greycard user guide

Before you start

• A GPU, for any speed. Vulkan on Linux and Windows, Metal on a Mac. Without one, greycard still opens: it draws the window in software, develops on the CPU, and says so in the status line. That is slow (a 24 MP frame takes about 14 s on a 2012 quad-core). On a processor that old the AI features (the learned masks, the eraser, and the learned denoiser) also need a runtime greycard offers to download, and they are slower again (On an older processor).
• On Linux, glibc 2.39 or newer: Ubuntu 24.04, Fedora 40, Debian 13, or later. The tarball and the AppImage both need it.
• A Mac with an Apple chip or an Intel one, if you're on a Mac. The Intel build is newer, and the generative remove is not available on it.
• On Windows on ARM, the aarch64-windows zip. It is a new build and not yet tried on a real machine. Its AI features (the learned masks, the eraser, and the learned denoiser) run on the CPU alone, slower, through Microsoft's ONNX Runtime, which greycard offers to download the first time you use one (On Windows on ARM).
• Raw files. Tested with Canon, Fujifilm GFX and X-Trans, Sony, Panasonic and Nikon raws. X-Trans raws develop without the learned denoiser for now (Fujifilm X-Trans). Nikon's High Efficiency raws (TicoRAW) don't open yet; only a build from source with the nikon-he feature reads them (building.md).
• Copies or a backup. greycard never changes a raw file, but it is a test build.
• On Linux, a file chooser. greycard asks the desktop's file chooser portal, which GNOME, KDE and most desktops run. On a window manager such as i3 started without one, install zenity (or kdialog) and greycard uses it instead, or run the session under dbus-run-session with xdg-desktop-portal and xdg-desktop-portal-gtk installed. A folder named on the command line, greycard-ui ~/Pictures/shoot, opens without either.

Installing

Download the file for your system from the releases page and unpack it.

• Linux: run sh install.sh in the unpacked folder. sh uninstall.sh removes it.
• Linux, without installing: greycard-<version>-linux-x86_64.AppImage is the editor in one file, nothing to unpack. Make it executable (chmod +x) and run it, with a folder or a raw after it if you like; --cli first runs the command line, greycard, instead. It needs FUSE, which most desktops have; where it is missing, as in many containers, add --appimage-extract-and-run. It puts nothing in your menus or Open with unless your launcher takes in AppImages itself. Its settings, cache, and downloaded models are the same ones an installed copy uses, so the two can be swapped. It needs the same glibc as the tarball (Before you start).
• macOS: open greycard-<version>-aarch64-macos.dmg, or -x86_64-macos.dmg on an Intel Mac, and drag greycard onto Applications. The app is signed and notarized, so it opens with one question the first time. For the greycard command too, take the .tar.gz instead and run sh install.sh; testing-on-a-mac.md has both step by step.
• Windows: take greycard-<version>-x86_64-windows.zip, or greycard-<version>-aarch64-windows.zip on Windows on ARM, and double-click install.cmd. Run register.cmd too if you want greycard in Open with for raws. If Windows warns about an unknown publisher, click More info, then Run anyway. uninstall.cmd removes it.
• Windows, without installing: unpack the zip anywhere and run bin\greycard-ui.exe. install.cmd only adds the Start Menu entry, the Path, and the Open with association; nothing needs it.

The basics

1. Open a folder with Ctrl+O or Open folder.... The filmstrip along the bottom holds the folder's frames.
2. Browse with the arrow keys. Library and Loupe at the top of the left pane (or G) switch between the grid and one frame. The loupe has two modes, Cull and Develop, first in the right panel's tab row. You see the camera's own preview first; greycard's develop replaces it a moment later.
3. Edit in the right panel's tabs after Cull: Develop, Crop, Masks and Retouch.
4. Export with Export... or Ctrl+Shift+E.

Your edits are saved as you go, in a .gcd file beside each raw. Copy those along with the raws to move a shoot.

