LORE: Stone & Crystal Guide

LORE is a field guide to stones, crystals, and minerals — the natural history of what you find, and what people have believed about it. Know what you find. Discover what it means. IDENTIFY WHAT YOU'RE HOLDING Photograph a stone and LORE gives you the closest matches from its 78-entry guide, along with what it actually observed in your photograph: colour, transparency, surface. It does not pretend to certainty it doesn't have. Most minerals cannot be settled from a photograph alone — colour shifts with the light, and polishing removes the crystal form that would decide it. So when LORE is confident it names one stone, and when it isn't it gives you a ranked shortlist and a physical test that separates them. "Hold a thin edge up to the light. If it stays fully opaque, that supports red jasper. If it glows orange-red, it's more likely carnelian." That's what a field guide does. It's the part the app can be honest about. IDENTIFY BY FEATURES — WORKS OFFLINE No signal, or would rather not send a photo? Answer what you can see — colour, surface, how light behaves on it, optionally a scratch or streak test — and LORE narrows the guide from your own observations. It runs entirely on your phone, and it's free and unlimited. NATURAL HISTORY AND FOLKLORE, KEPT APART Every entry covers how a stone forms, where it's found, how to recognise it, and its hardness on the Mohs scale. Alongside that: what people have traditionally associated with it, recorded as history rather than as effect. Roman soldiers carried engraved tiger's eye. Lodestone made the compass. Hertfordshire puddingstone was set into church walls against witchcraft. Where a stone has little folklore, LORE says so instead of inventing some. BUILD YOUR COLLECTION Save what you find. Your own photographs, not stock imagery — your collection is a record of your specimens, alongside a guide of 78 to discover. Got one wrong? Change the identification any time. Your photograph is kept. PRIVACY Your collection, notes, and settings never leave your phone. A photograph you submit for identification does: it's resized on your device — which strips the location and camera data — sent over an encrypted connection, identified, and not stored by anyone. Identify by Features sends nothing at all. Anonymous analytics can be switched off in Preferences. They never include your photographs, your collection, or anything that identifies you. LORE+ Three identifications are free. LORE+ makes them unlimited. Everything else is free forever: the full guide, Explore, Stone of the Day, your collection, and Identify by Features. An identification only counts when LORE actually names a stone. If it can't, that one is on us. LORE is a field guide, not an appraisal. For valuation, or where safety matters, consult a gemologist or a local geological society. Symbolic and traditional associations are presented for educational and cultural interest. They are not scientifically established and are not health advice.