Documents : Images, Audio, and Video

Quick links:

Edit panel
Navigation Bar
Context menu
Item Linking

Images, Audio, and Video

DEVONthink uses macOS core technologies to display images and videos, and also play audio. Interacting with images uses the same controls you are used to, like pinch to zoom in and out, two-finger tap to zoom to width, and even two-finger rotation in 90 degree increments. Audio and video files display the familiar macOS controls.

Images, audio, and video files can be imported. Also in DEVONthink's Sorter you can capture the screen to an image, as well as record audio and video notes.

Edit panel

When working with images, double-clicking opens an edit panel with three tabs. The Adjust tab allows you to do some basic image editing, like adjust exposure, saturation, adding a sepia tone, etc. The Effects tab provides some simple pre-defined image effects. The Details tab displays metadata about the image, including EXIF metadata and a map of the geolocated origin of the file.

Navigation Bar

For audio and video files, there is a special option available in the navigation bar: the playback time. This displays the current time of playback (audio and video only). Also, if you click the time it shows a Go to time function so you can quickly jump to another time in the playback.

Context menu

There are a few media-specific context menu items available, excluding common ones related to magnifying the image. In addition to the standard controls, e.g., volume, playback position, etc., some of the same context menu options are found in the action menu for these files.

Rotate Left/Right: Rotate the image left and right. The image is saved in an uncompressed TIFF format.
Flip Horizontal/Vertical: Flip the image on the chosen axis. The image is saved in the lossless TIFF format.
Edit: Opens the Edit panel.
Copy Image: Copies the image or current video frame to the clipboard. When used with an image, an uncompressed TIFF file will be captured.
Set As Thumbnail: Makes the current frame the thumbnail of the video (only available when the video is not playing).

Note: Edits to or copying an image via context menu items produces an uncompressed TIFF file. These files can be quite sizable, but are also saved in a lossless format.

Item Linking

In addition to the document's standard item link, audio and video files support this alternative item link:

Frame Link: Link to the current time of paused media.

Alternate item links may be available in the context menu in the view/edit pane or via the Action menu (gear icon) while the media is paused. The alternative command is also accessible while holding the Shift key while viewing the Edit menu.

Note: We sometimes get inquiries about including entire photo libraries in DEVONthink, e.g., from Photos, Lightroom, etc. While it's certainly possible to include images in your databases, please understand DEVONthink is not a digital asset management application. If you want to include some images on a per project basis, perhaps for journaling or genealogy, etc., that works fine. If you are trying to have an image archive, searchable by media-specific metadata, you'll be better off using an application built for this specific purpose.