Culling and rating

Ratings, flags and labels

Every frame can carry:

• a rating, 0 to 5 stars
• a flag: pick, reject, or none
• a color label: red, yellow, green, blue or purple

Set them with the keys, from the frame menu, or in Cull. The keys work in the loupe, the grid and Cull alike.

Purple has no key; set it from the frame menu.

Right-click a frame in the filmstrip, the grid or the picture for the frame menu. Rating and Label are submenus, and Pick, Reject and Unflag are on the menu itself. A check mark shows what the frames already have.

On several frames

The keys and the menu act on every selected frame (Ctrl+click or Shift+click to select more than one, Ctrl+A for every frame shown). A label key on a mixed selection sets the label on all of them; press it again to clear it from all.

A rating, flag and label belong to the file, so a frame and its versions share them: set one on a version and every cell of that file follows.

Shift capture time

When a second camera's clock was off, its frames sort in the wrong place among the first camera's. Select every frame from that camera (the Camera chip in the filter does it in one click), right-click one, and choose Shift capture time.... Type the difference, such as +0:05:00 for a clock five minutes slow, or 5m, -1h, 30s; or switch to Set this frame to and type the time the named frame was really taken, and the others move by the same difference. Apply shifts them; Clear shift takes every selected frame back to the time its camera wrote.

The raw is never changed: the shift is saved beside the rating, and the camera's own time is kept. The capture time under the frame's name in the panel shows the shifted time, marked "(shifted +5:00)". An export's EXIF carries the shifted time, and so does the .xmp with Write XMP sidecars on. Ctrl+Z in culling takes a shift back, as it does a rating.

Sorting and the Day chips need the library index, so they follow a shift for frames under one of your roots: there a list sorted by capture time puts the frames in their new places, and the Day chips count them on their new day. Frames the index does not hold keep their place.

How they show

Small badges over each thumbnail show the flag, the stars and the label. A labeled frame's tile in the grid is also tinted toward its label's color, so a run of red frames stands out. In the filmstrip, which sits beside the picture you are judging, the label shows as a thin colored line under the thumbnail instead of a tint. In the develop view the badge also shows over the picture for a moment after a key, and stays while the strip is hidden.

Ratings, flags and labels are saved in the frame's .gcd. With Write XMP sidecars on in Settings, ratings and labels go into the XMP too, for Lightroom or darktable; picks and rejects stay in the .gcd.

Keywords and a title

The METADATA section holds the frame's Title and its Keywords. It is under the CULLING section in Cull, the last on the Develop tab, and in the left pane beside the grid, under the import buttons.

Type a title and press Enter or Tab, or click a frame, to keep it; Esc puts back what was there. In the Keywords field a comma or Enter ends a word, which goes on at once and shows as a chip under the field's label; the x on a chip takes it off. As you type, words already in your library that start with the same letters are offered under the field: Up and Down move through them, and Tab, Enter or a click takes one. Esc leaves the field, and the keys are rating keys again.

Both act on every selected frame, as a rating does. With several selected, a keyword only some of them carry is dimmed (click its word to put it on the rest), and titles that differ show as Mixed; a title typed there replaces all of them. In Cull Ctrl+Z takes back a keyword or a title like a rating.

Keywords and the title are saved in the .gcd, and with Write XMP sidecars on they go into the XMP as well. The filter's Keyword chips and its keyword: term find the words you add.

Culling mode

The loupe has two modes, Cull and Develop. The right panel's tab row reads Cull | Develop, Crop, Masks, Retouch: Cull first, then after a gap the four tabs of Develop, and the one you are on is lit. Click Cull, or press C, to cull; from the grid, C opens the loupe in Cull. A click on any of the four tabs goes back to Develop on that tab. Cull shows each frame's own embedded camera JPEG instead of developing the raw, so moving from frame to frame is instant. A frame you have edited shows its edit instead, as it does in the grid. The right panel shows the CULLING section in place of the develop tools.

Leave the loupe in Cull for the grid and come back (Loupe, G, E or Enter), and it is still in Cull; greycard remembers the mode for the next session too. D goes straight to Develop, from the grid or the loupe.

The grid has no culling mode of its own. The rating, flag and label keys work there as everywhere, and with Move on turned on in the CULLING section a key moves to the next frame in the grid too.

The developed picture

Picture at the top of the CULLING section switches between Camera JPEG and Developed. Developed shows each frame as greycard develops it, still without the edit panel and with the same keys: Move on, the word over the picture and Ctrl+Z for your ratings. Use it to check your edits at full size, or for a second pass over a shoot you have edited. Each frame takes a moment to develop, as in Develop, and the camera's JPEG stands in until it does. greycard remembers the switch.

Compare (V, and the Compare buttons) is the camera JPEG's alone, and is not offered while Developed is on: switch back to Camera JPEG to compare frames side by side.

