Pixave App Reviews
DO NOT USE THIS APP The iCloud sync is very badly implemented, removing you from your media entirely, resulting in one little mistake and all your artwork is lost for ever, it won't be on any iCloud trash, or the iCloud Restore Files option. If you have to use this app, set it up so that it creates a Pixave library on your desktop, and then drop that library manually into iCloud Drive, that way you stand a chance of it being picked by iCloud, and backed-up.
I backed up my pixave library in three different drives. Now Pixave.app doesn't do anything, just that it can't locate the files. I opened the package and there are a lot of packages and they are EMPTY. Does anybody know what is a big file named pixave inside that the package?
*WAS* Really good overall
Updating my review to one star, as this app has been abandoned.
Dead On The Vine
This was a great application, upon release. It has long-since died, and the developers are unresponsive. Given that the formats are not open, etc. your libraries become risk. I'm not sure why/how this is still being sold.
Abandoned…but still the best
This app is not great, but it's literally the best option going right now for a local image reference / asset manager.
Great product, hope it continues!
I've been using Pixave for years to mostly track screenshots. As a product designer, I tend to collect them like crazy. With Pixave I can easily organize and tag them so I can quickly find them later. While Pixave still runs great on Sonoma, as another reviewer mentioned, I'm also worried it won't be carried forward. If you don't like subscriptions and want a great image manager, might as well give Pixave a try!
Really love it... but please support
Very clean and well-made app, but there hasn't been an update in awhile. I still use it regularly and everything works fine, but I'd also like to see some regular maintenance like twice yearly updates. This might also encourage others to purchase.
Quite good, but may have been abandoned
A good solution to the task of maintaining and cataloguing a large collection of images. The ergonomics of the app could be improved, but overall it's straightforward to use and does much of what you'd want. The option to index -- rather than import -- images is useful. The biggest concern about this app is that it may be abandonware. The last update was two years ago, and the developer's website has disappeared. It seems likely that Pixave is no longer being developed and may stop working in future versions of MacOS.
App not updated
This app is no longer compatible with newer versions of MAC OS. The developers website no longer exist. No support available. Do not buy.
Just go download Eagle for Mac
eagle.cool
Abandonware
Pixave no longer functions under 12.4. Company wensite is gone. No longer supported.
Not as useful
Explain to me why a photo management app would claim support for IPTC and EXIF, but you can't manipulate any of that data. For example, I have files that fill the IPTC Caption/Abstract field. Can't search for it. Can't copy it. Can't change it. Can't bulk edit. Nothing. I can edit tags, but these aren't reflected in either the metadata or the Finder file metadata. The app would be so much more useful if it at least matched the features of other apps it intends to replace. Otherwise, why bother?
Great app!!
I was lookiing for a way to organize my swipe file ... I'm email copywriter and there's no app that can do the job like Pixave! thank you developers you guys nailed it!
Lost my files
I had iCloud Sync turned on, but now my entire library shows up as "Missing File," and I can no longer retrieve my images. When I open the library switcher, the iCloud one shows up, but I can't get the files to load in Pixave.
Good APP but needs some improvement
It's generally a good App to organize the pictures, especially those with EXIF keywords, they could be translated into Tags automatically, that's great. One thing that I want to issue is the "Internal Link", or the "File Path" for each picture, the link could be used for citing from outside and will facilitate our work greatly. Thank you.
Recommended as an Adobe Bridge Substitute
Nope. It's more like a substitute for Photos. Yet another photos application that requires that you import your photos into a library. Provides no direct option for browsing files and folders directly, something that Bridge does.
Unsupported and unable to sync with iPad
It pains me to give Pixave a one-star review, because for a long time, it was the solution to my image management problems. But, seeing that the Mac app is still being updated and still advertises iPad sync as a feature, I have to warn potential buyers that syncing is broken, and that, as far as I can tell, the developer is not supporting the app (and has not been providing support since sometime before the last update). iCloud sync between the Mac and iPad used to work well (for me—others reported issues with data loss). But some time ago, that stopped. Now, the iPad app only sees new libraries created within the app. Those libraries sync to the Mac just fine, but the iPad can no longer see libraries created on the Mac, or even older libraries created on the iPad. Sync is the main draw for Pixave for me, and sync isn't working. I have contacted the developer several times about this (using the contact option within the app), and have never received a response. The last update to the Mac app (version 2.3.13) happened after I contacted them. So, they are still updating the app, but not supporting customers who have problems with it. (The iPad app, on the other hand, hasn't been updated in a couple of years.) Other customers have also reported that the developer is unresponsive, so I think you should consider Pixave unsupported. Given that it's advertising features (iCloud sync with iPad) that don't actually work, and the developer won't respond to support requests, I can't recommend spending money on Pixave. I'd love to see sync get fixed and be able to use the app again. I haven't found anything that lives up to Pixave when it was working. So, while I'm holding out hope for the app's future (and will update my review if it starts working again!), for now, you should avoid it.
