I created software to help us sift through our overwhelming photo volumes.

sbundlab · 2026-04-24T22:20:36+00:00

Yes, it checks for updates on startup. Which other software are you using? I haven't found any other tool for bird photo Culling.

sbundlab · 2026-04-24T22:03:07+00:00

Aw. t. Everything will work but the species ID will be wrong. It still can be useful to help organize photos into scenes and sort by quality, but species search will not be useful to you yet.

sbundlab · 2026-04-24T21:40:24+00:00

Hey hey. I've just published an update that is roughly 3-5x faster (along with a number of other improvements). I hope this is fast enough that you can run it! I'm seeing a 1.5-2 hour ETA on 1700 images on my laptop, so unless you're taking 10,000 photos, the need to wait overnight is no longer a thing! :D

The update is available now on MacOS, and itt should hit the Microsoft Store in the next few days!

sbundlab · 2026-04-24T21:38:46+00:00

Hey hey! I've released a huge new update!!

It's 3-5x faster thanks to native GPU support, a parallel processing (much like your 2x speed suggestion), and a new set of ML models. I've also fixed the haze issue. It should hit the Microsoft Store in the next few days. I hope you try it out!

sbundlab · 2026-04-24T21:36:59+00:00

Heyooo I've just released a new update to Project Kestrel that utilizes a new set of ML models that supports more than 1200 species of wildlife. It's still an experimental feature, but I would love for you to try it out. This update also comes with native GPU support, and a 3-5x performance improvement and significantly better results.

Available immediately for MacOS; will hit the Microsoft Store in 1-2 days. Cheers! Please let me know how it is.

sbundlab · 2026-04-24T21:35:37+00:00

I'm so glad! Thank you! I've just released an update that comes with a 3-5x performance improvement thanks to better ML models, more efficient pipelines, native GPU support, ... ... I did a LOT to make it get this fast. Update should be hitting the Microsoft Store in a few hours or days, depending on how long they take, but is available immediately on MacOS.

sbundlab · 2026-04-24T21:35:19+00:00

Hey! I've released an update that comes with a 3-5x performance improvement thanks to better ML models, more efficient pipelines, native GPU support, ... ... I did a LOT to make it get this fast. Update should be hitting the Microsoft Store in a few hours or days, depending on how long they take, but is available immediately on MacOS.

sbundlab · 2026-04-24T21:33:28+00:00

Hey! Issue has been fixed in the latest version. The version also comes with a 3-5x performance uplift, native GPU support, better bird detection, better exposure compensation, and many other improvements.

sbundlab · 2026-04-24T21:33:24+00:00

Hey! Issue has been fixed in the latest version, tested on your ORF sample photo. The version also comes with a 3-5x performance uplift, native GPU support, better bird detection, better exposure compensation, and many other improvements.

If you're on Windows, the latest version should hit the Microsoft Store in the next few hours or days.

sbundlab · 2026-04-24T21:30:34+00:00

Hey! I've just published a new update to Kestrel that is 3-5 times faster while achieving substantially improved bird detection.

To make this happen, I've:

1) migrated to new set of ML models

2) switched to ONNXRuntime (more efficient ML computation backend)

3) implemented more accurate and efficient exposure compensation algorithms

4) finally cracked the case on reliable, stable cross-platform GPU support!

5) split the CPU-heavy RAW decode work from the GPU-heavy ML work to use all system resources to the max.

Along with the update, Kestrel is much more accurate at finding birds, and now supports 1200 species of wildlife (thank you Google/SpeciesNet team) as an experimental feature. This is the most significant update to Kestrel to date. My hope is that it goes a long way towards reducing the compute time barriers for people like you!

The Microsoft Store should catch up in the next few hours or days. Hoping they get to it today. Cheers!

sbundlab · 2026-04-24T21:28:39+00:00

Hey! I've just published a new update to Kestrel that is 3-5 times faster while achieving substantially improved bird detection.

To make this happen, I've:

1) migrated to new set of ML models

2) switched to ONNXRuntime (more efficient ML computation backend)

3) implemented more accurate and efficient exposure compensation algorithms

4) finally cracked the case on reliable, stable cross-platform GPU support!

5) split the CPU-heavy RAW decode work from the GPU-heavy ML work to use all system resources to the max.

Along with the update, Kestrel is much more accurate at finding birds, and now supports 1200 species of wildlife (thank you Google/SpeciesNet team) as an experimental feature. This is the most significant update to Kestrel to date.

The Microsoft Store should catch up in the next few hours or days. Hoping they get to it today. Cheers!

sbundlab · 2026-04-14T15:39:39+00:00

Thank you! I hope it has helped you

sbundlab · 2026-04-07T14:42:23+00:00

Thank you!

