01 On-device curation
The AI picks like an editor, not an algorithm in a data center.
Nine on-device Vision requests read every photo: faces, eyes, sharpness, lighting, scene, aesthetics, a visual fingerprint, pets, and people. Near-identical shots collapse into a stack: the best frame leads, and its siblings wait one tap away when you want to swap. Screenshots and receipts are filtered automatically, and the strongest frames anchor every album, carousel, and collage.
02 Closed loop
A photo goes in, a file comes out. The cloud never lights up.
This is the part no competitor can copy. A photo drops into Pressbook, the Vision pass and layout run on your device, and a finished PDF, MP4, or (for collages and carousels) Reel comes out the other side. There is no Pressbook server in that path, so the cloud above stays struck through the whole time. Nothing to breach, nothing to subpoena, nothing to sell.
03 Looks
The look resolves itself. Shuffle it if you disagree.
Every album arrives dressed: paper, palette, pacing, and typography from 70 bundled typefaces, resolved from the photos themselves. A baby album or a memorial is recognized and set quieter, automatically. Not your taste? Shuffle the look with one tap, per page or across the album. Collage and carousel layouts keep their own gallery of personalities.
04 Albums
It reads the roll like a story, then sets it in type.
Chapters follow time and place, worked out on your device from when and where each photo was taken. The people in your life appear evenly across the pages, faces are never cropped. A fullness slider sets how full each page feels (it changes pages, never photos), and every rebuild is a take you can flip back to. Set-aside photos wait in a drawer, grouped by reason, and each album opens on a keepsake title page with an imprint line: made entirely on this device. Open one from the library and it lifts off its card while the cover swings open onto the first page. Then export a 600 DPI PDF a photo lab will actually print, page images for sharing, or the editable .pressbook project file, from 259 layouts shared across all three formats.
05 Carousels
One wide canvas, sliced for the swipe.
Build two to ten connected panels (Square or Portrait) on a single wide canvas, where photos, text, and graphics span the panel cuts. Every layout shows in a lookbook as a large, named preview, grouped by style or photo count: tap the heart on the ones worth keeping, and Pressbook reopens with your last setup. Drop a video clip into any panel, trim and mix its audio, and run it through the same filters. Export a sliced set of images built for the feed, one MP4 with sound and HDR kept, or a continuous swipe (or build) Reel ready for Stories, Reels, and TikTok.
06 Collages
One page, finished in a tap.
Single-page compositions in three sizes: square, story, and post. Drop in a few photos, lift a subject out as a sticker, add a video clip, pick a look in the live preview, and share anywhere: feeds, stories, messages. Export a still, an MP4, or a layer build-up Reel that assembles the collage for Stories. The same on-device pipeline as albums, finished in seconds.
07 Editor
Full manual control when you want it.
A complete canvas editor underneath the automation: drag, crop, rotate, and layer anything across all three formats. 87 filters across 12 families, from Portra and Velvia film stocks to cinematic teal-and-orange. Draw with Apple Pencil, run text along a curve or fill it with a photo, and let smart guides keep everything aligned as you work, evening out spacing, matching angles, and snapping to the carousel’s panel edges. Edge handles resize a photo one side at a time, and a cropped photo reveals more of the original before it zooms. A full shadow editor (presets, color, offset, softness) works on photos, text, stickers, and video, and the shadow survives into the video export. Photos clip into 55 redrawn cutout shapes, and a long press trades any two photos’ places. Frames hold eight camera viewfinders, film strips, Polaroid, and Instax, date stamps come in Digital, Stamp, or Film, and a long press pins a favorite font above your recents.
08 Stickers
A sticker library that travels across every page.
593 stickers ship with the app across ten packs: letters, words, doodles, tape, hearts, flowers, café and pets, travel, and celebration. Search them by name, and tint the hand-drawn doodles any color. Lift any subject out of a photo into a sticker of your own, one person or the whole group, and everything lands in a library you can reuse on any album, carousel, or collage. iOS stickers and Memoji drop in too, and the optional Discover tab (off by default) finds animated stickers that stay moving in a video export and flatten to a clean still for print. Only your search word is ever sent, never a photo.
09 Export
Print-ready, feed-ready, Stories-ready.
Albums, collages, and carousels open the same glass Share panel, with tabs that match the format. Albums export PDFs in three quality tiers up to 600 DPI (Square, Landscape, Portrait), page images, or the editable .pressbook project file, and share a live memory. Collages and carousels export Media (stills or MP4 with sound and HDR) and Reels: a layer build-up for collages, a continuous swipe or build for carousels, still rendering if you leave the app briefly. Share a live memory on every format. On iPad and Mac, AirPrint prints the pages, and Pro adds a lab package of JPEG spreads and pages for a print lab.
10 Gift and share
Seal any piece. Invite family, or open a public link.
Any finished album, carousel, or collage can open now or wait as a Memory Capsule until an anniversary, a birthday, or the day someone turns eighteen. Invite people privately for full comments and reactions (page by page in albums), or open a public link for reactions only. Switch modes without losing who you invited. Keep it only for yourself, or gift it so it unlocks for them on the day. Or start a Circle, a private place for a few people: everyone in it shares albums, collages, and carousels, reacts page by page, and comments, and every update keeps the version before it. Sharing is free for everyone. The invite travels through Apple iCloud, not a Pressbook server. No Pressbook account. No social feed. No strangers browsing a discovery wall.
