Souvenyr analyzes your thousands of photos to track down the best shots

Cameras are more accessible than they’ve ever been. Not only are professional-grade cameras cheaper than ever, but we also have a camera available at all times during the day with our smartphones. The only downside? The mountains of photos we have to go through.

Souvenyr understands this, and has come up with a device that helps you go through those photos, finds the ones that “look the best,” organizes them in an easy-to-access way, and shares them with friends.

The device itself is sits on a desk or stand, and has a built-in SD card slot and USB port, so you can quickly transfer photos from your DSLR over to its 1TB hard drive. On top of that, it has a HDMI port, allowing you to display your photos on a TV or other external display. Of course, you don’t have to transfer photos manually — thanks to the Souvenyr app, photos taken on a phone can be automatically synced to the device.

“With Souvenyr, users can easily manage, store, and access their digital photographs, collected, and uploaded from various devices, including smartphones and cameras,”Mathieu Martinet, co-founder of Souvenyr, told Digital Trends.

The real draw to Souvenyr isn’t photo storage — it’s photo analysis. The device goes through all the photos uploaded to it, hiding blurry photos, and grouping similar ones. That way, you don’t have to go through them manually after an event.

“Souvenyr makes an aggregation of numerous image analysis technologies: blur, luminosity, framing, faces, smiles … All that is added to moments analysis, and the different points of views pictures are taken from. It then can “score” every pictures to offer you only the best ones,” continued Martinet.

I know what you’re thinking: Google Photos and similar services already have image analysis technology that can help make albums with the best photos only. The team behind Souvenyr, however, argues that its device eliminates the need for any monthly fees that you might run into with cloud-based photo storage options. Still, many cloud options are either free or very cheap, and offer users the ability to store more and more photos as their photo library grows, even if it costs more to do so.

So does that mean that Souvenyr is a cloud-free device? Not exactly. Souvenyr can also back up your library to any major cloud storage service, according to the company. Of course, therein lies a problem: You either have to pay the fees for cloud storage or risk losing all your photos if Souvenyr gets lost or damaged. So while Souvenyr says that its device helps you avoid cloud storage fees, if you want to be completely safe, you’re going to have to pay those fees anyway.

So why would you need Souvenyr? The device could be very useful for people with large families who tend to take a ton of photos. Instead of having to teach grandma how to use Google Photos, you can simply take the SD card from her camera and slip it in Souvenyr. Do the same with everyone else’s photos, and the device will pick the best ones for you. You could even take Souvenyr to the event, gathering photos at the time rather than having to chase people down for them afterward.

If you’re interested in Souenyr, head to its Indiegogo page, and check out the video below to see the device in action. Souvenyr costs $130 if you happen to get an early bird special, but the standard price on the Indiegogo page is $150.