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Cull and organise a shoot

Getting from a folder of hundreds of frames down to your keepers, fast — flags, ratings, colour labels, and the views and shortcuts that make it quick. The workflow deliberately echoes Lightroom Classic, so your muscle memory carries over.

The short version

Open the first frame in the Loupe (E), turn on Photo ▸ Auto Advance, then walk the shoot pressing P to keep and X to reject. Filter to your picks, rate the best with 15, then delete the rejects with ⌘⌫.

Flags: pick and reject

Flags are the fastest first pass — a binary keep-or-bin decision per frame. In the grid, filmstrip or Loupe:

  • Pflag as picked (a keeper).
  • Xflag as rejected (a bin candidate).
  • Uunflag, clearing either state.

A picked cell gets a green wash; a rejected cell a red one. Because keeping and rejecting are separate from your colour labels, tagging a photo doesn't disturb its flag — the two live on different parts of the cell.

Star ratings and colour labels

Once the obvious rejects are gone, use stars to rank what's left and colour labels to sort by purpose (client / personal / to-edit, however you work).

  • 15 — set a star rating. [ and ] nudge the rating of the selection down or up by one.
  • 6 red, 7 yellow, 8 green, 9 blue, 0 grey — set a colour label. Press the same key again on a labelled photo to clear it.

All of these apply to the whole selection at once, so you can rate a run of frames in one keystroke. They're also in the Photo menu if you'd rather click. To flag, rate or label the whole set as you review, see Auto Advance below.

Loupe, Compare and Survey

The grid is for the broad pass; these larger views are for the close calls.

  • Loupe (E, or Spacebar) — one photo filling the canvas. Flag, rate and label from here just as in the grid; the filmstrip along the bottom moves you between frames.
  • Compare (C, with two or more selected) — two frames side by side for the "which of these two" decision.
  • Survey (N, with two or more selected) — several frames laid out together, to whittle a group down.

Return to the grid with G.

Auto Advance

With Photo ▸ Auto Advance on, flagging, rating or labelling a photo automatically moves you to the next one — so a full cull becomes a rhythm of single keystrokes without ever reaching for an arrow key. It's a persisted toggle; engaging the physical Caps Lock key turns it on too, matching Lightroom Classic's behaviour.

Quick Collection

Press B to add the selection to the Quick Collection — a scratch tray in the sidebar for gathering photos across folders without committing to a permanent collection yet. It's ideal for pulling a shortlist together during a cull. See File ▸ Quick Collection for saving or clearing it.

Assisted Culling

Library ▸ Assisted Culling… groups frames shot close together into bursts and scores each on classical sharpness, surfacing the sharpest shot of each burst and flagging soft or blinked frames for you to confirm. It's a review aid, not an automatic decision — accepting a burst's suggestion applies the flags, and nothing is changed until you do. Closing the sheet cancels the scan; it runs entirely on your Mac and adds nothing to the catalogue.

Stacks

Group a burst or a set of bracketed frames into a single collapsible stack so the grid shows one cell instead of ten.

  • ⌘G — group the selection into a stack; ⇧⌘G — unstack.
  • Photo ▸ Stacking ▸ Auto-Stack by Capture Time… groups automatically by how close together frames were shot.

The top frame is the stack's "pick" — what you see when it's collapsed. See Photo ▸ Stacking for the full set of stack commands.

Sweep: apply attributes by dragging

Metadata ▸ Sweep loads one or more attributes onto a "brush", then lets you drag across grid cells to apply them all in one stroke — a faster way to tag a run of photos than selecting and pressing a key. Sweep can carry a rating, a flag, a colour label, keywords, a rotation, and metadata or develop presets at once, so a single drag can, say, pick a photo, give it three stars and a green label together. Hold while dragging to clear those attributes instead.

Note

Sweep's develop-preset payload is an editing action, so it needs a licence to apply; ratings, flags, labels and keywords are always available.

Delete the rejects

When you're done, ⌘⌫ (or Photo ▸ Delete Rejected Photos…) clears out everything you flagged as rejected. Lumidex Studio asks first whether to delete the rejects in this folder / view or across all photographs — each option labelled with its count — so you can reject frames in one folder, move on, and still sweep them all up later.

Note

This removes the photos from your catalogue. You'll be asked whether to also move the original files to the Trash, or leave them on disk — your originals are never deleted without that explicit confirmation.