Folders and the library

Opening a folder

Press Ctrl+O, or click Open folder... at the top of the left pane, and choose a folder of raws.

Under the button, the pane names the open folder, with "in" and the root's name after it when the folder is in your library. Rest the pointer on the name to see the full path.

Click the name for Recently opened: the last ten folders you opened, the open one checked. A folder that is no longer on the disk stays in the list. Choosing it says so, and if its drive is unplugged, "isn't reachable; is its drive connected?".

greycard runs as one window. A file or folder you open from your file manager, by double-click or Open With, while greycard is running opens in that window, which comes to the front; starting greycard again with nothing to open brings the window up too. On Wayland the compositor decides whether the window comes forward or is only marked. A greycard export, and any run of the editor with flags, works on its own and leaves the window alone.

Filmstrip, grid and loupe

• The loupe shows one frame large, for editing. The filmstrip along the bottom holds the rest of the folder.
• The grid fills the window with thumbnails, for browsing and sorting a whole shoot.
• The lightbox lays the frames out large and as edited on a dark ground, for judging a set side by side. Press L. See the lightbox.

Library and Loupe at the top of the left pane switch between the grid and the loupe, and the one you are in is lit. In the grid, a double-click on a frame, E, Enter, or Esc also go to the loupe. (With several frames selected, the first Esc clears the selection.)

The loupe has two modes, Cull and Develop, first in the right panel's tab row (Cull, then Develop's tabs): Cull for rating a shoot fast, Develop for editing (see Culling mode). The loupe comes back in the mode you left it in, and greycard remembers it for the next session. The grid has no mode of its own: the rating, flag and label keys, and Move on, work there whichever mode the loupe is in.

G goes from the loupe to the grid, and from the grid back to the loupe in the mode you left it in; E goes from the grid to the loupe the same way. D goes straight to Develop, from the grid or the loupe. C goes from the grid to the loupe in Cull; in the loupe it switches between Cull and Develop.

In the grid:

• The arrow keys move the selection, and Home and End go to the first and last frame. A mouse's back and forward buttons go back to the folder you came from and forward again, as a browser's do.
• The scroll bar down the right edge, and the one under the filmstrip, show where you are in the folder; drag either, or click its track to page.
• Ctrl+wheel, or + and −, change the cell size. They step through six sizes, from 96 to 512 px; the header shows the current one, and greycard remembers it. To set any size between, or to stop the wheel resizing, see Settings.
• A color label tints the whole cell in the grid. In the filmstrip it shows as a thin colored line under the thumbnail.
• A frame greycard can't read says Unreadable.
• A version of a frame has a cell of its own right after the frame's, with its name on a tag at the top left. See Versions of a frame.

Drag the left pane's right edge or the right panel's left edge to set its width, and the filmstrip's top edge to set the size of its pictures; double-click an edge to put it back. The sizes are kept between sessions. F7 puts the left pane away, F6 the filmstrip, and F8 the right panel. Tab hides all of them, or over the grid, the left pane alone. F11 takes the window full screen and back, in any view; on a Mac the window's green button does.

Thumbnails show the edit

An edited frame shows its edit in the filmstrip, the grid, the cull view and compare, not the camera's JPEG. Reset a frame's edit and the camera's picture comes back. To reset several at once, select them, right-click one and choose Reset to Original: each edited frame goes back to its Original in one step, which its history can undo.

Some frames are edited without being opened: a sync, a preset or a paste over a selection, an edit joined from another machine through an archive, or a folder opened with its edits already on disk. Their pictures are made in the background, for the frames on screen and near them, and until then they show the camera's. Scroll and the frames you scroll to are made next. greycard holds this work back while you edit the frame on screen, so your own develop comes first. While pictures are being made, the status line says how many are left.

Edited and exported marks

Small marks sit in the top right corner of a thumbnail, in the grid and the filmstrip:

• a pencil on a frame whose edit is not the default;
• a picture with a down arrow on a frame that has been exported;
• a bookmark on a frame that is in a collection (see Collections);
• +JPEG on a raw with the camera's JPEG beside it (below).

A frame shows every mark it has. The exported mark stays after you undo past the export, or the export's row leaves the history. A version wears its own pencil and exported mark, and its own bookmark.

