Damselfly is a server-based digital photo management system designed for large, folder-based photo collections, with a particular focus on fast search and keyword-tagging workflows. It brings powerful machine-learning features — face detection, object detection and image classification — and can search a 500,000-image catalogue in under a second. The interface, loosely based on Google Picasa, includes a basket for selecting images to export or process.

Key Features

• Blazing-fast search — A 500,000-image catalogue returns results in under a second
• AI / computer vision — Face detection, object detection and image classification; full facial recognition with an optional Azure Face Services account
• Non-destructive keyword tagging — EXIF updates via ExifTool, so JPEGs are not re-encoded when tagged
• Advanced filters — Date ranges, faces/objects, camera or lens make/model, file size, orientation and visually similar images
• Multi-user & roles — User accounts with role-based entitlements; ReadOnly users are prevented from tagging
• Broad format support — JPG, PNG, HEIC, TIFF, WebP, BMP and DNG/CR2/ORF RAW files
• Geolocation — Map display of photo locations where metadata exists
• Desktop client — Native Electron client for syncing basket images to a local folder for editing

Why Use Damselfly?

If you manage a huge photo archive and need fast search plus AI-assisted tagging, Damselfly stands out. It keeps images on the server with a fast Picasa-like workflow and scales to hundreds of thousands of photos without sacrificing speed.

Use Cases

• Large personal photo archives
• Professional photographers managing big collections
• Keyword-tagging workflows
• Family photo organisation across many devices

Platform

Server-based web app with web front-end — runs on Windows and Linux; Docker deployment available

Licence

GPL-3.0 — free and open source

Website

damselfly.info