machine'... to those folks, it really isn't AI running on your machine. AI, in this case Claude Code, is helping you to write and run Python scripts to do what you want. There is no cloud storage, API calls, or an AI agent running around on your machine raking havoc.
While acknowledging that this is technically true, the end effect is similar to having an AI agent run around on your computer. You still have to manually execute the code that Claude spits out, but it's still Claude's code. Are you knowledgeable enough to check the code before copying it into the shell and executing? You earlier established that you're not a programmer. For the record, neither am I, which is why I don't trust AI to write code if I don't know how to vet it.
p.1 #12 · Anyone used AI, like Claude Code, to build Photo Management app
Since I've worked in tech my entire career, even if I am not an engineer, I guess I have a bit more faith in the system, and I am willing to take some risks.
A) All folders and systems have backups before I began. And backups of backups.
B) Even if this is brutally slow because of how I have the old NAS setup, dongles can only handle 1GB, etc - so all the steps are not done yet. It is Tuesday. I started Saturday...
C) I've instructed very clearly that nothing can ever be deleted. Let's hope that is not the case :-)
At any rate, the goal is to break out, try something new, and learn something in the process. I hate to reach retirement some day and sit with 30 years of corrupted Lightroom catalogs, folders, duplicates, etc, etc, etc. I will success in creating a brand new Master Archive system, and a brand new LR Master catalog built from scratch (after merging a bunch of old catalogs, syncing and saving meta data, etc). The only thing you apparently will lose is your Collections, but I can live with that.
p.1 #13 · Anyone used AI, like Claude Code, to build Photo Management app
Oscarsmadness wrote:
While acknowledging that this is technically true, the end effect is similar to having an AI agent run around on your computer. You still have to manually execute the code that Claude spits out, but it's still Claude's code. Are you knowledgeable enough to check the code before copying it into the shell and executing? You earlier established that you're not a programmer. For the record, neither am I, which is why I don't trust AI to write code if I don't know how to vet it.
Regarding the project, are you having success?
I use AI for creating code every day in work. From simple scripts to working with major systems and databases. This is not a thing whatsoever.
p.1 #14 · Anyone used AI, like Claude Code, to build Photo Management app
"I don't have any Python coding skills"
Stop, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
This is an easy task for a coding agent, and it is pretty easy to give it a UI with tkinter if you are so inclined. But it is likely to not be 100% accurate.
Without coding skills and knowledge how to design tests before cutting it loose on your images, how will you know that it is doing what you want it to be doing?
It is much easier to paste your OP in a chatbot and get a far simpler solution path
p.1 #15 · Anyone used AI, like Claude Code, to build Photo Management app
I used an AI agent to build a workflow that works for me, as a novice [read terrible] photographer (but a professional software developer).
I usually take 6-8 shots of the same thing and maybe 1 isn’t trash (grateful I’m shooting digital).
The GUI built churns through all the images on the card, runs a similarity analysis, and puts up to 6 images at a time on a quick decision screen (with the sharpest, most well exposed pre-selected). Key shortcuts mean I don’t even have to move the mouse. It’s the fastest way to churn through a full card that doesn’t fill me with dread.
I realize that going through the bad images is a path forward to taking less bad images, and I still get some feedback, but I don’t have the motivation to go through them if I don’t have help.
p.1 #16 · Anyone used AI, like Claude Code, to build Photo Management app
Chiming in as an AI research engineer who lives/breathes AI on a daily basis.
SOTA models like Claude are amazing multi-modal tools, but they are a swiss-army knife. Oftentimes, there are less powerful but more purpose-specific tools that are better for the job. For eliminating photo dupes, why not just use dedicated culling software? At the very least, perhaps you could find an "agentic" culling software (a piece of software that has a API or MCP interface that Claude can plug into). I would be very cautious about blindly trusting Claude's classification abilities.
For context, Claude is multi-modal, meaning that it can understand text, vision (image + video frames), and audio. The way the vision piece works is that the image frame is serialized down into a bunch of vectors (numbers) that the model scans. Like reading a book, it drags a "kernel" over the image, block by block, performing some operation — that operation could be e.g. a transformation like a gaussian blur, denoising; or a classification task like "does this block contain a boundary?". We call this technique a "convolution"-based approach and it's quite effective, but it can be slow, expensive, and (most importantly) opaque. Like all transformer based solutions, you give it some task (like "organize the images for me" or "remove the duplicates") and it completes the task, but it's non-deterministic and you have so causal explanation as to how/why it completed the task. This is extremely risky for any task where the failure threshold is something you would deem catastrophic (like "Oh no, Claude just deleted all of my photos!")
I keep all of my photos either in Lightroom, on my home NAS (Synology DS925), or both. Generally speaking, my workflow is:
1. Copy photos from SD card into a new Lightroom album
2. Copy photos from SD card to NAS. All photos are organized into date-oriented folders:
- Sometimes YEAR > MONTH > DAY > RAW
- Other times YEAR > MONTH > TRIP_NAME (for large dumps) > RAW
3. Delete photos from SD card
4. Do the edits in Lightroom
5. Export Lightroom edits to YEAR > MONTH > DAY > TRIP_NAME > Edits
I have also occasionally given Claude access to my NAS (via SSH, terminal-based Claude Code session) to organize files. But never deleting!
