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Home » Mylio Photos Review – Premium Photo Management – For Free!

Mylio Photos Review – Premium Photo Management – For Free!

Mylio Photos

In this Mylio Photos Review, we’re looking at one of the best photo management tools I’ve used to date. And with features such as Face Recognition, geotagging, and AI-powered automatic image tagging, Mylio Photos can bring order to the most chaotic photo collections. Jump to Conclusion.


Mylio Photos


Table of Contents

What is Mylio Photos

Mylio Photos is a feature-rich stand-alone photo management tool for PC and Mac – and by standalone, I mean it will work independently of your favorite photo editing application.

Photo Management in Mylio Photos
Mylio Photos features a clean, straightforward, and responsive interface.

Despite modern trends, Mylio Photo sidesteps Cloud technologies in favor of computer-based localized storage – a critical differentiator between it and the likes of Lightroom. However, Mylio Photos is no dinosaur and includes the latest AI trickery, integration with your social media and cloud storage and connectivity with your smartphone and tablet.

Therefore, Mylio Photos is a great way to unify a fragmented photo collection through a single, easy-to-use interface.

How much does Mylio Photos cost

The basic version of Mylio Photos, which isn’t basic at all, is entirely free of charge. Furthermore, Mylio is free in the best possible way in that it never teases you with greyed-out functionality or tries to grind you down with constant pop-ups.

That being said, for $9.99 a month, or $99 per year, you can access some additional features, which we’ll cover later in this Mylio Photos Review.

What does Mylio Photos do?

Photo Management

Mylio Photos is fundamentally a ‘juiced-up’ photo management tool with all the functionality you’d expect and more. As you might hope, you can rate your images, sort your photos into categories, and combine your pics into albums. However, the best is still to come.

Face Recognition

Mylio Photos has one of the best Face Recognition implementations I have used to date. You begin by manually tagging your photos with the names of those featured. Meanwhile, Mylio Photos will crawl your photo collection, looking for any image with a face.

Face Recognition in Mylio Photos
Mylio Photos recognizes the presence of a face and lists the names of those it’s most likely to be. Overall, it’s very accurate.

After which, Mylio Photos Face Recognition system will begin to propose the names of who it thinks is in any given photo, and you can do this on a photo-by-photo basis or as a batch. As a result, it doesn’t take all that long to tag even a more significant photo collection.

Batch Face Recognition in Mylio Photos
Mylio Photos crawls your photo collection for pictures with people in it. Its Face Recognition tool identifies one face from another, enabling you to tag many photos in one go.

Geotagging

Geotagging your images with Mylio Photo is very straightforward. Choose your photo or photos, and drag them onto the well-presented map. Click confirm, and now you can browse your photos based on where they were taken.

Geotagging photos in Mylio Photos
Geotagging in Mylio Photos works very well. To geotag your photo, drag the image(s) onto the map. Easy.

Smart Tags

Mylio Photos uses AI and object recognition to read your photo and identify appropriate keywords with which you may wish to tag your image.

Using Smart Tags in Mylio Photos
This is one of the times Mylio Photos Smart Tags nailed it.

As with other automatic keyword tools, Smart Tags in Mylio Photos is a little hit-and-miss because they can be uncannily accurate for one photo and bonkers on the next.

Regardless, there’s no downside to using Smart Tags since it’s up to you which Smart Tags you commit to your image. Thus, at best, Smart Tags are hugely convenient and, at worst, barely a distraction.

Social Media Integration

Connect Mylio Photos with an online service such as Facebook, Instagram, or Flickr, and Mylio Photos will automatically import all your posted photos onto your computer. Overall, this killer feature serves as an easy way to consolidate your fragmented photo collection.

Device Integration

With Mylio Photos, you can link multiple devices to share and consolidate images between numerous computers, smartphones, and tablets. In my case, I connected my Windows 11 PC and iPhone.

Browsing my photo collection via the Mylio Photo App
Browsing my photo collection on my iPhone using the Mylio Photos App.

Unlike other applications, Mylio Photos doesn’t whisk your images to the cloud for all devices to see. Instead, it browses devices connected to the same network – such as your home WiFi.

In practical terms, it downloaded all my smartphone photos into my PC’s photo archive, which, in turn, were then backed up to my own Google Drive cloud service. Doing so also meant I could browse my computer’s photo collection on my iPhone.

This feature only updates when all shared devices are connected to the same network, meaning the sharing of images does not occur in real-time. However, it also means you’re not reliant on internet connectivity or committed to paying for cloud storage.

