Presets, history and several frames

The navigator

NAVIGATOR shows the whole frame. When you are zoomed in, a rectangle marks the part in view. Click or drag in it to move the view. The section's heading shows the zoom.

Presets

A preset is a named part of an edit: some sections of it, such as Light and Grain, or single sliders of a section, such as Dehaze, with your settings. Applying one replaces those sections and sliders of the frame's edit and leaves the rest alone.

Applying a preset

Click a preset's name in PRESETS. It lands as one step in the history, so Ctrl+Z takes it back whole. With several frames selected, it lands on each of them (see Several frames at once).

greycard comes with three film presets:

They are built from the ordinary sliders, so you can see and change everything they set.

Saving your own

1. Edit a frame until you like it.
2. Press Save... under the list.
3. Give the preset a name.
4. Check what it should carry. The sections are listed in the Develop tab's order, each a heading with its parts under it (Detail: Texture, Clarity, Structure, and Dehaze), each part with its own check. The heading's check takes or leaves the whole section, and shows a dash when only some of it is checked. They start checked where your edit differs from the defaults, so the preset holds what you did and nothing else. Check all and Uncheck all set every check at once.
5. Press Save.

Saving under a name that is already in the list replaces that preset.

The sheet works from the keyboard too: Tab moves from check to check, Space or Return turns the one with the focus ring, and Esc closes the sheet without saving.

The parts are each section's sliders, or the few settings that make one control: a curve's channel, one band of the color mixer, one grading wheel. White balance, Display curve, Color tint, Look, Noise, Sharpen, Demosaic, and Camera profile have no parts; each goes whole.

Some sections are never checked for you, because they belong to one picture more than to a look: White balance, Lens, Demosaic, Camera profile, and Masks. Check them yourself if you want them. Under Masks each of the frame's masks is listed by name, so a preset can carry one mask alone, and Replace masks or Add to masks says whether the preset's masks take the place of a frame's own or join them. A mask a frame already has is not added twice.

A slider carried alone leaves the rest of its section, and the section's switch, as the frame has them. A preset never carries the crop, the straighten, or the retouch. Display curve is a section of its own, not part of Light, so a Light preset leaves each frame's curve as it is.

A preset's Noise carries the noise reduction but not the learned denoiser, which each frame sets from its own ISO.

A preset with a camera profile

A camera profile is made for one camera. A preset that names one lays it only on frames from that camera, the frame on screen included. The rest of the preset still applies, and the status line names the frames the profile was left off. If you want the profile anyway, pick it in CAMERA PROFILE, which warns "Made for X, not Y." but lets you.

A preset with a look

A preset can carry the Look section. It names the look, so the look's file has to be on the machine where you use the preset.

Importing presets, including Lightroom's

Press Import... and choose one file or several:

• a greycard preset (.gcp), from another machine or another user;
• a Lightroom or Camera Raw preset (.xmp).

A Lightroom preset comes across as a starting point, not an exact match, because Lightroom's sliders work on a different tone pipeline. These come across: exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, white balance, the tone curves (point and parametric), the HSL mixer, vibrance and saturation, black and white with its mix, split toning and color grading, texture, clarity and dehaze, sharpening (on or off only), luminance noise reduction, the post-crop vignette, grain and the lens profile switch.

These do not: color noise reduction, defringe, the global color grade, calibration, a camera profile that is not Adobe's, and masks. Once the import is done, greycard names any of them the file set, so you can do them by hand: on the status line for one short preset, or on a small sheet when you chose several or the list is long.

A file is left out, and the sheet says why, when it is not a preset, when it cannot be read, or when the list already has a preset of that name. To bring in a new copy of a preset you have, remove the old one first.

A Lightroom preset keeps its Lightroom group: it goes into a group of that name in PRESETS. One without a group stays out of any group. From the command line, greycard presets --import also takes a folder: its presets go into a group of the folder's name, and the presets in each folder inside it into a group of that folder's name.

Favorites and groups

Rest the pointer on a preset and a star shows at the end of its row. Click it to make the preset a favorite: the star stays filled, and the preset is listed under Favorites at the top of PRESETS as well as in its own place. Click the star again to take it off. Favorites are remembered from one session to the next.

Presets can be sorted into groups, each a section of the list under its name. The presets in no group come first, after the favorites, with no heading. Click a heading to fold its section away or open it again; Favorites folds too.

Right-click a preset for:

• Add to favorites or Remove from favorites, as the star does.
• Move to group: one of the groups, or New group..., which asks for the new group's name.
• Remove from group, which puts it back among the presets in no group.

Right-click a group's heading and choose Rename group... to give it another name. A group that has no presets left in it goes away.

A preset's name is still its own across all the groups: saving or importing under a name the list has finds that preset wherever it is. Applying a preset by name, from the command line or an import's Preset, finds it in whichever group holds it.

