PicSelect

PicSelect is a Windows desktop app for rapidly narrowing down large photo sets through repeated review rounds.

You point it at a folder of images, review photos one by one, and mark each image as Choose or Ignore. Chosen photos can move into later iterations so you can keep refining a set without touching the original files.

What It Does

• Non-destructive photo review. Original files are never renamed, moved, or deleted.
• Folder-based projects with local persistence.
• Append-only history for decisions and iteration changes.
• Iteration 1 starts from the imported snapshot. Later iterations start from the previous round's chosen photos.
• Recursive import with low-memory background processing.
• Import status tracking, cancel/force stop, restart, and delete project actions.
• Gallery revisit flow for completed iterations.
• Double-click zoom and drag-to-pan in the review screen.
• Local thumbnail caching after import.
• Local-only storage with SQLite.

Supported Formats

• .jpg
• .jpeg
• .png
• .bmp
• .gif
• .webp
• .tif
• .tiff

Download

Latest first release:

• Installer: PicSelect-Setup-x64.exe
• Portable build: PicSelect-win-x64-portable.zip
• Release page: v1.0.0

Notes:

• The installer is currently unsigned, so Windows SmartScreen may warn before launch.
• Current release packaging is win-x64.

Review Controls

• Enter: choose current photo
• Esc or Space: ignore current photo
• Left Arrow: previous photo
• Right Arrow: next photo
• Double-click: toggle zoom
• Drag while zoomed: pan the image

How Import Works

• Imports run in the background.
• Review stays locked until the project snapshot is complete.
• Files are streamed and written in batches to avoid loading huge folders into memory.
• Bad files are skipped and logged instead of aborting the whole import.
• Thumbnails are generated in a separate background phase after import.

Project Structure

PicSelect/             WinUI 3 desktop app
PicSelect.Core/        Core domain and persistence logic
PicSelect.Core.Tests/  xUnit tests for non-UI behavior
installer/             Inno Setup installer script
.github/workflows/     CI and release automation

Tech Stack

• WinUI 3
• .NET 10
• Windows App SDK
• SQLite
• xUnit
• GitHub Actions
• Inno Setup

Local Development

Prerequisites:

• Windows 10/11
• .NET 10 SDK
• WinUI 3 / Windows App SDK development environment

Build the app:

dotnet build .\PicSelect\PicSelect.csproj

Run core tests:

dotnet test .\PicSelect.Core.Tests\PicSelect.Core.Tests.csproj

Create a local Release publish:

dotnet publish .\PicSelect\PicSelect.csproj -c Release -p:PublishProfile=win-x64.pubxml

Packaging

The repo includes an Inno Setup script at installer/PicSelect.iss.

To build a local installer after producing the self-contained publish output:

& "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\Inno Setup 6\ISCC.exe" .\installer\PicSelect.iss

Generated packaging output is ignored through .gitignore under artifacts/.

CI And Releases

This repo has two GitHub Actions workflows:

• ci.yml: builds the app and runs core tests on pushes to master and on pull requests
• release.yml: builds a self-contained Windows release, produces the installer and portable zip, and publishes them to GitHub Releases

To publish a new release:

git tag -a v1.0.1 -m "Release v1.0.1"
git push origin v1.0.1

That tag triggers the release workflow automatically.

Current State

PicSelect is usable now, but still early. Some likely next steps:

• code signing for installer and binaries
• better app branding and icon assets
• richer gallery performance tuning for extremely large projects
• stronger installer polish and upgrade handling

Author

• Rana Faraz
• GitHub: @Rana-Faraz

License

Licensed under the MIT License.