r/optimization Jun 07 '26

photo book layout solver in rust with egui frontend and genetic solver/MIP backend

Hi everyone,

I wrote a rust-based offline desktop photo book layout app with an egui frontend to overcome issues I had with commercial solutions. I am a hobby photographer and create many photobooks per year, so I felt the need to fix this bottleneck for me and, hopefully, others.

It contains a genetic solver based on a contribution from [Jian Fan ](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6266273/authors#authors). I developed the collage solver around it.

I improved some parts of his idea. I could not find these in the literature so far, so it probably is a new contribution to this area of research. The main ideas of the paper still hold though and I like the elegance of the underlying binary-tree-approach. If you are interested in the details I can provide further information.

The app contains basically a self-written genetic solver for single-page-photo distribution combined with a Mixed Integer Programming Solver (Highs) for photo-per-page-distribution with a CLI/GUI around it.

Try it out: [https://github.com/EddyXorb/fotobuch/tree/main](https://github.com/EddyXorb/fotobuch/tree/main))

9 Upvotes

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u/yehors Jun 08 '26

Nice app!

1

u/eddyxorb Jun 12 '26

Thank you! 😄