Beta v0.1.5

PIC — What Changed

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Performance — the big one

PIC was sluggish on large libraries. Opening, scrolling and switching views
could freeze the whole window for seconds. That is fixed.

• Scrolling the photo grid is smooth again. The main cause was that the app
  was doing far too much work for every row of photos it showed, including
  scanning the entire library again and again. That repeated work is gone.
• The Folder view opens dramatically faster. Building the folder stream
  used to take about a second; it is now a fraction of that.
• Zooming stays where you are. Previously, changing the thumbnail size could
  throw the view back to the top of a folder or to a random spot. The view now
  stays on the same photos, and every zoom level fills the rows properly.
• Switching between views is much faster. Moving between All Photos,
  Favourites, Albums and Folders no longer rebuilds everything from scratch
  when it doesn't need to.
• The sidebar no longer stalls the library while it follows the folder you
  are scrolled to.
• Thumbnails appear while you scroll instead of arriving late, and the app
  no longer wastes effort decoding pictures that are far off screen.
• Startup is quick and stays quick.

Freezes and stalls

• Fixed a case where the window could lock up for several seconds when a photo
  lived on a slow or sleeping external drive.
• Fixed long pauses caused by the folder list and the thumbnail grid rebuilding
  themselves more often than necessary.
• Removed a problem where a large library could make the interface feel stuck
  while it reordered the folder view.

Offline photos and external drives

• Photos whose originals are unavailable are correctly marked again, including
  when a drive is disconnected while the app is running.
• Cached thumbnails still show for offline photos, and the app clearly marks
  the original as unavailable.

Sidebar

• The Library section stays put. Albums and Folders now share one scrolling
  area, so a long album list can no longer push the folders off screen — you
  just scroll down through both.
• Double-click the Albums or Folders heading to collapse or expand it.
• Watched folders are marked with a small eye on the folder icon, so you can
  see at a glance which folders PIC is watching for changes.
• Imported-only folder view lines the folder icons up neatly with the rest
  of the sidebar.

Photo viewer

• Drag to pan whenever the photo is zoomed in, not only at full 1:1 size.
• The cursor shows a grab hand whenever you can drag the photo around.
• Pressing 1:1 / space peeks at the photo at full size, and pressing it
  again returns you to the normal fit-to-window view.

Collage

• The collage preview is much sharper. Tiles used to be drawn from a small
  cached thumbnail and could look soft when enlarged; they are now prepared at
  a much better quality for the preview, while still appearing instantly.

Edit Mode

• B&W and Sepia can be combined. (Marked as disregarded in the final pass.)

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Summary

The headline is simple: PIC is now fast and responsive on large libraries.
Scrolling, folder browsing, zooming and switching views all behave the way you
expect, freezes are gone, offline storage is handled properly, and the sidebar
and viewer got a set of small usability improvements.

Picasa iPhoto Clone v0.1.4 Beta Pre-release

Picasa iPhoto Clone v0.1.4 is a public Beta release. The headline addition is Edit Mode, with the photo editing work and other improvements added since v0.1.3.

New: Edit Mode

Edit photos directly from the library with a non-destructive workflow. Changes are stored as edit recipes, so the original photo remains untouched.

• Crop and straighten photos
• Adjust exposure, fill light, highlights, shadows, temperature, saturation, and sharpening
• Apply automatic contrast and colour corrections, black and white, and sepia effects
• Undo, redo, and reset edits
• Copy edits from one photo and paste them onto another
• Export an edited photo as a full-quality JPEG
• Move between photos while editing and return to the same thumbnail position
• Copy edits and Paste to single/multiple photos in an instant

Also new since v0.1.3

• Improved photo actions: a redesigned right-click menu, Set as Wallpaper, and reliable grid focus after favourites, pasted edits, editing, and album actions.
• Wallpaper layouts: landscape photos fill the screen, portrait photos retain the whole image over a blurred background, and panoramic photos preserve their width. RAW photos are converted for wallpaper use.
• Better RAW viewing: higher-quality RAW previews and more robust DNG recovery improve thumbnails and full-photo viewing.
• Smarter collages: Smart Mosaic uses global layout scoring, supports no-crop layouts, handles mixed orientations more effectively, and improves preview performance and offline-photo handling.
• Library refinements: better keyboard navigation and search interactions, offline thumbnail recovery, favourite indicators, and refreshed documentation.