A raw and its camera JPEG

A camera set to RAW+JPEG writes two files for each press, such as IMG_0001.CR3 and IMG_0001.JPG. greycard lists them as one frame, the raw, marked +JPEG; under the frame's name the panel says "With the camera's JPEG, IMG_0001.JPG". The pair has one rating, flag, label and set of keywords, kept in the raw's .gcd. Moving rejects, Move back and deleting take the JPEG with its raw, and the delete sheet counts the JPEGs. An export writes the raw's develop.

Culling shows the camera's JPEG when it is at least as large as the preview inside the raw, and the status line says "the camera's JPEG beside the raw". A JPEG with no raw of its name beside it is a frame of its own.

To list the JPEGs as frames of their own, with their own ratings, turn on Treat a JPEG beside its raw as a separate frame under RAW+JPEG in Settings.

Roots: your library

A root is a folder you add to the library, such as your Pictures folder or a share on a NAS. greycard keeps an index of every frame under its roots, so it can list and filter them without reading each file again.

The roots are in the left pane while the grid is up, under ROOTS:

• All roots lists every frame in the library, with the total.
• Below it is a row for each root with its count. Click a row to see every frame under that root.
• Export queue, always last, shows the frames waiting in the export queue, with their count. See The queue in the grid.

To add a root, click + Add a root... at the foot of the section and choose a folder. When the open folder is in no root, + Add this folder adds it in one click. The Import sheet's Add in place does the same and opens the folder (see Adding a folder in place).

Right-click a root's row (Control+click on a Mac) for its menu. The first line is the root's full path.

• Rename... gives it a shorter name in greycard. The folder on disk is not renamed. Leave the name empty to go back to the folder's own.
• Use as an archive marks it as a backup copy of your shoots. See Archives and backup.
• Remove from library forgets the root. Its files stay where they are.

The folder tree

When you are looking at a root, or a folder inside one, the left pane shows its folders under FOLDERS, in the grid and the loupe alike. Each view remembers whether you folded the section, so it can stay open in the grid and folded in the loupe.

• Click a folder to open its frames. Click its triangle to fold or unfold it without opening it.
• The count beside a folder is its own frames when it is unfolded, and everything under it when it is folded.
• With subfolders off (the default) opens a folder's own frames only. Turn it on to open a folder with everything under it. The frame on screen stays open when it is still in the list. greycard remembers the setting.

A folder with no frames of its own opens empty, and the status line suggests With subfolders.

The left pane's lists, Folders, Collections, Presets, Snapshots, and History, share the pane's height. A list that has little to show gives its room to the others, and folding one does the same. Drag the gap between two open lists to move room from one to the other; the split is remembered. Double-click the gap to even the two.

Subfolder tiles

In the grid, the folders inside the open folder appear as tiles above the thumbnails, each with the number of frames under it. Click a tile to open that folder. Right-click it for Reveal in file manager. With With subfolders on, there are no tiles, since everything under the folder is already listed.

A shoot's rejects folder shows as a tile and in the tree like any other folder, so the frames you moved out while culling are one click away. See Culling.

Network and offline roots

A root on a network share

A local root is watched, so a frame added or changed there shows up right away. A share (NFS, SMB and the like) can't be watched, so greycard looks it over every 10 minutes instead. Change that under NETWORK FOLDERS, Rescan every, in Settings... (0 for never).

If a share stops answering, greycard sets it aside after about three seconds and carries on with your other roots. The status line says, for a root named Archive, "Archive isn't reachable; showing its last indexed frames".

After you update to 0.7, the first look over each folder reads every raw in it once more, to learn what kind of sensor made it. That takes a millisecond or two a file on your own drives, and a while of quiet reading in the background on a share. It happens once.

The loading bar

A view that takes a moment to read shows a bar with what it is doing, such as "Reading sidecars… 3,400 of 11,711". When it is held up by a slow share, it says "Waiting on" and names the root. You can keep working while it reads.

An offline root

When a root's drive is unplugged or its share is away, its row is dimmed and says "offline" in place of the count. You can still:

• open it and browse its folder tree, its grid and its thumbnails, an edited frame showing the last picture of its edit greycard made
• filter it and read the ratings, flags and labels it had
• cull it in the loupe and the compare view, from the local previews made while it was there (below)

Developing or exporting a frame needs the raw itself, so wait until the drive is back.

