Tropy

Tropy is an open‑source desktop application for managing photographs of archival research material. It lets users convert image files into searchable items, attach descriptive metadata, and apply custom templates that reflect the specific terminology of a project. The software supports tagging, list organization, and annotation tools for transcribing text, highlighting details, and adjusting image views, helping scholars keep contextual information linked to each photo.

The program runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, storing data in SQLite, a format recommended for preservation. Users can export projects in JSON‑LD, CSV, or directly to platforms such as Omeka S, and developers can create additional export plugins. Core extensions also provide import of IIIF manifests, CSV handling, and archive packaging.

Tropy is maintained by an international team of historians and developers, originally created at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media and now supported by several research institutions. It is freely available under an open‑source license, with a stable release suitable for academic and archival workflows.