Included downloads

• Cargo release build — dated ZIP archive containing the optimized x86_64 Linux binary
• Linux AppImage — dated portable x86_64 Linux application
• Linux Flatpak — dated x86_64 Flatpak bundle

This remains Beta software. Please report issues with Edit Mode, RAW files, wallpaper layout, collage creation, or library navigation.

Picasa iPhoto Clone v0.1.3 Beta Pre-release

Picasa iPhoto Clone v0.1.3 Beta Pre-release

Picasa iPhoto Clone v0.1.3 is now a public Beta release. Its headline addition is a complete collage workspace that turns a selection from your photo library into a finished, shareable JPEG without leaving the application.

New: Collage workspace

A collage can begin in either of two natural ways: select at least two photos in the library and choose Create Collage… from the photo actions menu, or use the collage button in the photo information bar to start a new canvas. The editor opens as a dedicated workspace, keeping the photo library and the work-in-progress collage easy to move between.

The editor starts with a clean Grid layout, then gives you fast creative control. Choose either Grid or Mosaic arrangement; select Square (1:1), 4:3, 3:2, or widescreen 16:9 proportions; set the canvas to white, black, or light grey; and tune the spacing between photos. Rounded photo corners are optional and their radius is adjustable. Use Shuffle whenever you want a fresh arrangement.

Photos can also be reordered directly on the canvas: drag one photo over another to swap their positions with a smooth visual preview. Need more images after you start? Click Add Photos…, move through the library and folders, select the photos you want, and add them to the same project. Selections are preserved while navigating folders, so building a collage from more than one location is straightforward.

When it is ready, choose Create / Export Collage… and save a JPEG. Export reads the original photos where available, respects their library orientation, and uses the selected layout, background, spacing, and corner styling for the finished image.

Also new since v0.1.2

• Automatic folder watching: enable monitoring per library folder in Settings. New or changed photos are detected and refreshed automatically; other file-system changes trigger a safe folder refresh, including reconciliation of deleted photos.
• Better folder navigation: open a photo location from the grid and the app selects and scrolls to its imported folder in the sidebar. The Library section can be collapsed for a cleaner sidebar.
• More useful photo actions: folder and album photos consistently offer Open in Folder, alongside the existing file-opening actions. The Add to Album action is simpler and clearer.
• Library insight: Settings now shows the current thumbnail count with the other library totals.
• Stronger DNG recovery: thumbnail and viewer decoding now have safer recovery paths for damaged or incompatible embedded DNG previews.

Included downloads

• Cargo release build — zip archive
• Linux AppImage — portable Linux application
• Linux Flatpak — Flatpak package

This remains Beta software. Please report issues with collage creation or export, watched-folder updates, DNG handling, or library navigation.

Picasa iPhoto Clone v0.1.2 Beta Pre-release

Picasa iPhoto Clone v0.1.2 Beta Pre-release

This release contains the latest tested build from 6 September 2026. It is intended for further deployment testing with large photo libraries.

What changed since yesterday

• Improved library responsiveness for large collections by moving gallery preparation and availability checks away from the user interface, reusing loaded gallery data, and avoiding unnecessary tile rebinding.
• Improved thumbnail loading by prioritising missing thumbnails currently visible on screen, retrying visible requests reliably, and allowing visible work to proceed ahead of background recovery/import work.
• Added startup/loading progress visibility for photo preparation.
• Improved RAW and DNG handling, including safer fallback behaviour for incompatible embedded previews and higher-quality full-size RAW viewing where supported.
• Improved HEIC thumbnail orientation and thumbnail display fitting.
• Added right-click photo actions for opening the original file, opening its containing folder, and opening with an associated application.
• Improved folder navigation so opening a photo location selects and scrolls to the actual imported folder in the sidebar.
• Improved sidebar navigation and folder search.
• Fixed click-drag photo selection and fullscreen photo panning.
• Fixed search behaviour when a photo is opened in the lightbox.
• Improved title-bar information and photo availability indication.
• Improved album view and thumbnail layout, including the remove-folder action.
• Avoided full gallery refreshes after favouriting photos.
• Removed an obsolete logo asset.

Included builds

• Cargo release binary
• Linux AppImage
• Linux Flatpak

This is a beta pre-release. Please report any regressions in scrolling, thumbnail availability, RAW/DNG viewing, folder navigation, or lightbox search.

