Your scans, squared away.
Scanning a shoebox of prints or a tray of slides is the quick part. Cropping and straightening every frame by hand is what eats the weekend. Squarewell looks at each scan, finds the picture on it, straightens it and sets a clean crop, so you can move on to the photos themselves.
Squarewell is made for photographed or scanned prints, slides, negatives, magazines, documents and album pages. For each one it finds the item against the background, sets the straighten angle and crops to the picture, leaving out the background, the slide mount and, if you like, a print's white border or a portrait's card mount.
Album and scrapbook pages come apart into one cropped copy per print, with the labels and notes beside them kept as copies of their own. Photos that look sideways or upside down are flagged for you to check, and any photo Squarewell wants you to look at says why, in plain words.
It comes two ways, with one license for both. The Lightroom Classic plug-in sets Lightroom's own crop and straighten: your files are not edited, and Edit > Undo takes back a whole run. The Windows & Mac app needs no Lightroom: it shows every crop for you to check and adjust, then saves new cropped pictures or XMP sidecars beside the originals.




A black background, a white background (a flatbed scan with the lid closed, or white card) or a copy stand's gray or tinted grid board or cutting mat. Squarewell tells them apart by itself, so there are no settings to change between them.
The angle that makes the item's edges sharpest, within 1.5° either way, and each edge measured in short stretches so no sliver of background shows. Slides from the same carrier are checked against each other for a more exact crop.
Every print, label and note on a page is found. Each print becomes its own cropped copy (Photo 1, Photo 2 …) in reading order, each label a “Photo 2 note”, and each can also be saved as a 16-bit TIFF. Image format includes Letter, Legal, A5, A4 and A3 paper and 12x12 album pages.
35mm strips in a carrier, using the sprocket holes to place an edge it can't see, plus film formats from half frame to 6x17 and 4x5, and Kodak Disc frames in their holder. Set white balance from the film base sets each frame's white balance from the clear film around it as it crops, and Set white balance only (negatives) in Plug-in Extras does the same for negatives already cropped.
Trims a print's white or cream border and a portrait's card mount, or keeps the whole border when there is writing on it. Certificates and other documents keep their border, and so do prints with a deckled edge, cropped out to the tips of the scallops (Keep deckled edges, on by default).
Faces, the scene, sky and horizon, and any writing in the picture, such as a sign or a caption, decide which photos look sideways or upside down. They get a keyword and the purple label, and Turn the flagged photos turns them for you.
Squarewell reads any writing in a slide or negative scan, in nine languages, and flips the photo left to right when the writing reads backwards. Photos without writing are left as they are, and flipped ones get the keyword Scanned backwards (flipped). On by default.
Black-and-white film is spotted and set to Black & White before Negative Lab Pro, because old film's faint cast can throw off the conversion. They get the keyword Black & white negative. On by default.
Each photo that gets a color label, or is left uncropped, says why in a note.
Crop three or more photos from the same setup and Squarewell learns the board, its grid and anything fixed to the stand, such as tape or a straightedge, then crops again any print that took in a strip of tape or ran to the frame.
Keep the settings for each kind of work under a name, shared by the plug-in and the app. Starter profiles cover slides, prints, negatives and album pages, and a Slides only choice keeps a run of slides to film formats. The Auto Crop now commands start at once with no dialog.
Every action has a key: press ? to see them. A Stream Deck or other macro pad can run them too, including Squarewell's Lightroom commands. Ready-made buttons come with Squarewell, one profile for the app and one for Lightroom: press ? and click Add Stream Deck buttons. In Lightroom you can give Squarewell's commands your own keys: click Keyboard shortcuts beside User Guide. The same window can give a key to another plug-in's menu item, such as Negative Lab Pro, by its name.
Step by step for every job: the Squarewell User Guide.
Windows may show “Windows protected your PC” the first time: click More info, then Run anyway. The Mac download is signed and checked by Apple: open it and double-click the Install app.
Lost your key? · License terms · Refund policy · Questions: info@thepictureorg.com
Squarewell is signed by The Picture Org LLC and is safe. Some antivirus programs (Norton, for example) flag any new download that few people have run yet, even a signed one, and the block goes away as more people install it. Windows SmartScreen (“Windows protected your PC”): click More info, then Run anyway. Norton: open Norton, go to Security > History, choose the entry for the download, and click Restore & exclude this file, then run it again. Microsoft Defender: open Windows Security > Virus & threat protection > Protection history, choose the entry, and click Actions > Allow on device. Other antivirus programs have a similar Restore or Allow choice in their quarantine or history. If you would rather not change a setting, email info@thepictureorg.com and we will send you a zip you can install by hand. We report every false alarm to the antivirus maker so it is cleared for everyone.
No. The Squarewell app runs on Windows and Mac without Lightroom and opens in your web browser. It runs on your computer only: nothing is uploaded. If you do use Lightroom Classic, the plug-in sets Lightroom's own crop, so the result is easy to adjust later.
No. In Lightroom the plug-in only changes Lightroom's crop settings and keywords (and adds album copies), and Edit > Undo takes back a run. The app saves new cropped pictures, or XMP sidecars beside the originals.
An even black background, a white background, or a copy stand's grid board or cutting mat, with the whole item in the frame and a little background showing all round. A light table behind a print is not supported yet.
Yes. Choose Album pages and every print on the page gets its own cropped copy, with any label or note beside it kept as a copy too. It works on black, light and magnetic album pages and on several prints laid on a flatbed.
It still crops it, and gives it the yellow label and the keyword Check crop with a note saying why, so you only look at those. A negative that doesn't match the rest of its roll is drawn at the roll's size. Tick “Leave unsure photos uncropped” if you'd rather have a photo whose edges barely show left as it was, with the yellow label.
Squarewell includes the same rotation check as Pivotwell, so if you scan prints, slides or film, Squarewell does both. Pivotwell is for collections of digital photos from phones and cameras that only need turning.
About 3 to 4 seconds a photo, and about 1.7 times faster on a computer with four or more cores. Album pages take about 3 to 10 seconds a page.
Not by accident. After each run the crops are saved into the photo files' own metadata (an .xmp sidecar, or the DNG, JPEG or TIFF file), so they don't get lost when another program opens the files. Programs that read crop information from the metadata, such as Bridge or Camera Raw, can still change the crops if you edit them there.
Only a check for a newer version when Squarewell opens, which fetches a small version list and sends nothing about your computer, your photos or your license key. You can turn it off. If something goes wrong, Create an error log can send a report to us, but only after you have seen exactly what it holds and clicked Send.
Squarewell tells you when a new version is out. Install now downloads it, checks that it carries The Picture Org's signature, and installs it, putting everything back if anything goes wrong. Installing it in the app or in Lightroom updates both. Updates within the major version are complimentary.
No. Adobe lets plug-ins run only in Lightroom Classic. If you use the Lightroom app, use the Squarewell app on your photo folders instead.
No. Squarewell needs a Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later).
More answers in the Squarewell User Guide, or email info@thepictureorg.com.
New in Squarewell 1.6.82
Slides only: A new Slides only choice and a Slides starter profile for runs of slides: only film formats are listed, and slides are never taken for deckled prints. Rotation flags now also go by any writing in the picture, such as a sign or a caption.
Also new in 1.6.78: Backwards scans flipped
Also new in 1.6.78: Black-and-white negatives
Also new in 1.6.75: Keys for other plug-ins
Also new in 1.6.74: Doubtful crops still cropped
Also new in 1.6.71: Your own Lightroom keys
Also new in 1.6.68: White balance from film base
See what's new