Under the file name at the top of the panel, culling shows the body and lens, then the focal length, aperture, shutter and ISO, as editing does. In compare, they are the chosen frame's. They fill in once greycard has indexed the folder.

• ← → move between frames.
• Space zooms to 1:1 to check focus, and back. At 1:1 you always see the camera's full JPEG, even on an edited frame, and in compare every frame shows its own, versions of one frame excepted.
• Shift+J paints the sharpest parts of each frame green, to see at a glance where the focus landed (Focus peaking).
• V cycles through comparing 1, 2 or 4 frames side by side. The Compare buttons (1, 2, 4) do the same. Click a frame in the compare view to choose it.
• Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z undo and redo your rating, flag and label changes from this session. They don't touch any edit.
• Enter, Esc or D, or Develop at the CULLING section's foot, go to Develop on the frame you are on, on the tab you were on before Cull. C does too, and so does a click on one of Develop's tabs, on that tab.

A word over the picture confirms each key, such as the new rating. When the key makes the frame fall outside the filter, the word says so too ("No stars; hidden by the filter").

Comparing versions

To choose between a frame's versions, right-click it or one of its versions and choose Compare versions. Culling opens on the original and its versions alone, side by side, each tile its own edit: two up for one version, three up for two, four up for three or more. With more than three versions, the first three are shown and the status line says how many were left out. Each tile's name reads like "IMG_0001 (Warm)", and the status line names the chosen version.

Press Delete on a version's tile to delete that version, after a confirmation; the view closes up on the rest. To keep a version as the frame's own edit, use Swap with the original on it. An arrow or a click past the file's cells, or V, ends the comparison.

The status line says what you are looking at: "the camera JPEG", "a small camera preview" when the camera stored only a small one, "the camera's JPEG beside the raw" for a raw and its JPEG, or "the edit" for an edited frame. For a frame on a drive that is offline or on the network, culling shows "the local preview" greycard keeps of it, so you can cull frames that aren't reachable right now, or are slow to read.

The CULLING section

• Turn with its Left and Right buttons turns the selected frames a quarter left or right, for a shot the camera recorded the wrong way up. The [ and ] keys do the same, in culling, the grid, and the loupe, unless a brush or a repair tool is in hand, when they size it. In culling nothing is developed.
• Show filters the folder by rating, flag, label or words, the same filter as the grid's header. See the library.
• Move on after a rating, flag or label steps to the next frame after each key, so rating a shoot is one key a frame. It is off until you turn it on, and acts only when one frame is selected. It acts in Cull, either picture, and in the grid, but not in Develop. In the lightbox it acts only while the loupe is in Cull.
• The rejects buttons and Delete selection..., described below.

The lightbox

The lightbox is for judging a set as a whole: whether a run of frames holds together in color and tone, before you send it out. It shows each frame large and as edited, on a dark ground, with nothing else drawn: no names, no badges, no marks, no header. A stack's badge is the one exception, so a closed stack is not taken for a single frame.

Press L in the grid, the loupe or culling, or click Lightbox in the grid's header. The lightbox lays out whatever the grid shows, as the filter leaves it and in the grid's order: a folder, a root, a collection, or only your picks (the Pick chip, then L).

• + and −, or Ctrl+wheel while Resize with the wheel is on, set how many frames go across, from two to six. It starts at four, and greycard keeps your choice for the next session.
• The arrow keys, Home and End move through the frames. A ring marks the frame you are on, and a thinner one the rest of the selection.
• Return, or a double-click, opens the frame in the loupe. Return, Esc or L there bring you back to the lightbox where you were.
• The rating, flag and label keys work as everywhere.
• Ctrl+Shift+S syncs the frame you are on onto the rest of the selection: choose the frame that is right, Ctrl+click the ones that stand out, and sync. The frame menu has the same as Sync settings of frame onto 3 other frames....
• In a collection in its hand order, a drag still reorders it.
• Tab shows or hides the left pane.
• Esc, G or L leave for the grid, as does Leave lightbox on the frame menu. With several frames selected, the first Esc goes back to one.
• E leaves for the loupe on the frame you are on, in the mode you left it in, and D for the loupe in Develop.

A frame you have edited shows its edit; one you haven't shows the camera's JPEG. While a new picture of an edit is being made, after a sync for example, the tile keeps its last picture dimmed. A tile with no picture yet says "Developing".

Stacks

A stack puts several frames of one folder behind one: a burst, a bracket, five tries at one expression. The grid, the filmstrip, culling, the lightbox and the filter then see one frame, the stack's top, until you open it.

