The Jury

The Jury is a Lightroom Classic plugin for running a local PPA-oriented image critique workflow on selected photos.

It is designed to stay local:

• Lightroom exports a temporary JPEG from the selected photo.
• A bundled local companion service evaluates the request on 127.0.0.1.
• The plugin shows the result and writes the key fields back into Lightroom metadata.

Features

The plugin currently supports:

• running PPA Critique... from Lightroom Classic
• optional Ollama-backed semantic analysis
• automatic start and stop of the bundled local service
• a Plug-in Manager settings pane for service/runtime status and configuration
• writing critique output into custom Lightroom metadata fields

Scope

The plugin is aimed at photographers who want a local critique assistant inside Lightroom rather than a separate standalone application.

Current scope:

• local-only workflow
• Lightroom Classic 13 or newer
• single-machine use
• critique orchestration and metadata write-back

Not in scope:

• cloud hosting
• remote multi-user service deployment
• direct image judging inside Lightroom without the local companion service

Requirements

• Adobe Lightroom Classic 13 or newer
• macOS or Windows
• a local build of this repository as described in INSTALL.md
• optional: a local Ollama installation for semantic analysis

How To Use It

1. Build the project as described in INSTALL.md.
2. Load plugin/PpaCritique.lrplugin in Lightroom Classic through File > Plug-in Manager....
3. Open the plugin settings pane in Plug-in Manager and confirm the managed service shows as reachable.
4. Optionally adjust Ollama URL, model, timeout, and plugin defaults.
5. Select one or more photos in Lightroom.
6. Run Library > Plug-in Extras > PPA Critique....

The plugin will automatically:

• start the bundled local service if needed
• export a temporary rendition
• submit the critique request
• persist the returned result into Lightroom metadata

Semantic Analysis

The default critique flow does not require Ollama.

If you want semantic analysis:

• install and run a local Ollama instance
• ensure the configured model supports image input
• configure the Ollama URL and model in the plugin settings pane

Installation

See INSTALL.md for platform-specific setup and build steps.

Local Operation

• The service is bundled and managed by the Lightroom plugin; users do not need to launch it manually.
• The service is local-only and binds to 127.0.0.1:6464.