The filter

The filter narrows what the grid and the filmstrip show. It sits in the grid's header, and in the CULLING section while you cull. Press Ctrl+F or / to type in it.

Chips

• Stars: Any, 1+ up to 5. Click or more to switch to exactly, which shows only that rating.
• Flag: Pick, Reject and Unflagged.
• Label: the five colors and No label.

Each chip shows how many frames it would leave. Chips in one group add up (Red or Green); different groups narrow each other (Red and 3+). A chip that would leave nothing is dimmed.

Under them are chips read from the cameras' data: Camera, Lens, Style (the camera's picture style), ISO, Focal, Day and Keyword. They fill in once greycard has indexed the folder. Beside them is Kind, from the file's name: Raw, JPEG, PNG or TIFF, shown when the frames shown hold more than one. Keywords are added in the METADATA section (see Keywords and a title) or brought in with a Lightroom catalog or an XMP.

The count at the end of the row says how many frames are shown, for example "120 of 640". Clear shows the whole folder again. Save..., beside it, keeps the filter as a smart collection (see Collections).

When a rating, flag or label key makes the frame fall outside the filter, it leaves the view and the status line says why, such as "IMG_0001.CR3 rated 0 and hidden by the filter (1 star or more); Clear the filter to see it".

Typing

Words in the text field find frames whose file name or keywords contain them. Several words must all match.

You can also type tests, with no spaces inside them: camera:R6 iso>=3200 rating>=3.

The tests are:

• : means "contains" for words and "equals" for numbers.
• = is the exact value, != is anything else.
• <, <=, >, >= compare numbers and dates.

Put a value with a space in double quotes: lens:"RF 24-105". != leaves out frames that don't record the field at all.

A test greycard can't read, such as rating>=9, is searched for as a plain word, and the status line says what was wrong with it.

Esc in the field clears the text and gives the keys back to the frames. greycard remembers the filter when you quit and restores it next time.

Sort order

Sort, the arrows at the end of the filter's row, sets the order of the grid, the filmstrip, culling and the lightbox. The arrows point the way the order runs, and the grid's header says what by beside the frame count ("8 frames · by capture time"), as the CULLING section does beside its count. Rest the pointer on the arrows for the whole of it, as "Sort: Capture time, oldest first". The menu offers:

• Capture time, from each frame's own date in its EXIF, moved by its shift when a camera's clock was off;
• Name, the file's name;
• Rating;
• Date edited, when the frame's edit was last saved;
• Focus, how sharp the sharpest part of the frame's embedded preview is, from 0 to 1, the sharpest first; the index scores each frame just after it lists it, and a frame not scored yet goes last;

and under them which way up: Oldest first or Newest first (A to Z or Z to A for a name, Lowest first or Highest first for a rating or focus).

Each kind of view keeps its own order, and greycard remembers them when you quit:

• A folder is by name until you choose otherwise, which is the camera's numbering.
• All roots, a root, or a folder with its subfolders is by capture time, so the frames of two cameras from one day read in the order they were taken, wherever their folders are. A smart collection opens as one of these and uses the same order.
• A collection is in its own order (below), and its menu starts with Hand order to come back to it.

Frames that tie, such as a burst taken within one second, follow their names. A frame with no capture time goes last, either way up, and so does a frame with no edit when you sort by date edited. Date edited is the last time the frame's sidecar was saved, so a rating given to an edited frame counts too.

Changing the order keeps the frame you are on selected and scrolls to it. A closed stack sits where its top frame falls, and an open one keeps its frames together behind the top. A camera's JPEG beside its raw goes where its raw does, and a version right after its frame.

The order is read when the list is: a frame you rate stays where it is while you cull, and moves to its new place the next time the list is read, when you choose the order again or open the view again. A capture time shift is the exception: a list by capture time is read again as soon as the shift is saved, since putting the frames in their right places is what it is for.

Collections

A collection gathers frames from anywhere in your library, from any root and any folder, into one list in an order you choose: a portfolio, a set for a client, the frames for a print sale. The frames stay where they are; a collection only points at them.

