The Library window
Library is where you browse, cull and organise. If you're coming from Lightroom Classic it will feel familiar — the layout deliberately echoes it. Here's each region and what it's for.
The module bar
Along the top is the module bar: Library, Capture, Develop, Grading and Print. Every module shares the same Explorer sidebar but swaps the main area for its own tools. Click a module name to switch, or use the shortcuts on the Window menu.
The Explorer sidebar
Down the left is the Explorer — your way into the catalogue. It has two main sections:
- Catalogue — live counts you can click: Total Images, the Quick Collection (a scratch set; press B on a photo to add it), and Previous Import (the set of photos from your last import).
- Folders — the folder tree, built from where your photos actually live on disk. A network volume such as a NAS appears here with a network icon and expands like any folder.
Collections, smart collections, keywords and — once you've named some — people also live in the sidebar. Selecting any of them loads that set into the grid. (⌘[) and (⌘]) walk your history of visited locations, like a browser. At the foot are the Import… and Export… buttons.
The Filter Bar
Above the grid, the Filter Bar narrows what's shown by flag, rating and colour label, and holds the search field. Search matches filenames and paths and your keywords and AI tags; wrap a query in "quotes" for an exact match. Turn filtering on and off from (⌘L). Full detail is on the Library menu page.
The Photo Grid
The grid is the heart of Library. Each cell shows the thumbnail with its sequence number, filename, dimensions and format, plus a rating row. Two independent visual channels tell you a photo's state at a glance:
- The cell background shows your cull decision — a green wash for a pick, red for a reject.
- The border shows the colour label (a selection outline always wins over it).
Cull fast with the keyboard: P pick, X reject, U unflag, 1–5 rating. Drag the thumbnail size slider in the bottom toolbar to make cells bigger or smaller. You can also Sweep — load a rating, flag, colour or keyword and drag across cells to apply it to all of them (Metadata → Sweep).
Two walkthroughs go deeper than this tour: Cull and organise a shoot for picking your keepers fast, and Find any photo for keyword, AI-tag and meaning-based search.
The Loupe (Detail view)
Press Space or E to open the selected photo full-window in the Loupe. Click to zoom to 100% and drag to pan; press Space again or G to go back to the grid. Turn on to see where the camera focused, and open (⌘J) to choose what information overlays the image.
There's also a Compare view (C) for judging two frames side by side — handy when picking between near-identical shots.
The Filmstrip
The filmstrip is the horizontal ribbon of thumbnails along the bottom, letting you move through the current set without leaving the Loupe or Develop. Toggle it with the ` (backtick) key. Its cells carry the same sequence number, pick/reject and bookmark overlays as the grid, and its toolbar has next/previous controls and a photo counter.
The Metadata panel
Open the info panel with to inspect the selected photo. It's grouped into File (dimensions, format, capture date/time), Camera (body, lens, focal length, ISO, aperture, shutter), Location (GPS, shown only when present) and Metadata (rating, flag, colour label). Shutter speed is shown the way you'd read it on the camera — 1/250s rather than a decimal.
Grid, Loupe and Compare at a glance
| G | Grid — the thumbnail overview |
| E / Space | Loupe — one photo, full window |
| C | Compare — two photos side by side |
| ` | Show / hide the filmstrip |
| L | Lights Out: cycles Dim, Out and back On, blacking out everything except the photos |
| D | Jump into the Develop module |
Every key here is remappable in . For the full list, with a map of the keyboard, see Keyboard shortcuts.