Show HN: Editing 2,000 photos made me build a macOS bulk photo editor

A solo itch-scratching project has turned into RapidPhoto, a macOS app designed to slay the time-suck of repetitive image edits. The developer says the app was born after slogging through 2,000 photos — and it shows in the feature list: batch crop, resize, blur faces, add watermarks and export to modern formats like WebP, HEIC and AVIF. Who wants to click the same slider 2,000 times? Not me. Not you.

What it does

RapidPhoto can import up to 500 images at once and apply crops, adjustments and watermarks across a whole set in one pass. It packs pro tools — exposure, curves, histograms, 50+ filters, plus OCR, QR/barcode detection and face detection for selective blurring. It has been reported that all processing is 100% on-device for privacy-conscious users; GPU-accelerated WebP exports and AI upscaling are allegedly included to speed outputs and improve detail.

Business model & updates

The app follows a freemium model: a free tier lets you test with 10 images and basic exports, while premium unlocks the full 500-image batch limit and pro formats for $2.99/week, $6.99/month or $39.99/year. Privacy is emphasized — app sandboxing and GDPR-compliant analytics are cited — though buyers should always vet promises for themselves. Recent updates add advanced composition overlays (golden ratio, diagonal method), a custom scaling engine, more filters, performance fixes and a smoother purchase flow.

RapidPhoto slots neatly into the trend toward on-device ML and privacy-first creative tools, appealing to e-commerce vendors, event photographers and anyone who hates repetitive editing. Will subscription fatigue scare people off? Maybe. But for anyone who’s pleaded with Lightroom to “just do them all,” this one’s worth a try.

Sources: apps.apple.com, Hacker News