Charmera 📸

A cute little macOS app (SwiftUI) that reads photos off a connected Kodak Charmera (or any camera card with a DCIM folder), shows them in a gallery, lets you multi-select, and applies nostalgic film filters to the whole batch in one go.

Features

• Auto-detects the camera — scans every mounted volume for a DCIM folder, so plugging in the Charmera just works. Also lets you pick a folder by hand.
• Fast gallery — polaroid-style tiles with ImageIO thumbnails, tap to multi-select, Select All / Clear.
• 7 nostalgic filters with live previews rendered on your photo: Faded Film 🎞 · Kodachrome '74 ☀️ · Sepia Sunday 📜 · Disposable ⚡️ · Sun-bleached 🌻 · Retro Chrome 🪩 · Noir '59 🖤
• Batch apply + export — filters run at full resolution via Core Image and save copies (originals on the card are never touched). Default output: ~/Pictures/Charmera.
• Optional retro date stamp — the classic glowing-orange corner date.

Building & running

This app uses SwiftUI, whose @State/@Binding are macros in the current SDK. Their compiler plugin ships only with full Xcode, so the Command Line Tools alone can't build it.

1. Install Xcode from the App Store.
2. Point the toolchain at it (one time):

   sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode.app

3. Build and launch:

   ./build.sh
   open Charmera.app

build.sh compiles the sources with swiftc and wraps the binary in a proper Charmera.app bundle (Dock icon, menu bar, and the removable-volume access prompt). If macOS asks to access files on a removable volume, click Allow so the app can read the camera card.

Project layout

Sources/Charmera/
  CharmeraApp.swift      # @main app + window
  Theme.swift            # warm film palette + button styles
  Models.swift           # PhotoItem, ExportState
  PhotoLibrary.swift     # camera detection + thumbnail loading (ImageIO)
  Filters.swift          # Core Image recipes, previews, full-res export, date stamp
  AppModel.swift         # app state, selection, batch export orchestration
  Views/
    ContentView.swift    # layout + empty state
    HeaderView.swift     # wordmark, status, selection controls
    GalleryView.swift    # grid + photo cells
    FilterBar.swift      # filter preview chips + apply row
    ExportBanner.swift   # floating progress / done banner

tools/
  make_icon.swift        # regenerates the app icon (Core Graphics)
  make_samples.swift      # generates sample photos for testing / screenshots
docs/                     # icon + screenshot used in this README

Package.swift is included for building in Xcode via SwiftPM if you prefer.

Development

Test the gallery, filters and export without the camera by pointing the app at any folder of JPEGs via an environment variable (run the binary directly, since open doesn't forward env vars):

CHARMERA_FOLDER=/path/to/photos ./Charmera.app/Contents/MacOS/Charmera

Regenerate the assets:

swiftc tools/make_icon.swift -o /tmp/mkicon && /tmp/mkicon /tmp/AppIcon.png
swiftc tools/make_samples.swift -o /tmp/mksamples && /tmp/mksamples ~/Desktop/samples