FirstPass compared

If you are looking for an alternative to Photo Mechanic

Photo Mechanic is the tool most photographers mean when they talk about fast ingest and culling, and it is good at it. What people ask us is narrower: what does this cost, what does it do to my files, and does it still work when the internet does not. Those are the questions answered below, about FirstPass — what other software charges and how it is licensed changes without notice, so it is not repeated here.

FirstPass covers the same part of the job — copy off the card, sort it, rate it, throw most of it away — and hands the keepers on to your editor of choice. It does not try to be a full asset manager, and it does not edit your photographs.

What it does that culling software generally does not

Culling tools generally assume the files arrived intact. FirstPass treats getting them off the card as the part worth being careful about.

• Every file is verified against the card before the card is released — a size check, or a full content checksum. Finder copies and assumes success.

• Anything that fails is re-copied automatically, and anything still failing is reported rather than counted as a success.

• Transfer reports as CSV manifests, PDF summaries and ASC MHL sidecars, for work that has to be handed on with proof it arrived complete.

• Two destinations in the same pass, so a backup exists before the card leaves the reader.

• As many cards at once as you can attach, each with its own progress and its own Cancel, and all of them still verified. A shoot rarely comes back on one card, and you should not have to sit and feed the reader.

• Copying does not hold the window: browse, rate and compare while the cards are still coming in.

If you want to buy it once rather than rent it

• Works where your photographs are. Browse an external disk directly, root the folder tree wherever your library lives, and pin the folders you keep coming back to. Nothing has to be imported into a catalogue first, and nothing is moved to suit the app.

• One payment. $39.99 on the Mac App Store, US pricing. No subscription, no renewal, and updates arrive through the App Store at no further cost for as long as they are made.

• Offline by default. Your images are never uploaded and are never used to train anything — not as a policy that could change, but because no part of the app sends a photograph anywhere. The only connection FirstPass can make at all is the optional release-notes signup, and only if you type an address into it.

• No account. Nothing to sign into, and nothing that stops working if a service is discontinued.

What it is not

• Not a RAW editor. It rates, flags and files; it does not develop — the keepers go on to Lightroom, Capture One or whatever you already use.

• Not a digital asset manager. There is no catalogue, no keyword hierarchy and no library to migrate into or out of. It works on folders.

• Ratings do not yet travel with a RAW file. They are kept in FirstPass’s own store, and a re-encoded export carries the star rating as XMP — but exporting the original copies the file only. XMP sidecars beside originals are planned.

• No IPTC, keywords or captions. There is no caption template, no code replacement and no metadata stationery. If captioning to a wire service is part of your job, FirstPass does not do that part.

• No tethered capture. It reads cards and cameras that are already full; it does not shoot to the screen.

• Not an AI culler. It does not decide which photograph is best. It puts up to sixteen similar frames side by side with synchronised zoom and pan, which makes deciding fast enough to do yourself.

• Mac only, and it needs macOS 14.6 or later.