Building Picmal: Why Alberto Gallego Still Believes in Simple, Local Mac Software

Picmal, a Mac app that started as a straightforward image converter, has since grown into a broader media toolkit, adding support for video, audio, PDFs, automation, Vectorize, Remove Background, and more. But despite that expansion, Alberto has kept to a surprisingly simple idea: you should be able to open Picmal and start using it immediately.

We recently spent some time testing Picmal for our review, and that philosophy stood out. So we wanted to go beyond the feature list and talk to the person building it.”

TheSweetBits: Picmal started as a simple image converter. What was the original problem you wanted to solve, and what made you keep expanding it?

Alberto: “I was getting tired of visiting different websites to upload my files, waiting for them to be uploaded to some random server, then waiting for the conversion or compression, and finally downloading them again. For those of us who work online and regularly deal with PDFs, images, audio, or video, it’s something we have to deal with all the time.

I looked for existing options, and there were some really nice apps that could do this locally on a Mac, but their interfaces were often a bit tricky. I was a big fan of ImageOptim because of how simple its UI was, so I thought, “I’m going to build ImageOptim, but for file conversion.”

And that’s how Picmal started. I got some really nice initial feedback, mainly on Reddit, which motivated me to keep going with the project.

From a business perspective, it’s still far from being profitable, partly because this is a pretty crowded market. I still haven’t figured out exactly how to make it work in the long term, but my main reason for keeping it going is that I keep getting feedback, new ideas, and, every time I use Picmal, I find myself thinking, “It would be nice to have this.”

It’s something I use every week, multiple times a week, and that’s ultimately why I want to keep working on it for the long run.”

Picmal has grown quite a bit, but it still feels pretty simple. How do you decide which features to add without losing that simplicity?

“I love sticking to one simple rule: a person should be able to open the app and start using it immediately. If they have to mess around with configurations first, something isn’t quite right, and we probably need to rethink the whole thing.

This is also the baseline I use when deciding whether to add new features. My main approach is to listen to customer requests and try to make Picmal available wherever it makes sense. That’s why you can now use it with Raycast, Shortcuts, Finder, and even through a CLI.

My own use cases for the app are pretty basic, but other customers, especially musicians and designers, have more complex workflows. Their feedback has helped me discover different ways to improve Picmal and support more use cases, while always keeping that first rule in mind.”

You’ve mentioned listening closely to customer requests. What’s one request that really changed the way you thought about Picmal?

“I think it was about a month ago. Convert and compress had been my main focus for roughly a year, but one day a user said, “It would be nice to have something like Picmal for splitting my PDFs.”

I had actually been thinking about building another app focused specifically on PDFs, but at that moment I thought, “Conversion and compression are already too crowded. Maybe the differentiation is to expand Picmal a bit and turn it into a media toolkit.”

That conversation probably changed the direction of Picmal more than anything else. It opened up a whole new door of possibilities for the app.”

Local processing is one of Picmal’s core principles. How important is it to you to keep Picmal local-first, especially as more conversion and editing tools move to the cloud?

“Very, very important. We’re seeing more and more services, like Lightroom, which I use and pay for, increasing their prices because they’re introducing AI. This is happening across a lot of software, even when users never asked for these AI features.

In the end, you end up paying more for decisions that were made mainly for the business, rather than for the customers.

That’s why, for me, Picmal has to be local. I don’t ask you to create an account, I don’t ask for your data, and I only track errors in the app. Every feature I add works both offline and online.

And, selfishly, it’s good for me too. Keeping everything inside the app keeps my running costs very low because I don’t have to rely on expensive server infrastructure, apart from my licensing server. It’s a win-win for everyone. I really hope we see more local tools in the future and less reliance on the internet for absolutely everything.”

You don’t track what people do inside Picmal, so we’re curious: which features do you personally rely on most that you wish more users knew about?

“Following up on the last question, I don’t really know which features are used the most and which ones aren’t. Yeah, as I mentioned, I don’t track anything, so I have no idea what users actually do with Picmal.

But if I had to pick, there are two features I personally find tremendously useful: the CLI, which sadly is only available in the direct distribution and not through the Mac App Store, and clipboard optimization.

For example, sometimes I just want to attach an image to an email, but the file is too large. I can use clipboard optimization, copy the image, let Picmal optimize it, and then paste it directly into the email. That’s it. It’s really convenient because it doesn’t break my flow.