The collections are in the left pane while the grid is up, under COLLECTIONS, below ROOTS and FOLDERS. Each row shows the collection's name and how many frames it holds. Click a row to open it; the grid, the filmstrip and the lightbox then show its frames.

Making one and filling it

• + New collection... at the foot of the section makes an empty one.
• Right-click a frame (or a selection) and choose Add to collection, then a collection, or New collection... to make one with those frames in it.
• B adds the selected frames to the collection that is open, or else to the last one you added to or made this session. When every selected frame is in it already, B takes them out. With no collection yet, it asks for a name for a new one.
• While a collection is open, the frame menu has Remove from collection. The frames themselves are not touched.

A name with slashes, such as Clients/2026/Cover, puts the collection in a set: the list sorts by set, and shows the set muted before the name.

Order

A collection opens in its own order, Hand order in the Sort menu. Drag a frame, or the selection, in the grid to move it; a bar marks where it will land.

Any other order from the Sort menu shows the frames that way instead, without changing the order you made, and greycard remembers it for that collection. While it is on, a drag does nothing. Choose Hand order to go back.

Right-click the collection's row for its menu:

• Rename...
• Capture order is a quick way to the Sort menu's capture time, oldest first. It is checked whenever the collection is in an order you chose, and takes it back to hand order. While the collection is open, its row names the order it is in.
• Delete... deletes the collection after asking. Its frames stay where they are.

Frames that move

A collection knows a frame by what is in the file, not only by where it is. Move a shoot to another drive, rename it, or let another program rewrite its metadata, and the frame stays in the collection.

A frame greycard can't find anywhere in the library is not shown, and the status line counts it when the collection opens, such as "Portfolio: 12 frames shown, 2 missing". It is kept, so it comes back when its shoot does. To let such frames go, right-click the open collection's row and choose Forget 2 missing frames. greycard looks again before it forgets anything, and keeps a frame on a drive that is offline or not answering, or one in a folder the library has not finished reading. The item is not offered while the library is being indexed.

Versions in a collection

A version of a frame can be in a collection on its own: B or Add to collection on a version's cell adds that version, and the bookmark shows on that cell alone. The original and its versions can sit in one collection side by side, each in its own place in the order.

A collection that holds a version can't be read by greycard 0.6 or earlier, which leaves it alone rather than change it.

Smart collections

A smart collection is a saved filter. Set up the grid's filter, press Save... beside Clear and give it a name. It covers what you were looking at: a root, a folder with the folders inside it, or every root, and the sheet says which before you save.

A smart collection shows in the list with a sparkles mark and no count. Click it to put its filter back on the bar and open the place it covers. Its row stays lit while the bar shows its filter, and goes dark when you change a chip. Its frames are whatever the filter finds at the time, so it fills itself as you rate and label.

Where collections are kept

Each collection is a small file in a collections folder beside the library index (see Settings).

Where your edits live

Your edits are saved beside each raw in a .gcd file, so IMG_0001.CR3 keeps its edit in IMG_0001.CR3.gcd. Ratings, flags, labels and keywords are in it too. To move a shoot to another folder or machine, copy the .gcd files along with the raws. Delete a .gcd file to start that frame's edit over. greycard never changes a raw.

A frame's versions live in the same .gcd (see Versions of a frame).

greycard 0.7 writes its .gcd files in a newer form, which 0.6 and earlier can't read, and 0.8 in a newer one again, which 0.7 can't read. An older version leaves such a frame's edit alone rather than write over it: it shows the camera's picture with the pencil, and its log says why. Once a version has saved a frame, open it with that version or a later one.

A hidden folder instead

If you would rather not see a .gcd beside every raw, open Settings... at the bottom of the left pane (or press Ctrl+,) and set Edits go to Hidden folder. Edits then go into a hidden .greycard folder inside the shoot's folder, which travels with the shoot the same way.

greycard reads a sidecar in either place. Changing the setting moves nothing by itself: each frame's sidecar moves the next time it is saved. To tidy the open frames at once, use Move the open frames' sidecars in the same sheet. It says how many are in the other place and moves them when you confirm.

