Smart Fill: AI Photo Picks for Frames

Choosing which photo goes in which frame is often the hardest part of planning a gallery wall. GalleryPlanner’s Smart Fill feature uses local AI to automate this process, selecting the perfect images from your library based on composition, color, and quality.

What is Smart Fill?

Smart Fill is available on all plans and analyzes your uploaded photo library to match images to the frames on your wall. Instead of manually dragging photos into every frame, Smart Fill can populate your entire layout in seconds, ensuring a cohesive and professional look.

💡 Tip: Smart Fill is actively improving. We continuously update model quality and selection logic, so results may evolve over time.

The best part? The analysis happens entirely on your device. Your photos are never uploaded to our servers, so your personal memories stay private.

How Smart Fill Thinks

The AI doesn’t just pick photos at random. It evaluates every photo-to-frame combination and assigns a compatibility score (0-100) from five parts:

1. Aspect Ratio (25 points)

Does the photo’s shape match the frame’s opening? A photo whose width-to-height ratio is within 0.05 of the frame’s earns full points, so nothing gets squeezed or heavily cropped.

2. Resolution (25 points)

This is the most practical check. Smart Fill looks at the photo’s pixel count, so a low-resolution image scores low and is less likely to be chosen for a spot where it would look blurry when printed.

3. Composition (20 points)

The AI checks orientation (portrait vs. landscape). It keeps a wide landscape shot from being squeezed into a tall, skinny frame, and vice versa.

4. Color Harmony (15 points)

Smart Fill looks at each photo’s color profile and your Style Toggles (Prefer B&W, Prefer Vibrant), and favors photos that fit the look you picked.

5. Face Handling (15 points)

Using a local, lightweight neural network, Smart Fill identifies faces within your images. With Target Faces on, it prioritizes photos with faces and favors portraits for tall frames and group shots for wide ones.

Whole-Wall Balance (Pro)

The five scores above evaluate each frame in isolation. Whole-Wall Balance is an optional Pro setting that checks the entire wall as a single piece of art:

• Brightness — keeps the light and dark photos spread out instead of anchoring one corner.
• Warmth and warm/cool balance — avoids clumping all your warm-toned sunset shots on one side.
• People — spreads photos with faces around the wall.

Tick Whole-wall balance in the Smart Fill options before you click Generate Options; it’s off by default and only applies to Full-Wall Options. Single-frame suggestions still use the frame-by-frame scoring. This setting is included with GalleryPlanner Pro.

See the Math Behind Each Match

Wondering why Smart Fill picked a particular photo? Tap a single-frame suggestion’s score to open the Score Breakdown, which lists Aspect Ratio, Resolution, Composition, Color Harmony, and Face Handling so you can see what a match won on. Tap a Full-Wall Option’s score and you’ll see its Match Quality, Coverage, and Diversity, plus the Whole-Wall Balance details (Brightness, Warmth, Faces, Hue Polarity) when that setting was on.

The breakdown is free for everyone. It’s also a useful feedback loop: if a photo you love is scoring low, the single-frame breakdown tells you which score is pushing back, and you can respond with a Style Toggle or a better crop.

How to Use Smart Fill

Smart Fill is integrated directly into your workflow. Whether you want to fill an entire wall or find the perfect shot for a single frame, the AI is always ready to help.

1. Full-Wall Options

If you’ve just generated a new layout and want to see instant design options:

1. Open the Smart Fill section in the sidebar.
2. Smart Fill analyzes your photos on its own as you add them. While it works, the section shows Analyzing library… with a percentage; you can keep planning in the meantime.
3. Optionally toggle Wall photos only — Smart Fill will reshuffle the photos already placed on your wall instead of pulling new candidates from your full library. Useful when you like your photo selection and just want a different arrangement.
4. Pro: tick Whole-wall balance if you want the options balanced across the whole wall.
5. Click the “Generate Options” button.
6. The AI will quickly work through many possible photo-to-frame combinations and present you with several distinct, high-scoring Full-Wall Options for your entire wall.
7. Review the options, noting their score and “Diversity” score, and click one to apply it to your wall.