UI is not very intuitive
Update: No longer using this app. Too clunky, and other than some "tagging" features, which also can be done in Finder, there really is no benefit to this app. This app just creates duplicate storage on my iCloud drive when the original files are in an organized folder system, and then the additional database full of the same images. I would be concerned if support for the app stopped and then you may not have access to the files you stored in Pixave. ~~~~~~~~~~~ There are some strong positives with this app, but the UI is not very intuitive. I did not see the small check to the right of the "# tag selected" in the Tag bar on the right and couldn't figure out why the tags I was selecdting for the objects wasn't sticking. Using "Smart Collections", I can create basic searches for single or multiple tags. Initially I thought I was limited to clicking on the Library "Tags" label, then double clicking on the tag from a popup list. This was pretty confusing at first. Also "searching" really lacks. What if many of the items don't have standard names? They may be a "Xd96884.png" file (downloaded icon file). How can I search for that odd file name if I don't even remember the file name? Nice start but still a fair amount of work to do with this app to make it a bit more intuitive for even an experienced techie.
inefficient markup but good app nonetheless
Instead of opening another program (preview) to markup an image, just make all the markup tools available in the image's details in side pixave. There's plenty of space in the toolbar.
Glad it still works
There aren't many apps like this... many are abandoned.. this one still seems to be working. Thank the stars. I'm still cautiosly using it. Afraid to lose my image collection like I did with Ember.
No update.
After upgrade Mac OS (Big Sur), it doesn't show exif file. I have asked many times, but so far no replies to answers.
The fate of "Award Winning" Apps right here.
Just 2 years ago Pixave was an Award Winning no quotes app. Worked okay up until Catalina & iOS 14. Now parts of its functionality are broken. On macOS I'd call it 3 stars, on iOS things are a lot more broken and it's only a 2-star app. I can't blame the dev, Apple has made a number of 4-5 star apps much worse under Crap.. sorry Catalina and iOS 14. Maybe go back to having stable platorms.
Great App - sad it seems there is no new development
I am still using this app and I would have given it a higher rating if it was still in development. I would have no issue paying to upgrade since it has been a few years now since the first release. It seems there is a demand for this type of program but no one has figured out how to monetize it well. The feature that has been the most valuable to me is their full website snapper that swaps between devices so this is what I will be looking to replace. I hope it makes a come back!
Search is very rudimentary - can’t use
This is one of the best image organizing applications that I used to use in years. The ability to see Adobe, Affinity, Sketch, PSD and movies is astounding. Nothing even comes close. I really do miss it and want to use it again but it needs a little help on the search features. The ability to do booleean searches is limited, as in wanting to search by title and a tag and notes I may have entered. I really wish the developer would update this. I badly need for my design work.
Mostly abandoned, with no signs of life
Pixave is a very useful software to archive images of many types. However, it is a while that no update is delivered and nobody replies to answers. I have the sensation that soon it won't work anymore. It should be not on the Apple Store
Not quite ready for professional work
Soon after it was first released, I purchased Pixave to replace Ember. I had high hopes for this app, and initially the developer was pretty responsive. But many of the improvements we discussed were not implemented, and eventually development slowed to a crawl. Although the app does some image cataloging things very well, it has a couple fatal flaws. The main problems I have with this app are: 1. There is no way to fix relocated images easily, if you have a complicated setup. In my case I have almost 50,000 images spread across hundreds of folders and sub-folders. Now that my library locations have moved (I stopped using a cloud service, so had to relocate my libraries), all the links are broken. Pixave DOES have a way to re-link multiple images at once, but only if they are all from the same folder. Otherwise you have to do it ... one ... image ... at ... a ... time. Since the overall folder structure is the same, it should be easy. But what should be a one-click solution (or maybe a few clicks — a "search and replace path component" feature would do it all!), instead is hundreds or thousands of clicks to fix. I cannot do that. (Fixing broken links could be much easier if the app would at least offer to check if there are other images from the same folder to relink, when you fix one broken link. But it doesn't do that. Fixing broken links would also be easier if it was possible to sort images by Finder location, and if there was a smart search option for finding images with broken reference links. But none of these are currently possible.) 2. The app has a very bad performance issue where the UI is locked while it does automatic imports (say, if you have synced folders like I do). This results in about 5 minutes of startup time before I can use the app, each time I open it. This should be a background task. On the positive side, I love that it can sync tags back to the original files so they are accessible via Finder. It supports loads of image types. The smart folder/collection feature has lots of options, is fast, and works well. Browsing thousands of images is very fast. The UI is pretty nice. But for all of its good features, I cannot work with a broken library that is not easily fixed. I am now looking for a new app. KeyFlow Pro 2 looks promising, even though it is geared toward video files.
