Perch

AI assitance was used to make this program possible

A Windows GUI for reorganizing multi-band drone imagery into a flat, band-per-folder layout. Point it at a flight folder, pick a sensor preset, and every TIFF lands in the matching band folder under a destination you choose.

Two sensor presets are built in: MicaSense RedEdge-MX Dual and MicaSense Altum-PT. More presets (single-camera RedEdge-MX, custom JSON) are on the roadmap.

Download

Grab the latest Perch.exe from the Releases page. Single file, no installer, no Python required on the target machine.

User guide

A full end-user manual — installation, a five-minute quick start, every control explained, band reference tables, troubleshooting and an FAQ — lives in docs/:

• Perch User Guide (PDF) — 59 pages, opens in the browser. Best for reading and sharing.
• Perch User Guide (Word) — the editable source, if you need to adapt it for your team.

The Word document is the master copy. The PDF is exported from it, and both are regenerated by python tools/build_guide.py (content lives in tools/guide_content.py, screenshots in docs/images/).

Preset 1 — MicaSense RedEdge-MX Dual

10 bands across two cameras (RED + BLUE). Applies to RedEdge-MX (serial RX02+) and Altum (AL05+) in the Dual configuration.

Suffix	Camera	Band	Center (nm)	Bandwidth (nm)	Folder
1	RED	Blue	475	32	01_Blue_475
2	RED	Green	560	27	02_Green_560
3	RED	Red	668	14	03_Red_668
4	RED	Near IR	842	57	04_NIR_842
5	RED	Red Edge	717	12	05_RedEdge_717
6	BLUE	Coastal Blue	444	28	06_CoastalBlue_444
7	BLUE	Green	531	14	07_Green_531
8	BLUE	Red	650	16	08_Red_650
9	BLUE	Red Edge	705	10	09_RedEdge_705
10	BLUE	Red Edge	740	18	10_RedEdge_740

Preset 2 — MicaSense Altum-PT

7 bands: 5 multispectral + panchromatic + LWIR (thermal). Single integrated sensor unit.

Suffix	Band	Center	Bandwidth	Folder
1	Blue	475 nm	32 nm	01_Blue_475
2	Green	560 nm	27 nm	02_Green_560
3	Red	668 nm	14 nm	03_Red_668
4	NIR	842 nm	57 nm	04_NIR_842
5	Red Edge	717 nm	12 nm	05_RedEdge_717
6	Panchro	634 nm	463 nm	06_Panchro_634
7	LWIR	11 µm	6 µm	07_LWIR_11um

Note: suffix 6 means Coastal Blue on the Dual but Panchro on Altum-PT. Suffix 7 means Green-531 on the Dual but LWIR thermal on Altum-PT — so picking the right preset matters. The app remembers your last choice between launches.

What you get for each run

<output_parent>\<your-folder-name>\
  01_Blue_475\         IMG_2400_1.tif  ...
  02_Green_560\        IMG_2400_2.tif  ...
  ...
  10_RedEdge_740\      IMG_2400_10.tif ...
  Misc\                everything that isn't a band TIFF, mirrored
  sort_log_<timestamp>.txt

The output folder name is whatever you type — no forced prefix.

Features

• Sensor presets — RedEdge-MX Dual or Altum-PT from a dropdown. Auto-detected from EXIF the moment you pick a source folder, so the dropdown self-selects from the first image's Make/Model tags.
• Drag and drop — drop a folder onto the window to set Source (or Output parent, if Source is already filled).
• Misc folder — everything that isn't a band TIFF (GPS logs, .dat files, parameter logs, etc.) is captured into a Misc/ sibling folder with the source layout preserved. Especially important for MOVE mode so nothing gets stranded. Toggle off if you only want the band TIFFs.
• Auto-update check — on launch, quietly checks GitHub Releases. If a newer version is available, a yellow banner appears at the top of the window with a Download button (opens the Releases page in your browser). Checked at most once every 24 hours; "Dismiss" remembers the version so it won't bother you again for that release.
• Modern UI with light / dark / system theme (CustomTkinter).
• Recursive scan — source layout doesn't have to match exactly.
• Copy by default; Move is an opt-in checkbox with confirmation.
• Parallel copy with configurable worker count (default 4) — typically 2-3x faster than serial on cross-drive runs, much more on network shares.
• Filename collisions detected up front; choose auto-rename, skip duplicates, or cancel for the whole run.
• Existing destination files are never overwritten — counted as skipped.
• Live progress with files/sec and ETA.
• Cancel button works mid-run, even with parallel workers.
• Per-band file counts and a full log written into the output folder.
• Source / destination / worker count / preset / appearance remembered between runs (stored at %LOCALAPPDATA%\Perch\settings.json; pre-v0.7 settings under ImageSorter\ are migrated forward on first launch).
• "Open output folder" button after a successful run.

Run from source

Requires Python 3.10+ on Windows.

pip install -r requirements.txt
python run.py

or double-click run.bat (after the pip install).

Build a single-file EXE

pip install -r requirements.txt -r requirements-dev.txt
build_exe.bat

Output: dist\Perch.exe.

You can also push a v* tag to GitHub — the bundled workflow builds the EXE on windows-latest and attaches it to a GitHub Release automatically:

git tag v0.7.0
git push origin v0.7.0

The workflow refuses to build when the git tag doesn't match perch.__version__, preventing version drift between source and releases.

Tuning copy workers

Source ↔ Destination	Workers
Two different SSDs / different physical drives	4-8
Same SSD	2-4
Same HDD	1 (parallel head seeks slow it down)
SD card / USB stick → internal drive	4
Network share → local	8 (often the biggest win)

Change the count any time from the Run card in the GUI.

Project layout

perch/
  __init__.py        # version
  __main__.py        # `python -m perch`
  bands.py           # suffix -> band metadata (preset registry)
  sorter.py          # scan / collision / parallel copy-move (Tk-free)
  settings.py        # tiny JSON persistence with legacy migration
  updater.py         # GitHub Releases auto-update check
  app.py             # CustomTkinter GUI
docs/                # user guide (Word + PDF) and its screenshots
tools/               # build_guide.py, guide_content.py, build_assets.py
tests/               # pytest suite
run.py               # entry point for source + PyInstaller
run.bat              # convenience launcher
build_exe.bat        # PyInstaller build script
requirements.txt     # runtime: customtkinter
requirements-dev.txt # build-only: pyinstaller
.github/workflows/release.yml  # CI: build + attach EXE on tag push

License

MIT — see LICENSE.