2. Instant Selection Suggestions

If you have a specific frame you want to fill manually but need inspiration:

1. Click any frame on your wall.
2. Look at the Smart Fill section in the sidebar.
3. The AI automatically generates a list of “Suggestions for selected frame”, sorted by their compatibility score.
4. Keep an eye on the sidebar indicators:
   • Match Score (0-100): Shows how well the photo fits.
     • Green (> 80): Excellent match.
     • Orange (50-80): Good match, might need minor cropping.
     • Red (< 50): Poor match (wrong shape or low quality).
   • Duplicate Warning (Red !): Shows that this photo is already placed somewhere else on your wall.
   • Current Selection (Green ✓): Marks the photo currently inside the selected frame.

Note on Print Quality: If you see a Red or Yellow Triangle on your canvas frames, that is a resolution warning.

• ⚠️ Yellow: Quality is okay (< 300 PPI) but could be sharper.
• 🔺 Red: Quality is low (< 150 PPI) and may look pixelated.

3. The Right-Click Shortcut

For Power Users who want to stay focused on the canvas:

1. Right-click any frame on your wall.
2. Select “Auto-Fill” from the context menu. On mobile, tap a frame to select it first, then long-press the selected frame to open the menu.
3. The AI will instantly search your library and place the single best match for that specific frame size and orientation.

Getting the Best Results

To help the AI help you, follow these simple tips:

Over-Upload Your Library

The AI needs choices. If you have 10 frames on the wall, don’t just upload 10 photos. Upload 30 or 40. This gives the scoring enough choices to find truly great matches.

Use the Style Toggles

In the Smart Fill settings, you can guide the AI’s aesthetic choices:

• Target Faces: Ensures your favorite people are prioritized and perfectly centered in their frames.
• Prefer B&W: Prioritizes photos that are already black-and-white (or heavily desaturated) when filling the wall. This is different from the Pro B&W Photo Conversion toggle, which renders any color photo as monochrome non-destructively.
• Prefer Vibrant: Perfect for colorful vacation photos or high-energy family sessions.

Keep Your Library Fresh

Smart Fill analyzes your photos once and remembers the results. New photos are analyzed automatically as you add them, and so are photos in a project you open or import. Turning on Target Faces starts face analysis on its own. Once everything is up to date, the Smart Fill section shows ✓ Library Analyzed. If some photos can’t be analyzed, tap Retry.

Manually Fine-Tune

Smart Fill is a powerful assistant, but you’re the lead designer. After the AI fills your wall, you can still:

• Pan and Zoom: Adjust the crop the AI selected. Hit Reset Crop to recenter at 100% in the mat opening.
• Adjust levels: Use the Brightness, Contrast, and Midtone sliders in the Photo panel to balance how individual photos read on the wall. Tap Auto Level (Pro) for one-click tonal optimization per photo.
• Swap: Drag a different photo over a frame to replace it.
• Switch Options: Click another generated option in the sidebar to completely swap the arrangement.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is my data private? Yes. Unlike other AI tools, GalleryPlanner runs the Smart Fill engine locally on your device. Your photos are processed on your device and are never uploaded to our servers.

Why are some photos being skipped? Usually, this is the Resolution score. Low-resolution photos score low on Resolution, so Smart Fill is less likely to pick them. On the canvas, a warning triangle appears on any frame whose photo falls under 150 PPI at the printed size, so you can spot a soft print before you order it.

Can I undo a Smart Fill? Yes! Just use the standard Undo (Ctrl/Cmd + Z) to step back to how your wall looked before.

What’s the difference between “Wall photos only” and a regular fill? A regular Smart Fill draws from every photo in your library — placed or not. Wall photos only restricts the pool to the photos currently in frames on your wall, so it just rearranges what you already have instead of pulling in new candidates. It’s disabled when no photos are placed yet.

Related Guides

• Understanding Auto-Layout — Learn how the layout engine arranges frames.
• Print Resolution Guide — A deep dive into DPI and image quality.
• GalleryPlanner Pro Features — Explore the full suite of Pro tools.

Ready to try Smart Fill? Launch the App →