Excellent App - feature omissions
This is an excellent App overall. However, an App is not very viable if it is not supported by the developer. This means no ability to Report Bugs, No Way to get Questions Answered, No Way to provide Important Feedback, No assurance of the True Product Quality. These items should be impotant for posting in the App Store. The most important prosuct issues for me are: 1. The File Name and the Name of the Media must be the same. Therefore, no ability to Sort based upon the Name of actual Media. They should be independant, but linked in the Info Window. 2. No ability in the Main Browser to Sort by Media Name or Tag Name. 3. Smart Collection feature does not show the number of Media it contains. 4. No Main Library Auto or Manual Backup feature. 5. No ability to Update or Add Meta Data.
Great idea, implementation lacking
The app could be a great app, but I continuously have a problem where when I open the app, the thumbnails do not update and I am faced with a bunch of blank images. Even when I update thumbnail and preview it does not show up. When I click on the blank image, I'm able to view the image in the edit mode. This is a big problem and limits the usefulness of the app. ALSO, under About Pixave, it has a link to visit PixaveApp.com and that is a site loaded with pornography. That is a big problem and I would certainly not allow my children to use this app until that is fixed. Otherwise, the app holds much promise. The UI is great, the usability is great and it looks like a legitimately designed mac-friendly app.
Good app suffers from poor developer
*Update*- After some trial and error, I finally figured out how to properly use the auto-import feature. I still can't give this app 5 stars though as the developer still hasn't responded to my support requests and could have saved me some time and aggravation by doing so. __________________________________________ Original Review: I hate to leave bad reviews but this developer leaves me no choice. He has failed to respond to two emails I've sent him in the past and appears to have abandoned this app with so much potential. Unfortunately the feature I wanted to use most, auto import, is broken and won't work and now he won't do anything about it. I would never have bought this otherwise.
Not at all what I expected - unecessary destruction of $15
I bought it thinking that i could migrate my iphotos collection into it for easy tagging. I had been using an auto tagger that was awesome and one day just quit. However, short of copying and pasting every photo into pixave, i cannot figure out a way to import my photolibrary. I consider myself pretty tech savvy, but this is basically a glorified viewer/replacement for the iphotos macos app and not an app that integrates into it. What a waste;
Finally, a Photos replacement
I have over 15,000 pictures and I do not like keeping them in the Photos app because the app is bloated and requires more than twice the storage as the pictures themselves. Also, pictures in Photos are locked in the app and inaccessible on non-Apple computers and devices unless you export all of the pictures first. I have kept my pictures in folders where I can back them up on One Drive and to external discs, but I have missed the layout and keyword search functionality of Photos. Photos does offer the option of not "copying items to the Photos library," but there is a bug in that process and I kept getting error messages when I tried doing it. With Pixave, there are no error messages. This well designed app creates a library of my thousands of pictures using only a few hundred MB. I can keep the pictures orgainized as I please in my own folders and set up the library to automatically update as I make changes to the folders. I can now perform keyword searches of all my pictures by simply clicking on whatever keyword or words I want. It is so simple and the search results come up instantly. The only search functionality missing is geolocation. But the keyword search works great and and the layout is beautiful. Thank you LittleHJ. This is just what I've been looking for.
MacOS 9 style error
This used to be my favorite app but leately -since Mojave - it crashes multiple times with a bizarre "unimplemented Trap error" that is in the old OS 9 style. I contatced the developer and he offered no help. Meanwhile, I have no security that my 12K pieces of collected media are safe.
This is not 'great for the price'. It's just plain GREAT.
I have been using Pixave for a few years and like it a lot. It beats chasing images all around your hard drive. I rely on it to manage image assets for web page producton, saving LOTS of time. They keep improving it in ways that are just delightful. Its clear they are real pros. I recommend you buy it before they start charging what it's really worth—which is much more than $15 bucks. [This is an unsolicitied recommendation by an unaffiliated real person].
Just what I need
I jumped to Pixave after Little Snapper folded. So far it's been great.
