Full-screen import
Card detection, dedupe during ingest, second-copy backup, auto-eject.
A Library · Amber
Search the way you think.
Fast like nothing you know.
Cull, organize, find: lightning fast even at millions of photos, with AI that runs entirely on your machine.
01 AI search
Your library understands what's in your photos.
Just type what you remember: “forest dog”, “red jacket on the beach”, “Helena at the lake”. Amberald finds the matches instantly, without you ever having tagged a thing.
- Natural-language search: a local image-understanding model, not a cloud service
- People-aware ranking: name someone, and photos of exactly that person come first
- Auto-tags & object detection suggest keywords. You confirm; nothing writes into your metadata uninvited.
- Fully offline: works on a plane exactly like at home
02 Performance
Built for speed. At any library size.
Import is two-phase: your photos appear in seconds, and the heavy lifting (previews, metadata, AI analysis) continues in the background, starting with whatever you're looking at.
- Instantly workable: tiles appear in seconds, even for 100,000 files
- Visible first: background analysis prioritizes what's on screen
- The UI never blocks: background work yields to your scrolling
- Designed for millions of photos: filtering and searching stay snappy even in huge catalogs
03 People
Every face. Found on your machine.
Local face recognition: name a person once and get suggestions everywhere. And because Amberald knows when a photo was taken, a birthdate even lets it tell siblings apart as babies.
- 100% local: your faces are never matched in a cloud
- Suggestions stay suggestions: you confirm every assignment
- Age-aware: separates look-alike siblings across the years
- Imports people from Lightroom, including face regions
04 Everything else
The workflow you know. Sharpened.
Duplicate finder
Find near-duplicates & bursts, review side by side, stack or reject.
Stacks
Burst and RAW+JPEG grouping that stays out of your way.
Collections & smart rules
Including workflow presets like “never exported” or “no keywords yet”.
Keyword hierarchy
Real trees, fast assignment with autocomplete, XMP-compatible.
Map & timeline
GPS map with clustering and geotagging, a date tree for every source.
Video
Thumbnails and playback with audio. Videos live in the same library.
Backups & integrity
Automatic catalog snapshots, consistency checks, one-click restore.
Browse folders without importing
Open a memory card, NAS or download folder directly: rate, flag, even develop. Edits live in sidecar files, and a later import brings everything along.
Client proofing
Share a selection as a link, straight from your machine: clients pick favorites and comment, feedback lands back in your catalog. No gallery subscription.
05 Switching
Leaving Lightroom? Take everything with you.
Point Amberald at your Lightroom catalog and years of work move over, down to develop settings and virtual copies. If the import is interrupted, it resumes exactly where it stopped.
- One click: pick your .lrcat, watch it happen
- Repeatable without duplicates: importing again only fills the gaps
- Old catalogs welcome: Lightroom 1 through today
your-photos.lrcat → Amberald
- Ratings, flags & color labels
- Collections & smart collections
- Keyword trees
- People with face regions
- EXIF, GPS & IPTC
- Develop settings
- Virtual copies → versions
- Even your presets (.xmp/.lrtemplate)
Your Lightroom catalog is only ever read, never modified. Amberald works on a copy.
And once the photo is chosen?
That's when the real work begins: next door, in the darkroom.