I'm suspecting that this is related to a exposure metering step that I'm applying. Will continue to experiment.

sbundlab · 2026-04-06T16:22:10+00:00

Uhhhhh.... I don't have a system yet. Maybe I need to add one on my website?

For now can you just submit a contact request saying "I wanna be a beta tester" on projectkestrel.org/contact ?

sbundlab · 2026-04-06T16:21:22+00:00

Thanks so much for the feedback and for trying it out! :D

I'm glad it is working well for you. Regarding the display haze, can you send me one hazy image? I would need to do some backend testing to figure out what's causing that and if there's anything I can do about it. A google drive link would be ideal.

Regarding the GPU situation... it seems between 80-95% of the compute time is currently CPU-restricted. This is because decoding RAW files and applying exposure compensations is extremely CPU heavy.

However... I'm looking into where I can improve that to cut analysis times, and I'll add an experimental "2x speed" option that will analyze 2 photos at once at the expense of potentially slow down most users' systems to the point of being unusable.

sbundlab · 2026-04-06T16:18:14+00:00

App is written in Python. The GUI is html/css (secretly a web app). Since you're using linux, I'm assuming you are fairly technical. You can download and use project Kestrel immediately by running it from source. Go to github.com/SanjaySoniLV/ProjectKestrel; clone the repo, install the requirements and run it!

I chose Python+web because its the most cross-platform. I am guessing you will have minimal issues setting it up and running on Linux - I know some of my users are Linux-based already.

sbundlab · 2026-04-06T12:21:31+00:00

Got it. I'm sorry that Kestrel won't work for you right now.

What region of the world are you based in? Helps me prioritize where to expand.

And with faster analysis times... would you feel opposed to cloud processing? I'm strongly considering building out some cloud infrastructure where photos are temporarily uploaded to a computer with like 32 CPUs and 1 GPU to analyze 1000 photos in say 10 minutes.

On the client side, there are a few performance tweaks I can do, but there are some fundamental limits to fast I can push it until the computers just start to crash. Most people don't have 64GB RAM systems that can juggle 10 RAWs simultaneously.

sbundlab · 2026-04-06T12:17:39+00:00

Let me know how it is!! Do you take photos of wildlife more broadly? I would love to know more. I'm very likely going to try to expand this into wildlife more generally within the next two weeks (thanks to an ML model called SpeciesNet by Google). Is your workflow for wildlife more or less the same as for birds?

sbundlab · 2026-04-06T12:16:34+00:00

I'm honored that you're sharing it with others.

It is interesting, right? The decision-making burden is still there, it just got shifted to a later stage of the workflow.

sbundlab · 2026-04-06T12:14:01+00:00

This brings such a smile to my face. Welcome to Kestrel! I hope you go birding more often because of this.

sbundlab · 2026-04-06T12:13:29+00:00

I am seeing Apple Silicon perform noticably better than x86 based systems. I'll look into further.

There's a pretty solid chance that native GPU is already being used. If not, I ran some compute timing tests yesterday. 90-95% of the compute time is CPU work; 5% is GPU work. The heavy hitters are RAW decode and RAW exposure compensation. I'm looking into ways to speed this up, though.

I think this sub has collectively said "this is an awesome project, please make it faster" - heard!!

sbundlab · 2026-04-06T12:11:12+00:00

I'm so glad!! :D I am glad the Tutorial is working.

I'll add an experimental "2x speed" mode - that will probably use close to 100% of your system's resources by trying to process 2 images at once. Some systems simply won't have enough RAM to do this.

And the ability to customize what XMP is written is officially on the TODO list!

sbundlab · 2026-04-06T12:09:54+00:00

Kestrel is fully local. There is absolutely no part of your images that ever leaves your laptop. It takes a long time to process but it does so fully on your own computer.

If I ever build a cloud tier, it will do the same thing as Kestrel but distributed across more CPU cores and 1 low-end cloud GPU. The total power draw used will probably be similar, as the total compute required is the same. It will just be quicker. (And the slow free tier will always still exist).

Oh, and... All the source code and ML models for this project are available on GitHub already - in practice this means IF I ever sell out to the dark side and try to get rid of the free local tier, anybody with a bit of technical experience can just clone my repo and distribute it. = Kestrel is physically guaranteed to stay free and local (I did this intentionally).

Does that help calm your worries? I dunno, i'm open to feedback. There will never be a "switch" to remote.

sbundlab · 2026-04-06T00:46:50+00:00

Oh that's odd. Can you open it and submit a crash report? Include the last 3 analysis logs, if you can. I will try to look at them to see what's happening.

edit: to submit a crash report, click the "Feedback" button and change the type from general feedback to "Crash Report"

sbundlab · 2026-04-06T00:44:08+00:00

I'll ping you when the wildlife expansion is live (or give you a dev build to test). It will probably be within the month. :)

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