Don't Leave Me
Such a great app. If you're looking for something that does what it does, trust that you won't be disappointed with Pixave. My biggest fear is that the developer will one day move on and leave this wonderful piece of pure software joy to rot. It happens sometimes. But hopefully never to Pixave.
Update … You’ve got to be Kidding
There is a caution to backup my photo library before updating this app. Then I noted three reviews stating that these writers experienced loosing their entire photo libraries… some multiple times. I should risk my entire image collection to an outfit that cannot seem to write functional “Safe” software? I think NOT. I will delete this app instead and shop for something functional.
Pixave update fixed crashing
Thanks to the developer for killing that bug! Previous version crashed on screen grab. So far so good now!
개발자가 한국인인데
한국어 지원이 안되는 이상한 앱.......
So far it doesn't work.
I'm hoping they update this. I haven't been able to use it yet.
Decent basic functionality but feels very rough around the edges
I basically use Pixave as a repo for app-related screenshots to use as reference. So, it does the job when I occasionally use it to dump or reference things but it always feels clunky. A lot of the UI feels unintuitive and simple things like zooming and examining details of an image feels cumbersome.
Ember replacement?
I bought Pixave to replace Embr, which is no longer supported by Real Mac Software. For webpage capture, Pixave is good. But I contacted supported during the trial period, hoping to get some answers to a few questions, but Pixave support never responded! The trial ran out, and I decided to buy the app, but these are still my reservations: 1) It's *extremely* fidgety to set the width of a webpage before capturing it and is a process of trial-and-error. A numeric entry box and/or pop-up with defaults would be great. 2) Since a lot of folks are coming from Ember, it sure would be nice if Pixave had an Embr import feature! :)
Mostly great, with two major problems
Pixave is so great most of the time that the two consistent issues I’ve come across since its first release are a shocking (unwelcome) surprise. These issues can be significant deal-breakers, depending on your usage of this application: 1. Focus-stealing: - You will NOT be able to use any other application or do anything else whilst you are importing files. - If you attempt to go to another application or go to a different screen, Pixave will forcefully set your screen back to its application at the start of each new import. - You cannot turn off this behaviour. 2. Inconsistent scrolling and unhelpful location changes: - When you scroll through a collection and perhaps click on an image, the application will snap the screen to place that image at the bottom of the window immediately. - If you switch to another application and come back to Pixave, you will unhelpfully be snapped to the top, exact middle, or bottom of the collection, depending on the preference set, regardless of the selected image location in the collection. - If you select multiple items to tag, after pressing enter you will be once again snapped to the top, middle, or bottom of the collection irrespective of the selected image locations. - If you scroll through a collection, sometimes it will fly hundreds of images past with a single scroll movement; other times it will glacially move just a tiny bit, not even one entire row of images with the same scrolling movement. - You may indadvertently never be able to see certain images until you close/re-open pixave as the inconsistent scrolling will “hide” rows of images until it is “reset”. If you need to maintain the focus of your screen on other application when importing files or have more than a handful of images in any collection that you need to locate/compare/tag/etc. these issues may impact you significantly. If neither of these items affect you, then Pixave is lovely.
Great for Photos AND Videos - Very Robust!
I just can’t tell you how overjoyed I was to find this software! For years I’ve been looking for a tagging software that accommodated my workflow. My needs are complex because I do multiple photographs and videos regarding different places, scenes, subjects, and projects sequentially on the same card. So I needed to organize by day, media type, category, and special keywords/tags. Wildlife is a major topic for me and requires even more extensive classification and keywording. Before Pixave I used Adobe Bridge for photos and Photoshop Elements Organizer for videos because they were the only applications that allowed me to customize my keywords and searches. But Adobe Bridge was dropped when Adobe went to that awful overly-expensive subscription service and then Elements Organizer became unstable, slow, unreliable, and hogged ram - even when it was the only thing running. Mac Photos is great for photos but doesn’t handle videos well. Plus I needed the tags/keywords and metadata to be recognized in Finder and other applications like Final Cut Pro X. Pixave does all this and has yet to crash or let me down. Any new keywords created in Pixave automatically appear in Finder’s tags too. I only wish that the thumbnails in the collections showed the complete picture instead of the upper half, but that is a minor concern and might be fixed in a setting I’m not familiar with yet. At any rate, this is a wonderful truly diverse and robust application at a most reasonable price! I recommend it wholeheartedly - great work!