The window opens no taller than your screen, so on a 13 or 14 inch laptop the buttons of a sheet such as Export stay in reach.

Text and controls too small? Scale, under Interface in the Settings sheet (Ctrl+,), makes them up to twice the size, from the next start (Scale).

The chapters

Working with your photos:

• Folders and the library: opening folders, library roots, the folder tree, filtering, sorting, collections, a raw's camera JPEG, where edits are kept, RawTherapee profiles
• Importing: from a card, a folder where it is, or a Lightroom Classic catalog
• Culling and rating: ratings, flags, labels, the lightbox, stacks, rejects and deleting
• Archives and backup

Editing:

• The Develop tab: every section of the panel
• Crop and retouch
• Masks
• Scopes and color
• Presets, history and several frames: presets, snapshots, the history, versions of a frame, sync and paste
• Fitting your camera's look
• Merging frames: HDR, panorama and focus stack

Finishing and reference:

• Exporting
• Settings

Keys

Press ? in the editor, or choose Help > Keys (?) at the foot of the left pane, for these on a sheet you can search. The sheet is made from the table the editor reads its keys from, so it always matches the build you have. Help also opens this guide and the bug form.

To change a key, open Settings (Ctrl+,) and choose Keys: click an action's key, then press the new one, modifiers and all; Esc keeps the old. The grid's stack key follows the soft proof's (S). The frame step (← →) and the turn ([ ]) are a key each way; the step's Shift form follows its keys, and the step moved is the Loupe's: the grid and the lightbox keep the arrows. With a brush or a repair in hand the brackets size it wherever the turn is bound. The other lines with more than one key (the up and down arrows, the ratings, flags, and labels, + −, F6 to F8, Redo, and the filter's), Enter, Tab, and F11 cannot be moved, but an action can take one; Delete or Backspace alone, while a key listens, means None; a focused slider keeps its own keys. Esc cannot be taken. A key that does two things says so in red; of two actions, the higher in the list gets the press. Reset to defaults puts every key back. The tables below are the defaults; the ? sheet shows your own.

Moving around

In the grid, a mouse's back and forward buttons go to the folders visited, as a browser's do: back returns to the folder a subfolder was opened from, and forward goes there again.

Views

Ctrl+wheel over the grid changes the tile size as + and − do.

With a repair or a mask's shape in hand, Space or Shift held with a drag moves the picture; a tap of Space still zooms.

Rating and sorting

Editing

Files, sheets and help

In the filter's text field, Esc clears the text and gives the keys back to the frames.

On a Mac, Ctrl is ⌘, and the keys sheet says Cmd (⌘C, ⌘V, ⌘Z, ⌘+click). Control+click is a right-click, and delete (⌫) opens the delete sheet.

Known rough edges

• The default look and the tone sliders don't match Lightroom's feel yet. Highlights and Whites came closer in 0.7; tell us when a frame looks too dark, too flat or odd in a way you can name.
• The learned denoiser doesn't run on Fujifilm X-Trans raws yet, and their chromatic aberration correction takes out less of a fringe than on other raws.
• The high-quality denoisers are slow, taking tens of seconds on a large frame.
• On Windows the display is treated as sRGB unless you pick your monitor's ICC profile by hand. On a wide-gamut screen, colors may look too saturated until you do.
• On a Mac, double-clicking a raw or a .gcd in Finder launches greycard but does not open that file.

Reporting a problem

Click Report a problem... at the bottom of the left panel, or choose it from Help just above. It opens the bug form in your browser with the version, OS and GPU already filled in, and it shows the log file in your file manager so you can drag it into the form. In the report, include:

1. What you did and what you expected, in a sentence each.
2. The log. The three runs before are kept as greycard-ui-1.log (the latest), greycard-ui-2.log, and greycard-ui-3.log.
3. The raw file and the camera model, if a picture renders wrong. This is the most useful report you can send.

If the form doesn't work, the logs are here: