How Plumb Daily keeps you aligned, every single day

How a scene comes together

1. Take a key photo. It becomes the reference for every photo after it.
2. Line up each new photo. Guides in the viewfinder show you where the key photo was taken.
3. Record the big days as moments. Short videos play at real speed inside the finished video.
4. Keep your photos in order. Leave out the bad days without deleting anything.
5. Export the video. Pick a time-lapse or a slideshow, preview it and save it to Photos.
6. Sync privately. Turn on Sync with iCloud, and your scenes move between your devices through your own iCloud, never through Plumb Daily servers.

I built Plumb Daily to record my own new home build. The aim was simple: every photo lined up with the first, and a video at the end that's worth watching.

– Matthew Sweet, Platform21

Step 1: Start a scene with a key photo

A scene is one project: a house build, a garden bed, a kitchen renovation. You can have as many scenes as you like.

The first photo in a scene is the key photo. Think of it as your plumb line – the fixed reference that every later photo is checked against. If a better starting shot turns up, you can choose a different key photo later.

The camera locks to match the key photo

When you take the key photo, Plumb Daily locks the lens, zoom and orientation for that scene. Every later photo uses the same field of view as the first.

• Lens. The app uses one real, physical lens. It never uses a lens that switches by itself. An iPhone camera can change lenses on its own as you move closer or the light drops. That jump shows up as a sudden change in framing.
• Zoom. It stays where the key photo set it.
• Orientation. A scene can be portrait or landscape. The shutter is switched off while the phone is turned the wrong way, so a sideways photo can't slip in.

Add photos you already took

Started before you had Plumb Daily? Add photos or videos from your library. Each one lands on its original date, in the right place in the scene.

Choosing the spot matters as much as the app does. The guide to aligning progress photos so your time-lapse doesn't jump covers where to stand and what to line up with.

Step 2: Line up every photo with the key photo

Each time you come back, the viewfinder shows you where the key photo was taken. Move until today's view matches, then take the photo. You can switch between 3 guides: the overlay, the stencil and the difference view. A grid and a spirit level help too.

See-through overlay

The key photo sits over the live camera view like tracing paper. It starts at 35 per cent opacity, and you can turn it up or down. Line up the things that won't change – the neighbour's roofline, a power pole, the kerb – then take the photo.

Stencil outline

On a busy site, a see-through photo can look cluttered. The stencil traces the key photo's edges as white outlines instead. You set the level of detail: fewer lines for a messy view, more for a plain one. Trees still leave plenty of marks, so line up with the hard edges – fences and roofs – not the treetops.

Your iPhone draws the stencil itself. The key photo never leaves the device to make it.

Difference view

The difference view shows what has moved. Anything that matches the key photo goes dark, and anything out of place shows up bright. When the fixed parts of the view go dark, you're lined up, and only the new work stands out.

Grid and spirit level

A grid over the viewfinder helps you keep the horizon and other strong lines in the same place in the frame. The spirit level shows when the phone is level, so the view doesn't tilt from one day to the next.

Photos drift for all sorts of reasons over a long project.

A daily reminder for each scene

Set a reminder for each scene, at a time you choose. It arrives as a notification on your iPhone, so a busy day doesn't mean a missed photo. The phone schedules the reminder itself – nothing goes through a server.

Taking the photo at about the same time each day also keeps the light and shadows similar. That makes for a steadier video.

Step 3: Record the big days as moments

Some days deserve more than a still photo: the slab pour, the crane lowering a roof truss, the scaffold coming down. A moment is a short video of a day like that.

You record a moment with the same overlay and stencil guides, so it's framed like the photos around it. You can also add a video you already took.

In the finished video, a moment plays at real speed between the photos either side of it. You can trim its start and end without changing the original.

Moments and sound

Be clear on this before the big day:

• Moments you record in Plumb Daily have no sound. The app records video only, and it never asks for your microphone.
• Videos you add from your library keep their sound in the finished video. So do videos you drag in from Finder on the Mac.

Want the rumble of the crane in your video? Film it with the iPhone Camera app, then add it to the scene from your library.

Step 4: Keep your photos in order

• Timeline. A grid shows every photo in the scene, labelled with its date.
• Full screen. Swipe through photos one at a time, and pinch to zoom in on the detail.
• Leave a photo out. Drop the blurry one, or the day a truck parked in front, from the video without deleting it. It stays in the scene.
• Photos library. Every photo is also saved to your Photos library, and to an album for the scene if you want one.

Step 5: Export a time-lapse or a slideshow

When you're ready, turn the scene into a video. You can do this on your iPhone or on your Mac.

Choose a style

A time-lapse suits a long project with hundreds of photos. A slideshow suits a shorter one, or a video where each stage should stay on screen long enough to take in.

Not sure how long your video will run? Plan your capture schedule with the capture planner. Enter how long your project will run and how often you'll shoot. It works out your photo count, your video length and a speed that suits it.

Pick a transition

A slideshow joins each photo to the next with a transition. Choose from:

• cut, dissolve, fade through black, push, slide over or reveal
• the depth transitions: zoom through, flip or cube.

Add a slow zoom

Choose Gentle zoom on your iPhone, or turn on Slow push-in on your Mac, and the view eases gently closer across the whole video. It's often called the Ken Burns effect. It adds a little movement to a view that otherwise stays still.

Preview before it renders

A live preview plays your video before it renders, transitions included. Try a different speed or style and see the change before you commit.

Where your video goes

• The video is an MP4 file in HEVC, a compact, high-quality video format.
• It's 4:3 or 3:4 to match the scene, up to 2880 × 2160.
• It saves to your Photos library, and a shelf in the app keeps your saved time-lapses together.
• Keep Plumb Daily open while a video renders on your iPhone. iOS stops video rendering in the background, so the app keeps the screen awake while it works.

Step 6: Sync privately through your own iCloud

Progress photos of your home are personal. Plumb Daily treats them that way.

• No account. There's nothing to sign up for. Open the app and start a scene.
• No ads and no tracking. The app has no analytics of any kind.
• No Plumb Daily servers. Your photos never go to the developer.
• Done on your device. The stencil, the alignment and the video are all made on your iPhone or Mac.
• Synced through your own iCloud. Your scenes sync between your iPhone and Mac through Apple's CloudKit private database. That's private storage for apps, inside your own iCloud account. Only you can see it. The developer can't.

On a single device, you don't need iCloud at all. To sync between devices, you do.

Moment video files are the one exception to sync. They don't go through iCloud – only a preview frame does. On the Mac, you can fetch a moment's video from your iCloud Photos library, or link the file by hand.

What the app asks for

Plumb Daily never asks for your microphone or your location.

The Plumb Daily privacy policy sets out what the app and this website collect.

Review and export on your Mac

Months of photos are easier to sort through on a big screen. The Mac app adds tools the phone doesn't have:

• Compare any 2 days side by side, with a wipe or as a difference view. Or use onion skin: one photo laid over the other, see-through.
• Align All lines every photo up with the key photo, on your Mac. A nudge editor lets you move, turn or scale any photo by hand. Your iPhone's exports use the same alignment.
• The export studio adds a date stamp, smooth exposure to even out bright and dull days, and HD or 4K output.

The same App Store listing covers iPhone and Mac. See how browsing, comparing and exporting on the Mac fits in with the phone.

Built for projects that take time

The same routine works for anything you can photograph from the same spot over days, weeks or months:

• progress photos for a new home build, with a builder or as an owner-builder
• renovations and extensions, from the first demolition photo to the final coat of paint
• gardens and landscaping, through a full season of growth
• murals, art and other hobby projects that run for weeks
• tradespeople and small builders showing clients how a job is going.

Try it when it's ready

Plumb Daily is in beta testing now, on iPhone and Mac. Join the waitlist and you'll get one email when it's on the App Store.