Recto/Verso and Tropy: different tools for manuscript photographs

Tropy and Recto/Verso both organize research photographs. Tropy supports many kinds of archival material across three desktop platforms. Recto/Verso concentrates on manuscript identity, reading, rights records, figures, and slide decks on macOS.

A comparison written by one of the two parties deserves scrutiny. Tropy is free and open source. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media created it; RRCHNM, the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History, and Digital Scholar now develop it together. The two applications have different scopes.

Tropy is a general tool for organizing research photographs across many kinds of source material. Recto/Verso is a manuscript-focused tool for folio identity, evidence work, and scholarly output.

What Tropy is built for

Tropy manages research photographs from many kinds of archives. You can group images into items, describe them with metadata templates, tag them, select regions, and write notes beside the image. Its project data lives in a local SQLite database. According to Tropy's documentation, its export paths include JSON-LD, CSV, PDF, and Omeka S. Tropy leaves the original image files unchanged.

What Recto/Verso is built for

Recto/Verso focuses the problem on photographs of handwritten books and documents, manuscripts of any period, from medieval codices to early modern letter-books to nineteenth-century diaries. That different focus adds structure around folio identity, scholarly reading, rights, and publication:

• The folio model. Each assigned image can carry an arabic folio number, a roman-numeral flyleaf number, a quire signature, a side, or a two-page spread. Images outside those patterns can remain unassigned or use the object-photo workflow. Recto/Verso does not currently provide a dedicated bis suffix.
• Renaming to foliation. Recto/Verso batch-renames your camera's IMG_4021.jpg files to folio-numbered names (the workflow guide covers this). Tropy leaves filename decisions in the researcher's general organization workflow.
• Correction-first transcription. A transcription pane sits beside each photograph. It stores separate as-written, expanded, and translation passes, and warns when a later pass was based on an older source revision. It does not currently keep a browsable history of earlier readings.
• Publication outputs. Figures and exports are aimed at dissertations and articles: images assembled for submission rather than for storage. The companion guide on preparing manuscript figures for publication covers the requirements those outputs exist to meet.
• Rights as structured data. Each image carries a rights panel, grantor, reference, expiry, cleared arenas, filterable from the grid, as described in the guide on tracking reproduction rights.

The focused scope comes with tradeoffs. Recto/Verso is available for macOS, remains in beta, and is free during the beta period. A one-time purchase is planned after beta, but no final price has been announced.

Side by side

The transcription question

Both applications provide space for transcription. Tropy Notes are searchable rich text attached to a whole photograph or a selected region. Recto/Verso supplies three linked text passes and marks a downstream pass stale after its source changes. Neither description is a claim that the software can identify a correct reading.

Recto/Verso treats transcription as a reading made by a scholar. Separate passes can record the source text, expanded abbreviations, translation, conjectures, and losses. The useful workflow depends on the source and the research question.

The price question

Tropy is free. Recto/Verso is also free during beta; a paid one-time release is planned, with price still unannounced. Platform support and the usefulness of manuscript-specific fields remain separate considerations.

What happens if the software goes away

Long-term access matters for any research catalog and deserves particular attention for a beta application from a small independent maker. Both applications store project data in a local SQLite database. SQLite is publicly documented, dedicated to the public domain, and described in the Library of Congress's Sustainability of Digital Formats registry. Technical access to a database does not by itself provide a documented archival export or preserve every relationship outside the application.

Recto/Verso can write a subset of descriptive and rights metadata into working image files as IPTC/XMP. Its catalog exports include CSV, Obsidian notes, RIS, selection data, and Web Annotation JSON-LD. A graph can be exported as a self-contained HTML file. Transcriptions, figures, decks, graph structure, and catalog relationships are not reproduced inside each image, so the catalog database and separate exports remain part of a sound preservation plan.

Tropy may fit especially well when…

• Your sources are mixed: manuscripts this month, printed pamphlets and photographs next month, and one tool should hold all of it.
• You work on Windows or Linux, or across platforms.
• You need custom metadata templates, controlled vocabularies, or export to Omeka S.
• Open source, institutional backing, or a zero budget is decisive for you, all perfectly good reasons.

Recto/Verso may fit especially well when…

• Your photographs are of manuscripts and handwritten documents, and you identify images by folio labels such as f. 24v.
• You want your files renamed to foliation, so the filenames tell the truth outside the app too.
• You transcribe by reading, with conventions and uncertainty, and want the transcript to live permanently beside its leaf.
• The endpoint of your cataloging is a dissertation or publication: figures, citations, and a permissions file that survives the publisher's queries.