Facet vs Kepla

Facet is a free, local tool for scoring, culling, organizing, and serving a web gallery for photo libraries. It runs on the user's machine without cloud services, accounts, or API keys. Its scoring evaluates nine dimensions, including aesthetic quality, composition, sharpness, color, exposure, face quality, subject saliency, and dynamic range. It detects bursts, similar photos, blinks, and duplicates, with a dry-run preview for automatic culling. The gallery includes natural-language semantic search, filters, timeline and map views, albums, and themed slideshows. Face tools group people and support searching, renaming, merging, and organizing clusters. XMP sidecars provide metadata interoperability with Lightroom, Capture One, digiKam, and darktable. Users can send photos to a WebDAV inbox, or share revocable album links that need no recipient login; proofing supports hearts and comments, with an optional PIN. Core functions work on CPU, while an NVIDIA GPU unlocks additional models and features. Facet can be installed with Docker or natively on Linux and macOS, requires Python, and does not provide RAW editing or development.

Kepla is a Mac app that sorts photo cards as they copy, flagging frames for the photographer to review rather than making the final selection. It groups burst duplicates and flags similar shots, out-of-focus frames, closed eyes, very dark or blown frames, and images with nobody in them. The maker says it does not delete, move, rename, or add reject flags to photo files; decisions are recorded in XMP sidecars. Processing runs on the Mac, works offline, and does not upload photo frames, according to the maker. Supported formats include CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, DNG, ORF, JPEG, and HEIF. Kepla provides a Lightroom Classic plugin; the maker says Capture One and Bridge read the same sidecars. It requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later and runs on Apple silicon and Intel Macs. The app is in private preview, with the preview plan listed at free and billing starting when version 2.0 ships. Solo is listed at $15 a year, billed $15 a month yearly. A separate Solo monthly option costs $19 a month.