Pic Time Assist, A Native Mac App for the Portrait Lab
A simple Mac app, built with Pic-Time, that fully automates Jeremy's upload workflow. No extra services to set up, just download, log in, and drop photos in a folder.
Executive Summary
Phase one of the Portrait Lab automation reclaimed roughly four hours a night for Jeremy Cowart by stitching together Make.com, an AppleScript trigger, generated XML files, and a Dropbox staging layer to push photos into Pic-Time. It worked, but it depended on a chain of external services that each introduced their own failure points, rate limits, and setup steps.
In phase two, Jet Black Solutions partnered directly with Pic-Time to design and build Pic Time Assist a native macOS desktop application that lives entirely inside the Pic-Time ecosystem. It watches a local folder, creates albums, and pushes photos through the official Pic-Time Uploader without Make.com, webhooks, or Dropbox in the middle. Setup is now "download the app and log in." The same automation runs on multiple machines, with fewer moving parts and a smaller blast radius when something goes wrong.
Why we built a real app
Too many systems to babysit
Make.com, webhooks, Dropbox, and AppleScript each had their own quotas, auth tokens, and ways to break. Every external dependency was a potential point of failure.
Hard to install on a new machine
Spinning up the workflow on a second computer meant reconfiguring credentials, scripts, watch folders, and cloud connections, not something Jeremy or his team should have to do.
No first-class home in Pic-Time
The original solution lived around Pic-Time rather than inside it. We wanted the automation to feel like a normal part of the Pic-Time experience.
Our Solution: a single Mac app
Working in close partnership with Pic-Time, we designed and built Pic Time Assist as a native macOS desktop application. It uses the official Pic-Time account and the existing Pic-Time Uploader, and replaces every external service from phase one.
Local Watch Folder
Drop photos into a designated folder on the Mac. The app sees the change, groups files into albums based on the configured rules, and queues the upload, no cloud staging, no syncing service in between.
Inside the Pic-Time Ecosystem
Pic Time Assist works hand-in-hand with the Pic-Time account and the Pic-Time Uploader app. There is no Make.com scenario, no webhook listener, no XML generation pipeline, and no Dropbox bucket in the path.
Download and Log In
Setup collapses to two steps: install the app and sign in to Pic-Time. Configuration that used to take a developer is now something a photographer can do on their own.
Multi-Machine Support
Because each machine runs its own copy of the app against its own local watch folder, the same automation works across studios, mobile rigs, and assistant workstations without a shared cloud middleman.
Background Efficiency
The app runs quietly in the background and uses the local file system as the source of truth, so it reacts immediately to new files instead of waiting on polling intervals from a remote automation platform.
Results & Impact
Fewer failure points
Removing the Make.com / webhook / Dropbox layer eliminated entire categories of outages, third-party API limits, auth token expirations, scenario errors, and sync delays.
Simpler onboarding
A photographer can install the app, sign into Pic-Time, and start automating uploads the same day, without engaging an engineer or wiring up an automation platform.
More efficient runtime
Because the app reacts directly to local file system events, photos move from folder to Pic-Time album faster than the previous chain of remote services allowed.
Carries the phase 1 wins forward
The roughly four hours per night Jeremy reclaimed in phase one is now delivered through a single app that he and his team actually own and control.
What's Next
Pic Time Assist started as a bespoke build for Jeremy Cowart's Portrait Lab. With Pic-Time as a partner, the same foundation can extend to other professional photographers who run high-volume shoots and need their watch folder, album rules, and Pic-Time uploads to act like one connected system rather than four.
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