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Is Peakto Search the Ultimate AI Indexer for Lightroom Classic Users?

Person using computer with image catalog software.

Are you looking for the best AI indexer for Lightroom Classic? In this video, I discuss my experience with different photo keywording tools and dive into my thoughts comparing Excire Foto, Excire Search, on1 Keyword, and the newly released Peakto Search.

I’ve been a long-time user of Excire Search for its ease of keywording photos within Lightroom. However, the resource-intensive nature of Excire Search has been a downside for me. I then explore on1 Keyword and its standalone app, highlighting its potential but also its limitations due to not being integrated into Lightroom.

Peakto Search is a new player in the game. I share my thoughts on its features, its ability to index photos from various sources, and its integration with Lightroom through a standalone app and a Lightroom plugin. I discuss its background indexing process, resource usage, and the options for searching for similar images and keywords.

I walk you through the user interface of Peakto Search, showcasing its capabilities and discussing its potential for improvement. I offer insights into its resource usage and the potential benefits it can bring to your photo organization and workflow. I share my wish list for additional features and discuss why Peakto Search is a great option if you are in the market for a new AI indexer for Lightroom Classic.

If you’ve been on the hunt for a powerful AI indexing solution for Lightroom Classic, this video is for you.

Check out Peakto Search for Lightroom.

Transcription was done by Descript‘s automated transcription services which means it’s an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar, and other errors, and is not a substitute for watching the video.

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Scott Wyden Kivowitz: [00:00:00] For years I have been using Excire Search to keyword my photos to make it easy to find any photo inside of Lightroom and Excire has two versions. They have Excire Search, which is a Lightroom plugin, and they have Excire Foto, which is a standalone app. Excire Search has been my go-to, because everything’s inside of Lightroom.

The only downside of it is that it is a resource hog. It takes a lot of resources to build its indeExciret takes a lot of Storage to maintain the database, and when you are opening and closing the Lightroom, everything slows down when Excire is activated. Other than that, it’s a fantastic application to basically build up all the keywords you want to find the photos to find whatever you need, but also to write those keywords to your metadata in Lightroom.

There’s been another software that has come out called on1 Keyword, I believe, or on1 keywording. I don’t remember exactly. It’s from [00:01:00] on1. I have loved on1 software for a very long time. I never used any of it as my true workflow solution because I was always a little quirks that just didn’t work well for me.

For that purpose, but I’ve always enjoyed the innovations that they’ve done over time. And they have a standalone app that, again, works well, but it’s its own system. It’s not inside of a Lightroom. And so I, again, don’t use it in my workflow on an ongoing basis. Then there is Peakto. Now I’ve done another video on Peakto and Avalanche, a sister application that that company makes.

And Peakto is a standalone software. It’s kind of like on1s, and it’s kind of like Excire Foto. It is a standalone application that actually will index every photo from Instagram and Apple Photos and Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic and, Aperture if you still have an Aperture catalog, and so on and so on and so on.

Capture 1 and so on. it makes it easy for you to search via AI to find a photo or [00:02:00] similar photos among so many other things. Give you some insights about your work and things like that. Peakto is, Peakto is, is great, but like Excire, it takes up a lot of Storage. The the database is quite large. You can put it on an external drive the database if you don’t want it on the internal, whereas Excire, it lives wherever your Lightroom catalog is.

So you basically have very little control over where its data is stored. Now, Peakto has just released Peakto search. It is a combination of an app along with a Lightroom plugin, and so far it’s not building a very large database, which is quite nice because it’s not taking up too much. Storage on, on my machine does take up a good amount, but not nearly as much as Peakto or the others do.

Now, with that said. This is a, a standalone app that sort of just sits up at the top of your, [00:03:00] of your Mac machine. I don’t know if there’s a Windows version. I don’t use Windows. I don’t know if there’s a Windows version coming. Again, I don’t use Windows, so I’m only paying paying attention to the Mac version, but basically it lives at the top.

And the reason why they say it runs so fast is because it’s always running in the background. As long as you have it open so that the indexing could happen slowly over time. Except for the initial, the initial takes up a lot of resources on your machine, a lot of ram to build that first index. You can index multiple Lightroom catalogs if you want as well.

And when you open a brand new catalog, you’ve never opened while Peakto’s been installed or Peakto Search rather has been installed. It, it even prompts you to, to, to index it if you want to. Similar to when you, when if you use Excire, if you op, if you close Lightroom, it does say wait till Peakto Search stops doing its thing or whatever.

But it’s actually much faster than Excire’s is. Okay. So, this is what the Peakto app looks like. [00:04:00] So far. This is the beta version. I wish that I could go to the preferences and tell it where I want the files to be stored, but I can’t. That’s not an option. maybe down the road they’ll add the ability because Peakto, the, the bigger application actually has the ability to say where you want your indexing stored.

This does not. Okay. Now what is cool is that it does, I have my cat, my main catalog index. You can see 422,000 images, 6,719 videos all inside of this catalog. Okay? Now this is the standalone app. I could search by prompt, which actually brings me to here. I can search by similar Imageners. Which brings me to here, you can see I did do a search for fireworks at one point, and it actually maintained that.

now what you can also do is I can go from inside of Lightroom, I can go to file, plug in extras. Then Peakto, search for Lightroom. I could search for similar Imageners and I’m gonna have it do this, the Space Needle [00:05:00] that’s, in Seattle, Washington. And you can see it’s actually gonna bring it right up and it’s gonna show me all of the similar photos I can hit.