XMP for other programs

To share ratings, labels and keywords with Lightroom or darktable, turn on Write XMP sidecars in Settings. greycard then also writes a standard .xmp beside each raw. An .xmp that is already there is read either way. Picks and rejects have no XMP field, so they stay in the .gcd.

Lightroom edits in XMP sidecars

When a raw has a Lightroom XMP beside it (IMG_0001.xmp) with develop settings in it and no edit of greycard's, the first time greycard opens or indexes the frame it brings the edit across as one step in its history, "Imported from Lightroom", just as a catalog import does. Lightroom's rating, label, keywords (with their full path), and title fill whatever greycard has left empty; one you set here stays, unless the XMP has changed since greycard last read it, when the XMP's wins as it always has. It writes the frame's .gcd then, so it happens once. A frame with an edit of greycard's is left alone, and an XMP whose settings are where Lightroom starts a frame brings nothing.

Lightroom Classic writes XMPs only when told to, so one beside a raw may be older than your catalog. Importing the catalog later replaces an edit brought from an XMP when you have not edited the frame since: the develop becomes the catalog's, and so does each rating, label, keyword list, or title that came from the XMP or is empty. One you set here stays. A frame you have edited is held back unless you force the import.

Profiles from RawTherapee

RawTherapee keeps each frame's edit in a .pp3 beside it. When you open a folder that holds them, a line under the folder's name says how many frames have one ("RawTherapee profiles found beside 24 frames"), counting the frames an import would change and would not hold back (below). It is offered once a folder: Not now puts it away for good, and so does importing any of the frames. Opening the sheet with Import... and canceling it leaves the offer for the next time you open the folder. Your answer is kept in greycard's settings, not in the folder. A run started with --no-sidecars offers nothing.

A profile named after the raw with its extension replaced (IMG_0001.pp3) belongs to the raw: the camera's JPEG beside it doesn't take it.

Import... opens a sheet with what the import would do, a few lines a frame: the profile and the RawTherapee version that wrote it, what comes across exactly (the stars, the color label, the trash mark as a reject, the lens profile's switches, the angle and turns), what comes across as a likeness (the exposure, the white balance, the crop, the manual distortion), and what has no place here, by RawTherapee's own name ("Local Contrast", "Exposure Curve"). The totals sit at the top. A folder of more than 200 profiles lists the first 200 frames and says how many more the totals count. The tone curves are never carried: they do the job greycard's base curve does.

A frame you have developed here is left alone, and so is one whose stars, label or flag set here the profile would change, so a cull you made in greycard is never wiped by RawTherapee's unrated profiles. When there are some, a switch appears, Write over the N frames developed or rated here already. With it on, the report says what a forced import would set, RawTherapee's neutral settings included for a developed frame, and what it replaces of your own culling ("5 stars to 0, the reject cleared"). Write writes the sidecars, one history step named "Imported from RawTherapee" a frame, which you can undo like any other. The frame on screen picks up what was written at once. A slider you moved just before pressing Write is saved first, so that frame counts as developed here.

The import doesn't touch the hand-set chromatic aberration of a frame unless the profile sets one: a lens profile's correction and the amounts set by hand are separate.

The command line does the same: greycard rawtherapee FOLDER prints the report, and --write writes it (--force for the frames developed or rated here).

A raw moved by hand

Under a library root, a raw you move or rename in your file manager keeps its edit, rating and flag: greycard recognizes the file and moves its .gcd along with it. An .xmp is not moved; move it yourself.

Thumbnails and local previews

greycard keeps the thumbnails it makes on disk, so a folder you open again, move or rename fills in at once. Frames under a root also get a local preview, a picture 2048 px on its long side, made in the background while the drive is there: for the frames you scroll past in the grid or the strip, and, while you cull in the Cull view or the lightbox, for the frames around the one you are on. It lets you cull an offline drive, and a shoot on a NAS without reading each raw over the network. An edited frame's pictures of its edit are kept in the same cache, beside the camera's.

Both have a size limit under THUMBNAILS in Settings:

When the cache is full, the ones used longest ago go first. Clear empties it.

The cache is under ~/.cache/greycard/thumbs on Linux, ~/Library/Caches on a Mac and %LOCALAPPDATA% on Windows.