The same goes for the CLI. Everyone is using AI and agents nowadays, and sometimes I’m writing a blog post and need to compress some images to keep the website fast. I can simply tell an agent to generate a script using the Picmal CLI, and that’s it.

The nice thing about this approach is that whenever I improve the compression engine, the improvements benefit both the CLI and the main app.”

You now offer Picmal both directly and through the Mac App Store. What made you decide to go down both paths, and how do you feel about the trade-offs?

“It’s really about distribution. I want Picmal to be everywhere for a reason. Being available in different places shows users that you’re serious about the project. It shows that you care about it, that you’re proud of what you’re building, and that you want people to discover and use it.

From a business perspective, every distribution channel is also another door for people to discover the project and, hopefully, buy it.

I’ve been a bit hesitant about bringing Picmal to the Mac App Store. The main differences compared to the direct distribution are that the App Store version doesn’t have the CLI or watched folders, and you need to grant access to each folder you want to work with. That can break the flow a little bit.

But honestly, it’s not a huge trade-off. Once you grant access to a folder, you keep that permission, so you only really have to deal with it once.

So, looking at it from the long-term perspective, I think being on the App Store would probably bring more benefits than downsides for the longevity of the project.”

Picmal remains a one-time purchase despite the growing pressure toward subscriptions. Has building the business changed the way you think about one-time pricing?

“I’ve always thought of Picmal as a short-term investment with a long-term vision. I keep coming up with new features and ideas, but at some point, the product itself should be complete. There’s a point where adding more features no longer makes sense and can actually make the product worse.

Thinking about it this way, I believe a one-time purchase is the fairest pricing model. The hardest part is that every month you basically start from zero again, and as I mentioned earlier, I still haven’t found a way to make Picmal profitable in the long term.

But if the product doesn’t have any recurring costs, apart from the time I spend supporting customers, which I genuinely enjoy, I think it makes sense to charge a one-time price rather than a subscription.

That said, I’m still trying to figure out how to make this sustainable in the long run, and which channels work best for this kind of product. If anyone is reading this, I’m all ears.”

You recently wrote about turning down a five-figure offer to acquire Picmal. What made you decide to keep building it yourself?

“It might sound funny, but I actually flipped a coin. It’s a pretty stupid way to make a decision, but the moment the coin was in my hand and I was about to look at the result, my first thought was: “I hope it’s a no.”

Right now, I don’t need the money, and I genuinely enjoy working on the project. The buyer also wasn’t very clear about what they wanted to do with Picmal in the long term, and I don’t want to see a product like this get ruined.

The values I’ve built Picmal around are important to me. If someone buys the app in the future, which I’m definitely not looking to do anytime soon, I’d want them to respect those values 100% and have the same long-term mindset that I do.”

If we talk again a year from now, what would you love Picmal to look like — and is there anything you never want it to become?

“As I said, unless another email arrives and opens up a new door, Picmal should be more or less feature-complete within the not-too-distant future.

Beyond that, what I’d like to see a year from now is a more robust business, both financially and in terms of the product itself. I’m always looking for ways to improve Picmal. I still hear from customers who use multiple apps because Picmal doesn’t always give them the best results for every use case, and I’d like to close those gaps as much as possible.

That’s what would make Picmal the go-to option. My goal from the beginning has been to build the best app for this kind of work, so I’m always looking for ways to make it better.

I don’t know if I’ll get there, but I’m going to try.”

Final Words

After talking with Alberto, what stayed with us wasn’t a particular Picmal feature. It was how closely the product seems to reflect the way he wants to build software.

He isn’t trying to turn Picmal into an everything app. He isn’t particularly interested in collecting user data to figure out which buttons people click. He isn’t convinced that every useful feature needs a cloud service behind it, and he still believes a piece of software can be sold for a one-time price when it doesn’t come with significant recurring costs.

That’s also what makes the story interesting. Picmal isn’t a finished success story; it’s an indie software project still being figured out in public.

For now, Alberto seems happy to keep building it—and perhaps the most revealing answer in our conversation came when we asked why he turned down an acquisition offer. He flipped a coin, and just before looking at the result, he realized he was hoping it would be a no.

Sometimes that’s enough of an answer.

Read our full Picmal review   |     Visit official website to Learn more about Picmal

Loved the article, share!