See all, it’s gonna bring 617 similar photos. And you can see they all look like the spacing. You know, you even got the, the sit the, the, the city scapes that have it in the, that have it in the background. How cool is that it found? I wonder if it’s gonna do anything that is not. Okay, so this is Brooklyn, so it didn’t do it perfectly, but I did a pretty good job.

You can actually, if I go back up, I, nope, you can’t there. But if you do it by interesting, if you do it by keyword, then you can actually say, to. Give it like a, a, a restriction. So for example, if I was to go here and I was to say fireworks, I could search all, all catalogs or just the open one tolerance.

Gotta be very close. And, and let’s collapse that. And now you can see I got just the fireworks photos here. There should be nothing but fireworks here, right? I [00:06:00] could go and make that more tolerant and it would expand as as needed. Now if I go back to. Let’s do a different prompt search by prompt. Oh, I clicked on the photo.

If you click on the photo, it actually brings the photo up inside of your Lightroom catalog. This takes a little bit of time for some reason. but let’s say I type in the word cat.

You can see it did bring up a bunch of cats that I have in my catalog. I have a lot, I do have two cats as well as family has additional cats. So I’ve got a lot of pictures of cats in my catalog. and it can like again. Restrict how tolerant I want it to be for the, the, for that word I could say I want a black cat.

And now we’ve got only black cats. This is one of my favorite examples. I [00:07:00] believe I did the same exam, same exact example when I showed you Peakto, the main software, as well. But what I really like about this is that it’s always indexing in the background. I love that it works inside of Lightroom.

Outside at the same time, I don’t have to use a separate application. I can just have it pro, you know, pick it up. Now there’s some things that are not here yet. I’m assuming they’re adding things that Excire have, that Peakto does not, or Peakto search rather does not. For example, I would love for once it has all the keywords indexed in its own database for the ability to take all those keywords and write it, all of them to my Lightroom database.

So for example, in Lightroom, if I do have black hat, not index, not actually in Lightroom, as in the metadata of all the pictures of black hats, I would love for Peek two search to write those to it. That would be amazing because I love to have all my keywords inside the metadata so I can pull ’em up inside of Lightroom as well if I want to.

So, I do love the fact that it is a [00:08:00] simple app that just lives in the browser and doesn’t use many a resource, not lives in the browser. Lives up in the menu bar. Does not use many resources until it’s indexing. Once it’s indexing, it takes up a good amount of resources. But again, once you index the first time, unless there’s been a dramatic change, like you wipe out the index and start again, it’s not gonna use that much resources.

It just happens in the background. So check out Peakto. Search if that is something you are interested in. If you have tried Xzy photo or Excire Search, if you’ve tried on1’s keyword tool, if you’ve tried any of them out there. Peakto. Search is a great option for you to try, so I definitely recommend checking that out.

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Comments

10 responses to “Is Peakto Search the Ultimate AI Indexer for Lightroom Classic Users?”

  1. Digital Curator Avatar
    Digital Curator

    Excellent review! The author’s experience with different AI keywording tools for Lightroom Classic offers a wealth of knowledge. Peakto Search’s user interface and its background indexing process sound impressive. This is a must-read for anyone looking to optimize their photo organization and keywording workflow.

  2. Tech Savant Avatar
    Tech Savant

    This was a fantastic read! The comparison of AI indexers for Lightroom Classic is detailed and very informative. The mention of Peakto Search’s efficient resource management and its ability to index photos from various platforms is particularly intriguing. It’s clear that the author has done thorough research and provided a balanced perspective.

  3. Insightful Maven Avatar
    Insightful Maven

    This article provides an incredibly comprehensive comparison of various AI indexing tools for Lightroom Classic. The author’s detailed analysis and personal experiences offer valuable insights that can help photographers make an informed decision on the best indexing solution for their needs. Peakto Search sounds particularly promising with its background indexing and efficient resource usage.

  4. Artistic Visionary Avatar
    Artistic Visionary

    The article does a splendid job of highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each AI indexing tool. It’s refreshing to see such an in-depth analysis, especially with the detailed explanation of Peakto Search’s capabilities. The author’s insights make it easier to understand which tool might best suit different workflows.

  5. Photo Enthusiast Avatar
    Photo Enthusiast

    I appreciate the thoughtful breakdown of each tool’s pros and cons. The author’s experience with Excire Search, on1 Keyword, and Peakto Search brings a lot of clarity to the often confusing world of AI keywording tools. Peakto Search’s ability to handle multiple sources and its seamless Lightroom integration make it a standout option.

  6. Wow this Peakto Search looks kool. Love how it dont use too much storage. ????????

  7. Charlotte85 Avatar
    Charlotte85

    I never knew bout these tools! Exicre and On1 sound interesting. Gonna check em out! ????????

  8. Jayden55 Avatar

    I been using Excire for a while, but Peakto seems bettr. Need 2 try it! ????????

  9. Ethan Robinson Avatar
    Ethan Robinson

    Love how Peakto works with Lightroom! My photos need this kinda indexing. So useful! ????????

  10. Amber48 Avatar

    This video help me so much. I always lose photos, but now I wont wit Peakto! ????????

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