Powerful, but many flaws
I purchased this to replace Ember, which is no longer supported. The app has all the features you would expect, but has some majorly irritating behaviors: 1) Right out of the box it was confusing how to *import* images - I had to create a collection to put them in (as opposed to just dragging and dropping images on the app). 2) Showing search results in a side panel is terrible - you see unuseful thumbnails in the panel to alongside all the thumbnails in your current collection. 3) The Chrome extension does not work. At all. 4) When you want to snap a webpage, it opens a completely new window - it’s not at all clear how to get back to your image library (it’s a tiiiiny arrow that’s easily missed). 5) There’s no option to capture the last screenshot area used (I need to do this all the time) Don’t get me wrong - the app’s performace is great, and there a lot of features. Probably too many, which is the issue. The app feels more like a developer’s tool than a designer’s tool. The core tasks of importing, searching and snapping screenshots are just not that great. I would go back to Ember in a heartbeat, but with it’s future so uncertain it is time to move on. Seems like the field is still wide open for a great Ember replacement.
Where are my files!?!
After having lost almost 800 files due to a syncing problem between the Mac and iOS versions of this “app” I’ve decided to give it a very generous one star. Great app if you are looking for something pretty and you don’t mind losing your valuable files. Seriously, learn from my mistake of trusting this app - BUYER BEWARE! Absolute garbage.
Wonderful Application!
Pixave has motivated me to get more organized! I love how you can organize images and files by type (screen, phone tablet, web, etc, web, icon, interface, etc), using keywords and colors to designate and define your content. The export to epub option is a nice bonus. I’m updating my review because I’m exciting that Pixave is now available for the iPad (and coming for the iPhone very soon). It syncs with iCloud Drive which is very convenient!
Worth the Bux
Since Aperture has been phased out, I have embraced Photos (with mixed results). But the killer features here are simplicity, divergence, and ambition. Let me explain. SIMPLICITY: This is a little low-footprint $15 app billed as a photo organizer. It is truly a 5 star app for that. I think all the feature recommendations that users have (except mine) would vault this app into the “Pro" sphere. That would be OK, but not likely for $15! That it includes support for PDFs, Animated GIFs, Movies, Fonts and Documents is an extremely valuable proposition that certain cheapie apps can’t touch. I only wish my collection of 2,000 CBZ (comic book archives) will be considered by these extremely talented developers in the future. DIVERGENCE: Anyone who is familiar with iPhoto/Aperture/Photos will appreciate the similarities embraced in this app. But there are enough useful differences here to justify the pain of re-importing tens of thousands of your carefully curated images. Go to the developer’s website and download the TRIAL version and see for yourself. AMBITION: The developers website includes a roadmap! WHO ELSE DOES THAT!? There is a newly released IPAD app, and an IPHONE app is coming soon. I like the app AS-IS on my 2008 MacPro, and can’t wait for the iPhone version. That said, I wish the future macOS enhancements of the app would address the following: 1. Better editing. You can use the rare Actions Extensions for editing (I only have two) or Quartzy/Core filters. They are available in two very dissimilar ways in an app that brags about their “awesome” UX. Some coherence would be nice here. Would be nice if this app can simply use Photos extensions instead of (or in addition to) the Actions extension (does anyone even know where you can get more Actions extensions?). I would have happily paid more for this app if it did …. and I’ll be YOU would too. Bonus dollars for photoshop plugs. 2. Again … Comic Book Archive (cbz format) support pleeez. They are, after all, “collections”. 3. A 90,000 library froze in full screen mode. So … I’m afraid to take the time to import my 300,000 Aperture library. For $15, that’s all i can say. Five stars AS-IS. Willing to pay more for additional feature, but will continue to use Aperture so don’t bother trying to clone it’s advanced featureset. Keep thinking outside the box and this app will prosper!
Silly Auto-Import Procedure
I bought this app because I have a folder that I use to handle screengrabs and I wanted a visual of all of the screengrabs I take. I used the “Auto-Import” feature. Here’s the problem. Every time a screengrab get put in the folder, it wants to auto-import EVERY PHOTO again EVERY TIME. That is incredibly annoying. Why can it not just do a diff and pick up what’s new? Seems silly to me if they are asking you what folder you want auto-imported.
AWESOME APP!
AWESOME!!! So EASY to use and so FAST! This app was EXACTLY what I was praying for because of the total and overwhelming mess my files are in. I am a photographer and graphic designer. I LOVE this APP! Totally organizing ALL of my files. THANK YOU for creating it!
Best photo organizer
After more than 50 years of serious photography, I finally found a truly great photo organizer for my zillions of digital files. I would highly recommend this app for professional photographers.
Sync doesn’t work correctly
I’ve lost my entire library multiple times using this app on two computers. I never know if opening the app is just going to wipe out weeks of images and sorting. It’s at the point where I’m afraid to open the app on my desktop because it may just delete everything.