A reference manager for artists, built around a board
Artists end up with references in four places: a folder per project, Pinterest, screenshots, and a board file or two. A reference manager should pull those together so you can find the pose or the palette in a second. Maki does that, and the board you lay images out on is part of the same app.
In short: Maki is a reference manager and reference board for artists. It searches file names, notes, colors and the words inside images, offline, across every board.
One library, every board
Each board is a file in a folder on your disk, and Maki indexes all of them. Type a word and you see matches from every board, not only the one you have open. There is no account and nothing is uploaded.
Linked project folders
Link a folder on your disk to a board and new files that land in it appear on the card. A reference folder you already keep stays the source of truth; Maki shows it.
Collect from where you already look
- The Save to Maki extension for Chrome sends images, whole Pinterest boards and articles to a board.
- Drag a folder of hundreds of images in and they land on the board together.
Does it hold up with a lot of images?
We filled one board with 5,000 JPEGs (903 MB) and timed Maki 0.1.2: open from launch in under 5 seconds, search in 3 to 14 ms, and panning into parts not yet opened drew 95% of frames in 7.4 ms or less. The PureRef comparison has the full table and the test machine. It was one run on one laptop, so treat it as an indication.
Managers versus boards
A pure library app such as Eagle is strong at tagging and browsing but is not where you arrange a layout. A pure board such as PureRef is strong at layout but not at finding. Maki is aimed at the space between them.
Related
PureRef vs Maki Eagle vs Maki Moodboard app for Windows Guide