Bring in your media, effortlessly
Import once. Organize forever.
Point it at a folder or a card, and walk away
Import scans your source, pulls EXIF, generates thumbnails and variants, and files everything into your library automatically. No manual renaming, no per-file settings — the same import flow works whether you're bringing in ten photos or ten thousand.
Total control over your files, always
Your originals never move without your permission
Fictura reads and indexes your source files where they already live. Nothing is copied into the app's storage unless you explicitly turn on "Copy Originals to Internal" — because a local-first tool that silently duplicates your media onto disk you didn't choose isn't actually local-first.
Importing Media
Import brings media from outside your library — a folder on disk, a connected camera or card reader, or a remote source — into Fictura, where it becomes searchable, editable, and organizable.
Choosing a source
From the Import view, pick where you're importing from — every source Fictura can export to is also a source it can import from, so the same destinations you set up for Export double as import sources here:
- Device — a connected camera or card reader, imported directly without first copying files onto your computer's file system yourself.
- Filesystem — browse to any folder on disk, including one of your configured scan directories, and Fictura finds every supported photo, video, and audio file inside it, recursively.
- Local — a saved local folder path, reused from your configured Export destinations as a one-click starting point instead of browsing to it again.
- NAS — the same idea for a network-mounted folder: a saved path preset, not a separate protocol — Fictura reads it exactly like any other mounted folder. See Connecting a NAS for how to set one up.
- Dropbox — a saved path preset pointing at your local Dropbox sync folder. This reads whatever Dropbox's own desktop app has already synced to disk; there's no separate Dropbox account connection or API involved. See Connecting Dropbox.
- Google Drive — the same idea for Google Drive's local sync folder. See Connecting Google Drive.
- S3 — pulls directly from an S3 bucket (
s3://bucket/prefix), including S3-compatible providers like Backblaze B2 or MinIO via a custom endpoint. Credentials come fromAWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID/AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY/AWS_REGION/AWS_ENDPOINT_URLenvironment variables, or theexport.s3config block — there's no S3 credentials field in the Settings UI itself. Unlike Filesystem or Device, an S3 import enumerates and imports everything found at the given path in one pass rather than showing a selection grid first. See Connecting an S3 Bucket. - Remote (SSH) — pulls from a remote server over SSH (using your system's
ssh/scp, so a working SSH key matters), given a host, user, SSH key path, and remote directory — the same fields used for Export's remote destination. Like S3, this imports everything found rather than offering a selection grid first. See Connecting a Remote Server (SSH).
Why so many sources
Many other photo/video editors generally assume your library lives in exactly one place — their own cloud, or a single folder structure they manage for you — and want you to consolidate everything into it. Fictura is built the other way around: it connects to wherever your media already lives, rather than requiring you to move it all into one company's storage first. A camera, a plain folder, a NAS, Dropbox, Google Drive, S3, or your own server over SSH are all just as valid a starting point as any other, side by side, without one being the "real" library and the rest being second-class imports.
Reviewing before you commit
Before anything is actually imported, Fictura shows you a preview of every file it found, with per-file flags so you know exactly what will happen to each one before you confirm:
- RAW file will be saved — the RAW original will be tracked and processed as-is.
- EXIF will be extracted — metadata was found and will be pulled in (camera settings, capture date/time with timezone, GPS if present).
- RAW will be skipped — a matching processed version (e.g. an in-camera JPEG) already covers this file, so the RAW copy won't be separately imported, avoiding duplicate entries for the same shot.
Deselect anything you don't want imported, then confirm to start.
What happens automatically
Once you confirm, Fictura handles the busywork so imported media is immediately usable without any manual processing step:
- Metadata extraction — EXIF/capture data is read from the file itself and from RAW sidecar files where present, including camera settings and the timezone-aware capture date used throughout the rest of the app (folder organization, sorting, and forecast planning all rely on this being correct).
- Thumbnails and previews — generated for photos, videos, and audio so the Media view stays fast to browse without decoding full-resolution originals every time you scroll.
- Video/audio metadata — duration, a representative thumbnail frame, and waveform data where applicable.
- Histogram generation for photos, used by the editor's exposure and tonal tools.
- Baseline edit version (v001) — every imported item automatically gets a locked, unedited baseline version created for it. See Versions for exactly what that guarantees.
- Optional AI processing (if enabled in Settings) — automatic image description, suggested collection assignment, and face detection feeding Faces. Title/description/tag generation requires Ollama running locally; everything else in this list works regardless.
RAW handling
RAW files are recognized and handled specially: Fictura extracts their embedded metadata, generates previews directly from the RAW data, and — depending on your import settings — either keeps the RAW as the tracked original or skips it in favor of an existing processed version. The import preview always tells you which behavior applies to each file before you confirm, so there are no surprises about what got imported versus skipped.
After import
Newly imported media shows up immediately in the Media view, ready to browse, edit, organize into collections, or export. If a file's location on disk changes later — a drive gets renamed, a folder gets moved — Sync is what repairs the link back to it.