Capture. Code. Create.
I’m a photographer who got tired of solving the same small, annoying problems over and over again. So I started building the tools I wished already existed.
“If I keep doing something manually and thinking there has to be a better way, that’s usually where an app starts.”
Richard Monsieurs · Photographer / makerFor most of my career I’ve been making images. Then I discovered that making software scratches exactly the same itch: see a problem, strip it down, make the solution feel obvious.
Every Monsieurs Made app started with something I actually wanted to use myself. That rule keeps the ideas practical — and the feature lists honest.
Turn client selects into the RAW files you actually need.
Clients send JPGs. Sometimes screenshots with filenames. Then comes the glamorous part: digging through folders to find the matching RAWs. SelectRAW was built to make that disappear.
A soundboard for the calls you really didn’t ask for.
After one scam caller too many, blocking them felt almost too polite. I wanted a button that made the experience a little less enjoyable on their side. RingRoast happened.
See what your investments actually did after you bought them.
Broker apps showed balances. I wanted context: my buys, my timing, my return, multiple portfolios and one clean picture — without giving another service my broker login.
Learn first. Earn screen time. Parents keep the boundary.
This one started with a very normal family problem: kids want screen time. Instead of arguing about it, I wanted learning to unlock the time we were already willing to give.
After a shoot, clients and teams often send their selects back as JPGs, lists or screenshots. The filenames are there — somewhere — and the full-resolution RAW originals live across shoot folders, cards and drives. I had done that search by hand enough times.
Once SelectRAW worked, I started noticing the same pattern everywhere: tiny bits of friction that we’ve somehow accepted as normal. Calls. Portfolios. Screen-time discussions. If the problem was real for me, it was worth trying to solve properly.
I don’t start with a trend report or a giant feature roadmap. I start by asking what would make this annoyance disappear — then I keep removing things until the app feels simple.
Monsieurs Made is the separate home for the software. My photography work remains its own world; the apps simply come from the same obsession with craft, details and making the final experience cleaner than the process behind it.
If I wouldn’t keep the app on my own device, there’s no point shipping it.
No feature just because apps are supposed to have it. The shortest route to “done” wins.
Utility can still be beautiful. Details matter — in a photograph, in an interface and in the boring bits too.
LivyWorld started with screen time. Livy Universe is where that idea wants to go next: a whole learning universe, with subjects as planets, characters as guides and progress that actually feels like an adventure.
This one is intentionally bigger. The others remove little annoyances. Livy Universe gets to become a world.