"Your Privacy" Software Overview

Aegis Photo Voyager is a premium, local-first photo management application. It is designed to handle massive image collections with a focus on privacy, speed, and intelligence.

Key Philosophy

  • Privacy First: Your photos never leave your computer. All AI analysis is performed locally.
  • Speed: High-performance database indexing and lazy-loaded galleries.
  • Intelligence: Semantic enrichment using local Large Language Models (LLMs).

Main Features

Chronological

Automatically sorted by the exact moment they were taken.

Smart Search

Find photos by camera, location, objects, or complex concepts.

Interactive Map

Explore your travels on a geographic cluster map.

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Discovery & Processing

Before you can browse your photos, Aegis Photo Voyager needs to "discover" them and build its internal index.

The Processing Pipeline

  1. Discovery: The app scans your chosen folders, extracts EXIF metadata (Date Taken, Camera, GPS), and adds entries to the database.
  2. Processing: Proxies (thumbnails) are generated so you can scroll smoothly. Perceptual hashes are computed to detect duplicates.
  3. AI Analysis: The local LLM (Ollama) examines each photo to generate tags, categories, and natural language summaries.

Whenever you add new photos or folders, the app can automatically start a Full Auto Sequence (Discovery -> Processing -> AI) to ensure your library stays up to date.

Importing Your Photos

The Import feature allows you to bring photos into Aegis Photo Voyager from various sources. All imported photos are organized automatically by date and checked for duplicates.

Import Sources

  • External Drive: Import from SD cards or external HDD/SSD.
  • Google Photos: Import from Google Takeout (ZIP) exports.
  • iPhone: Direct USB import via gphoto2 (Linux).

Target Structure

All imported photos are organized into a clean, date-based hierarchy:

Master Directory/
  └── YYYY/
      └── YYYY_MM_DD/
          ├── IMG_0001.JPG
          └── VID_0001.MOV

Duplicate Management

Voyager uses Perceptual Hashing (pHash) for photos and MD5 partial hashing for videos to prevent redundant files, even if they have different filenames.

Browser & Smart Filtering

The main library view is where you spend most of your time exploring your collection. It is designed for professional performance with libraries exceeding 100,000 items.

The Timeline Rail

The vertical bar on the right is the Timeline Rail. It shows a distribution of your photos over time. Click any month or year to jump instantly to that point in history.

AI-Driven Sidebar

Use the left sidebar to filter by Category, Mood, Quality, or specific Objects/Actions detected by the local AI engine.

Map Feature

The Map View provides a geographic way to explore your photo library using high-performance Leaflet clusters.

Geographic Clusters

Photos taken in similar locations are grouped into Clusters. Click a cluster to zoom in and see individual markers.

Rotating Hover Previews

Hovering over a cluster will automatically rotate through high-resolution previews of all photos in that area, giving you an instant summary of that location.

Word Cloud Analytics

The Word Cloud provides a visual summary of your library using AI-extracted tags.

  • Frequency Visualization: Larger words indicate higher frequency in your current view.
  • Interactive Filtering: Click any word in the cloud to immediately filter your library by that specific tag.
  • Dynamic Scoping: The cloud updates in real-time as you apply other filters (e.g., year or location).

Virtual Collections

Collections allow you to group photos together regardless of where they are stored. They are "virtual" groups, meaning a photo can belong to many collections without being duplicated on your disk.

Active Collection Workflow

Set a collection as Active in the sidebar, then use the Purple Plus icon on any thumbnail to instantly add/remove it from that set. This is ideal for quickly curating "Best of" albums or project-specific assets.

Setting Photo Locations

Add missing geographic information to your photos to enable mapping and spatial search.

  • Manual Selection: Draw a "rubberband" box over photos in the grid and use the Location tool to batch-select a pinpoint on the map.
  • Analyze Clusters: An intelligent tool that finds "sessions" (photos taken together in time) and suggests locations based on other nearby geotagged photos.

Application Tools

The Tools dialog contains specialized utilities for library enrichment:

  • Session Finder: Automatically groups photos taken within 3 minutes of each other.
  • Batch Actions: Apply metadata, locations, or collection memberships to thousands of items at once.
  • Verification: Audit your library for missing thumbnails or pending AI analysis.

Configuration & Options

Customize Aegis Photo Voyager to suit your specific workflow needs across four dedicated tabs.

AI Engine Settings

Configure your Ollama Base URL and select your active Vision Model. You can also control the Image Size sent for analysis to balance speed (256px) and accuracy (2048px).

Custom Prompting

The Prompt Editor allows advanced users to modify the exact JSON instructions sent to the AI, enabling custom metadata architectures tailor-made for specific library types.

System Dependencies

To enable advanced AI features, you need to set up Ollama locally.

# 1. Install Ollama from ollama.com
# 2. Pull the required vision model:
ollama pull granite3.2-vision:2b

Voyager expects the Ollama API to be reachable at http://localhost:11434 by default.