• Make one: select the frames (Ctrl+click, Shift+click) and press Ctrl+G, or choose Stack 3 frames on the frame menu. The frame you are on goes on top. The frames must be in one folder, and a collection's view makes none.
• The badge: a closed stack's top carries a layers mark and how many frames it holds, at its picture's bottom right. Click it, or press S in the grid, to open the stack: its frames follow the top, marked "2/5" and so on, on a band of their own in the grid. Click or S again to close it. In culling and the loupe S is the soft proof, so open a stack there by its badge on the filmstrip.
• Stack bursts on the frame menu finds the bursts in the folders you are looking at, frames taken up to two seconds apart that look alike, and stacks each one, closed, with its sharpest frame on top, by the same focus score the Sort menu's Focus sorts by. Frames already in a stack are left as they are. The first time it reads each frame's embedded preview, which takes about a minute for a card of raws, longer for Fuji's large previews; the index keeps what it learned, so the next time is quick.
• Set as top of stack on the frame menu, or Shift+S in the grid, puts a frame on top. Shift+[ and Shift+] in the grid move the frame you are on up or down in its stack; moved to the first place, it is the top. Remove from stack takes the selected frames out; a stack left with one frame is no stack. Unstack, or Ctrl+Shift+G, undoes it.
• Compare stack on the frame menu opens culling on the stack's frames side by side, two, three or four up.
• What you do to a closed stack, a rating, a flag, an export, a delete, Add to collection, is done to its top alone. A closed stack passes the filter when its top does, and the filter's counts leave out the frames behind it.
• Move rejects moves every rejected frame of the folder, including rejected frames behind a closed top. A frame moved out, or deleted, leaves its stack; Move back brings it back as a frame of its own.
• Stacks are kept with your collections, on this machine. A stack whose frame you rename in its folder follows it, and so does one whose folder you rename under a root of the library, open or closed; a frame moved to another folder leaves its stack.

greycard library list shows a closed stack's top alone, marked "stack of 3"; --stacks expanded lists every frame.

The rejects folder

Rejecting a frame only flags it. To get rejects out of the way, move them into a rejects folder inside their shoot's folder. Nothing is deleted.

The same actions are in two places:

• the CULLING section, in Cull
• the Rejects menu in the grid's header. The button shows the count, such as "12 rejects", or just "Rejects" when there are none.

Move rejects

Move 12 rejects... moves every frame flagged reject in what you are viewing, whatever is selected. It asks first: "Move the rejects?", with the count and where they go. Move (or Enter) moves them; Cancel (or Esc) doesn't.

• Each frame takes its .gcd and its XMP with it.
• In a view of several folders (all roots, a root, or a folder with With subfolders on), each reject goes into the rejects folder of its own folder.
• A frame on a drive that is offline is left alone.
• A file is never written over. If the rejects folder already has a file of that name, the frame stays where it is, and the status line says so.

With no rejects the item reads No rejects to move and is greyed out.

Move back

Open the rejects folder, select the frames you want back, and use Move back to folder (or Move 3 frames back to folder). It is on the frame menu, in the CULLING section and in the Rejects menu, whenever part of the selection is in a rejects folder. The frames go back into the folder above with their sidecars, and their reject flag is taken off so the next Move rejects won't send them out again. There is no sheet: nothing is written over.

Delete rejects folder

Delete rejects folder... deletes the frames in the rejects folder, and the folder itself once it is empty. It always asks first (see Deleting frames).

What it covers depends on the view:

• One folder: that folder's rejects folder.
• All roots, a root, or a folder with With subfolders on: every rejects folder that view lists frames in. The sheet says how many frames and folders, such as "Delete 30 frames from 3 rejects folders?".

Frames on an archive are left out unless you are viewing that archive itself, and the sheet says how many it left alone. Delete those from the archive's own view.

Remove rejects from an archive

When you have an archive, the menu also offers Remove rejects from archive... for each one. It finds the archive's copies of this folder's rejects and moves them into a rejects folder on the archive, or deletes them. It works on one folder at a time. See Archives.

Deleting frames

Delete selection... in the CULLING section, or the Delete key in the grid, culling or the loupe, deletes the selected frames from disk. On a Mac, the key marked delete (⌫) does the same.

Both deletes ask first. The sheet names how many frames and sidecars, and from which folder. If you have an archive, it also says whether the frames have a copy there.

Deleting a frame takes its versions with it. To delete one version and keep the frame, see Versions of a frame.

• A frame's .gcd and its XMP go with it. Nothing else in the folder is touched. An XMP a raw shares with its JPEG (IMG.xmp beside IMG.CR3 and IMG.JPG) is kept.
• Move to the trash is the default, and Enter presses it. You can restore the frames from the system trash.
• The delete runs in the background, and the status line says when it is done. A frame on another drive may be copied into your home trash, which takes a while for a large set.

If the trash refuses a frame, the delete stops there. The frames before it are in the trash; that frame and the ones after it stay where they were, and the status line says which files went. The next time, the sheet also offers Delete permanently, which can't be undone. Enter never presses that one. Where there is no trash at all, the sheet says "No trash here: this is permanent."

Mouse buttons

In the grid, a mouse's back and forward side buttons go to the folders visited, as a browser's do; ← and → step the frames.