Picasa iPhoto Clone v0.1.1 Beta Pre-release

Picasa Clone Build Instructions and Update History - Linux Release as this is a linux project and do we realy need a Windows build if Picasa exists "Besides the lack of RAW support"

Changes since the initial build

Albums index and album state refresh

• The Albums heading opens a dedicated album index containing all created
  albums, including empty albums.
• Album cards use a fixed square cover allocation, with the album name and
  photo count below it. Portrait and landscape covers use crop/cover behavior
  and cached thumbnails.
• Empty albums use a square placeholder.
• Creating, deleting, and changing album membership refreshes the sidebar,
  album menus, and the Albums index without requiring an application restart.
• Deleting the currently open album safely returns to the Albums index.
• SidebarFilter::Albums is handled explicitly during refreshes, so background
  scan or library refresh events do not query the normal photo grid or panic.

RAW and NEF thumbnail handling

• Normal grid display crops RAW/NEF thumbnails using the actual RAW dimensions
  and EXIF orientation so embedded thumbnail letterboxing is not shown.
• Album covers use the same RAW crop behavior as the normal photo grid.
• RAW thumbnail generation prefers the embedded RAW preview pixels, with a
  fallback when no suitable preview is available.
• RAW cache invalidation is versioned separately from regular image caches.
• RAW thumbnail work is limited to a smaller worker concurrency during large
  batches to reduce UI freezes; regular image batches keep their normal
  concurrency.

Folder library management

• Folder context menus include removal from the application library.
• Removing a folder removes its app/database entries without deleting the
  actual folder or photos from disk.

Favourites

• Photo context menus show one dynamic action: Add to Favourites or
  Remove from Favourites.
• The action applies to the current photo selection and refreshes the relevant
  UI.
• Folder context menus can add or remove all photos in a folder, including
  descendant folders, from Favourites.
• Favourites reuse the existing photo database field; no schema change was
  introduced.
• Albums do not have a separate favourite state.

Important scope notes

The normal photo grid behavior, lightbox, scanning workflow, album database
schema, and thumbnail cache architecture were preserved except for the RAW
preview/cropping and RAW performance fixes described above. Cover Flow has not
been implemented.

Picasa iPhoto Clone v0.1.0 Beta

First Cargo release build/Flatpak/AppImage and Windows x64 of Picasa iPhoto Clone.

This release brings the Rust/GTK4 photo manager to both Linux and Windows, while keeping the same fast, minimal photo-browsing experience inspired by Picasa and iPhoto.

Included
Fast cached thumbnail grid
Folder importing and browsing
Albums and favourites
Search and sorting
Full-screen photo viewer
Zoom, 1:1 view and rotation
JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC/HEIF and RAW photo support
NEF, NRW, CR2, CR3, ARW, DNG, RAF, ORF, RW2, PEF, SRW and RAW
Offline/unavailable folder detection
Local SQLite photo library
Linux x86_64 native Cargo release build
Windows x64 portable release
Linux Installation

Download:

cargo.build.Picasa-iPhoto-Clone-Linux-x86_64.tar.gz

Extract the archive.
Open a terminal in the extracted folder.
Make sure the application is executable if required:
chmod +x Picasa-iPhoto-Clone
Run:
./Picasa-iPhoto-Clone

The Linux release is a native build created with:

cargo build --release

The native Linux build requires compatible GTK4, libadwaita and Linux system libraries to already be installed.

A Flatpak release is planned to provide easier installation and broader compatibility across Linux distributions.

Windows Installation

Download:

Picasa-iPhoto-Clone-Windows-x64.zip

Extract the complete ZIP.
Open the extracted folder.
Run Picasa-iPhoto-Clone.exe.

Keep the included DLL files together with the executable. They provide the GTK4/libadwaita runtime required by the Windows version.

Notes

This project was originally intended to be a Linux-only application, so it was a nice surprise to discover that the same Rust/GTK4 codebase could also be made to run on Windows. :)

These are still early builds and the application is under active development. Bugs and platform-specific issues may still occur.

The Windows application is currently unsigned, so Windows may display a SmartScreen/security warning the first time it is launched.

The native Linux Cargo build may not work on every Linux distribution because GTK4, libadwaita, glibc and other system library versions differ between distributions.
Disclaimer: I have not lost any photos while building or testing this app, but it is still under active development. To be safe, please test it first with copies of your photos or a temporary test folder.