Each group is a folder inside the presets folder (below), so you can also make, rename, or fill one in your file manager. A preset moved from one group to another keeps its star; one moved there by hand, outside greycard, loses it.

Removing a preset

Click the bin at the end of its row, then Remove. To get back a film preset you removed, open Settings... and press Restore under PRESETS. It puts back only the missing built-in presets and leaves yours alone.

Presets are kept as .gcp files in a greycard/presets folder under your configuration folder (~/.config on Linux, ~/Library/Application Support on a Mac, %APPDATA% on Windows). Copy that folder to take them to another machine.

A preset that carries single sliders, or whose masks are added to a frame's, needs greycard 0.6 or later. An older version reads it as its whole sections only: it leaves out the single sliders, and its masks replace a frame's own instead of joining them.

Snapshots

A snapshot keeps the whole edit of a frame under a name, so you can try something else and come back.

• Take keeps the current edit as "Snapshot 1", "Snapshot 2" and so on, and opens the name for typing. Type a name and press Enter, or click anywhere else to keep what you typed. Esc keeps the old name. While you type, moving the pointer over the picture doesn't take the keys away from the name.
• Hover over a snapshot to see it in the picture without changing anything.
• Each row has three icons: the arrow restores the snapshot, the pencil renames it, and the bin removes it. Rest the pointer on one and the status line says what a click does.
• Restoring is a new step in the history, named "Snapshot: " and the name, so Ctrl+Z undoes it.
• A click on the row restores it too, after a moment's pause, so that a double-click can rename it without restoring it first.

Snapshots are kept in the frame's .gcd with its edit, and they are never dropped as the history grows.

History

HISTORY lists every step of the frame's edit, newest at the top. The bottom row, "Original", is the edit the frame started with. On a version, the section's head names the version, and the history is that version's own.

Each step is named for what it did:

A step in a mask starts with the mask's name, such as "Lamp: White balance on".

• Click a row to go back to that state. The steps after it stay, muted, until you change something, as with undo. Click a muted row to go forward to it again.
• Hover over a row to see that state in the picture without changing anything.
• Ctrl+Z undoes a step, Ctrl+Shift+Z or Ctrl+Y redoes it.
• \ (backslash) shows the frame as it was, its Original, under the edit's crop and at the same zoom, and the status line says "Original". Press it again, or press any other key or change anything, to see the edit.
• Reset to Original, in the section's head while the edit is not the Original, puts the edit back there as one step, "Reset to Original", which Ctrl+Z takes back. It is there with the section folded too.

The history keeps the last 50 steps, plus "Original". Use a snapshot for a state you want to keep for good.

Exports in the history

Each export adds a row on the state it was made from, in italics with an export mark: the file name, the export preset if you used one, and the time ("IMG_0001.jpg · Web 14:32"). Hover over it for the full path and date. Click it to go back to the edit that was sent out. An export row goes away with its state if that state leaves the history. The exported mark on the frame's thumbnail stays (see the library).

Versions of a frame

A version is a second edit of the same raw, kept beside the first: a warm one and a cool one, a color one and a black and white, a wide crop and a tight one. Where a snapshot is a state you can go back to inside one edit, a version is a picture of its own. It has its own cell in the filmstrip and the grid, its own thumbnail, its own history and snapshots, and its own export. The raw is not copied; the versions live in the frame's .gcd.

Making one

Right-click a frame and choose New version, or press Ctrl+' (⌘' on a Mac). The new version starts as a copy of the edit you were on, opens at once, and asks for a name with "Version 2" filled in: type a name and press Enter, or press Esc to keep "Version 2". Its history starts with one row, "From the original" (or "From" the version it was copied from).

New version from the original starts from greycard's defaults instead, for an edit that has nothing to do with the first.

The version's cell sits right after the frame's, with its name on a tag at the top left. In the grid, the name under the cell is the version's.

What a version shares

Everything in the edit is the version's own: the crop, the white balance, every slider, every mask. The rating, the flag, the label, the keywords and the quarter turn belong to the file, so the frame and all its versions share them. Choose between versions by deleting the ones you don't want, or by swapping the one you like into the frame's own place, not by rating them.

The version's menu

Right-click a version's cell for:

• Rename version...
• Swap with the original trades the two edits whole, each with its history and snapshots. The version keeps its name, and now holds what the frame held.
• Delete version... asks first ("Delete the version Warm of IMG_0001.CR3?"), then removes that version alone. It can't be undone. Delete over a selection of versions does the same; over a frame, it deletes the file and its versions with it.
• Compare versions puts the frame and its versions side by side in culling (see Comparing versions).

