Facet vs Optyx

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.

Optyx is an AI photo-culling application for grouping similar images and helping photographers choose which shots to keep. It can rate images using facial expression, sharpness, composition, exposure, and other criteria; face analysis checks expression, blinking, and focus, and can identify and group common subjects. Fast previews support manual review, including of large RAW files. Optyx writes culling information as XMP metadata and lets users drag selected files into Lightroom. For other editors, users can work with XMP or organize selected photos into filesystem folders. It supports a range of camera RAW formats, including CR2/CR3, ARW, NEF/NRW, RAF, RW2, PEF, ORF, and DNG. Optyx is intended to accompany another editor, not edit photos automatically. The maker says face-based AI works best when people are the main subject, while sharpness features suit almost any photography. The Free plan is free; Pro is $6.99 a month billed annually or $9.99 a month billed monthly.