Cloud Integration

Expand your backup solution by connecting Mylio Photos with your Google Drive, OneDrive, NAS, or S3 compatible storage. Once integrated, you can choose how extensive your backup will be. For instance, you can save your photos’ thumbnails to access your photo collection via your smart device.

Adding a cloud service to Mylio Photos
Mylio Photos is not a cloud service. However, you can attach Cloud storage to back up your photos.

Or go to the other extreme and set up a ‘Vault’ – which is to say, a full replica of your computer’s photo collection. You can connect multiple backup devices and multiple vaults. But if you prefer to avoid Cloud storage entirely, you can set Mylio to backup to your local repository.

Photo Editing with Mylio Photos

Mylio Photos also includes a simple-but-effective photo editing mode.

Presets

Mylio Photos includes 15 attractive presets, including a lovely Black and White Noir. Furthermore, you can save the sum of your edits as Presets – meaning you’ll never repeat your best work.

Editing Photos in Mylio Photos
I liked Mylio Photos Black and White Noir Preset.

Photo Editing

Mylio Photos is equipped for basic photo editing, including Exposure, White Balance, and Saturation adjustments. There’s a vignetting tool, an image sharpener, and a noise reduction tool. Sadly, no Tone Curves are included.

However, Mylio nor I consider Mylio Photos to be a full-blooded photo editing solution. But what it has, works very well and is sufficient for causal photo editing.

Batch Photo Editing

After editing your photo, you can copy your adjustments and apply them to one or many other images. Batch editing in Mylio Photos is easy, fast, and nice to have.

Mylio Photos Alternatives

Mylio Photos vs ACDSee

ACDSee Home and Mylio Photos offer similar photo management features, including advanced Face Recognition and Geotagging tools.

Photo management in ACDSee Professional 2023
ACDSee Professional 2023 is an excellent photo management tool and one of the best photo editing software applications on the market. Read ACDSee Photo Studio Professional 2023 Review.

However, I do prefer Mylio Photos presentation and ergonomics. Therefore, the only reason why I would pay more for ACDSee Home is for its more advanced photo editing feature set. And if that is what you’re thinking, I’d strongly recommend you step up to the vastly superior ACDSee Professional instead.

But if you already have your photo editing solution and seek superior photo management, I’d go with Mylio Photos. Read ACDSee Photo Studio Professional 2023 Review.

Mylio Photo vs Lightroom

If you only want photo management, you can’t beat the free version of Mylio Photos. However, things get a little more complicated when comparing the premium version of Mylio Photos with Lightroom, as both cost about $9.99 monthly.

Lightroom Photo Editing
Lightroom is one of the best photo editing software applications. However, you must be willing to join the Adobe ecosystem. Read Lightroom Review.

With Lightroom, you get comparable photo management, 1TB of Cloud Storage, and one of the best photo editing software applications. Thus, compared to Lightroom, the premium version of Mylio Photos begins to look a little expensive.

However, Lightroom is not for everyone. Specifically, Lightroom is part of the Adobe Cloud ecosystem, which means you must use their cloud service. And while you can still keep a copy of your photos on your computer, Lightroom will import your images from their current location into a bespoke file structure.

In contrast, Mylio Photos will, if you prefer, leverage your existing file structure, use any number of local disks – including NAS, and allow you to choose your own Cloud service.

Therefore, if you crave absolute ownership of your image archives, Mylio may be your better option. But, if you want an all-in-one photo studio that takes care of your collection for you, read my Lightroom Review.

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Conclusion

The free version of Mylio Photos is an easy recommendation as it is much too good to be free. Therefore, you should probably download it now before they change their mind.

Rating photos via Mylio Photos Quick View

Of course, Mylio hopes you’ll pay them $9.99 monthly and upgrade to Mylio Photos +. And if you do, you’ll enjoy automated backups to your existing Cloud service provider or local disk and the ability to access your photos via your smartphone and tablet.

However, Mylio Photos + US$9.99 monthly fee invites comparison with Adobe Lightroom, which offers similar photo management, 1TB of inclusive cloud storage, and one of the best photo editing software applications on the market. While Lightroom is a terrific product, it demands you join its ecosystem, use Adobe’s cloud service, and even accept its file structure on your own disk.

Mylio Photos is different in that it’s not a cloud product at all, and you can use your existing file structure, choose your own cloud provider for back-ups (if you want to at all), and use your own local disks in any way you see fit. Therefore, it’s fair to say that Mylio Photos is aimed at those reluctant to climb over Adobe’s wall and get stuck in their garden.

Judged on its merits, Mylio Photos is feature-rich, straightforward to use, and an almost perfect photo management system. Given much of it is free of charge, it would almost be rude not to give it a go.

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Mylio Photos


About the Author

Richard Adams

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