Versions and everything else

• A paste, a sync or a preset acts on the version you chose, and leaves the frame's own edit alone.
• An export of a version is named with the version's name, as IMG_0001-Warm.jpg, and is recorded in that version's history. See Exporting.
• A version can be put in a collection on its own (see Collections).
• has:versions in the filter finds the frames that have one.

Several frames at once

Selecting frames

Selected frames are highlighted in the filmstrip and the grid. The frame on screen has the brighter outline.

What acts on the selection

• ratings, flags, labels and the [ ] turns;
• a preset click, one history step on each frame;
• Sync..., copy and paste settings;
• Export..., which writes every selected frame (see Export);
• the right-click menu.

Sync settings

Sync copies the open frame's edit onto the other selected frames.

1. Edit one frame.
2. Ctrl+click or Shift+click the others.
3. Press Sync 4 frames to this one... at the top of the develop panel (it says how many), Sync... under PRESETS, or Ctrl+Shift+S.
4. Check the sections to copy, and press Apply.

A middle click on the Sync button at the top of the develop panel syncs straight away, without the sheet, on the sections your last sync or paste took (every section but Masks before there was one).

Every section starts checked except Masks, because masks are drawn around one picture's subject. The sheet lists what a preset's does: a heading a section, its parts under it, the open frame's masks by name, Check all and Uncheck all, and the same keys. Uncheck a slider and only the rest of its section goes; check a single mask and only that mask goes. Replace masks (the default) takes each frame's own masks away; Add to masks keeps them and puts the copied ones after. A Subject, Background, Sky or People mask carries what it asks for and is made again for each frame, from that frame's own picture.

• The crop, the straighten and the retouch are never copied.
• A camera profile goes only to frames from the same camera. The status line names any frame it skipped.
• Noise brings the learned denoiser and its blends along, unlike a preset.
• Each frame gets one history step, "Sync from" the open frame, so Ctrl+Z on that frame undoes it.

While the sheet is open, the arrow keys and undo do nothing, so the frames it names are the frames it syncs.

Set or shift

Temperature, Tint and Exposure each have Set and Shift at the top of the sheet:

• Set (the default) gives every frame the open frame's value, as above.
• Shift moves each frame from its own value by the open frame's difference from where it started: Temperature and Tint from its as-shot white balance, Exposure from 0 EV. This is Lightroom's Quick Develop: if you warmed the open frame from as shot, every frame gets as much warmer from where it was, rather than all taking the open frame's value.

Temperature shifts by the same step in mired (a million over the kelvin), which is how far a change looks alike at any light. A step is fewer kelvin on a warm frame than on a cool one: the open frame warmed 300 K from 4800 K moves a frame at 3000 K about 115 K and one at 6500 K about 560 K. The sheet says the step and what it comes to at a few lights.

A frame at As shot that is shifted becomes a custom white balance at its own as-shot light, moved. If the open frame is at As shot, it has moved nowhere, so with either of Temperature and Tint on Shift every frame's white balance stays as it is. If the open frame isn't a raw, or its raw doesn't record its white balance, Temperature and Tint are set instead, and the sheet says so. The choices are greyed while their section is unchecked, and greycard remembers them. A paste has no shift: it sets.

Copy and paste settings

• Ctrl+C copies the open frame's whole edit.
• Ctrl+V opens the same sheet, titled Paste settings from the copied frame, over the selected frames. Check what to paste and press Paste.

The checks start as your last sync or paste left them, and masks checked by name check the copied frame's masks of the same name. A paste follows the sync's rules: crop, straighten and retouch stay each frame's own, and each frame gets one step, "Paste from" the frame you copied. The frame you copied from is left as it is.

The copy stays inside greycard until you quit. It does not use the system clipboard, so Ctrl+C in a text field still copies text.

The right-click menu

Right-click a frame in the filmstrip, the grid or the picture for a menu. On a Mac, Control+click does the same.

• Copy settings of the frame you right-clicked
• Paste settings from the copied frame onto the selected frames (greyed until you have copied something)
• Sync 4 frames to the frame on screen, with more than one frame selected
• Reset to Original, every selected frame's edit back to the Original, one step on each (see History)
• New version and New version from the original, and on a version Rename version..., Swap with the original and Delete version...; Compare versions on a frame that has versions (see Versions of a frame)
• Lightbox, or Leave lightbox (see the lightbox)
• Rating, Pick, Reject, Unflag, Label
• Add to collection, and Remove from the collection that is open (see Collections)
• Reveal in file manager (on Linux it opens the folder without selecting the file)
• Export..., or Export N frames... over a selection
• Move back to a folder, for frames in a rejects folder (see Culling)
• Back up to or Bring back to, for library roots with an archive (see Archives)

On a selected frame, the menu acts on the whole selection. On a frame that is not selected, that frame is opened first and the menu acts on it alone.