Culling Photos

RawCull helps you review a temporary photo catalog, mark the frames you want to keep, and copy only selected RAW files to a final folder.

RawCull does not delete images from the source catalog.

Basic Workflow

1. Copy photos from your camera card to a temporary folder.
2. Open that folder in RawCull.
3. Wait for scanning and thumbnail generation to finish.
4. Review images in the grid, list, or zoom view.
5. Mark rejects, keepers, and final star ratings.
6. Copy rated images to your final editing folder.

Ratings and marks are saved automatically. Reopen the same folder later to continue where you stopped.

Pick, Reject, and Rate

RawCull supports a fast two-pass workflow:

Use p and x for a quick first pass. Then filter to keepers and assign final ratings from 2 to 5.

Only images rated 2 or higher are copied to the final folder. Keepers without a star rating and rejected images stay in the temporary catalog.

Grid and Zoom

The grid is the fastest way to review many images. Double-click a thumbnail to open zoom view. You can keep rating with the keyboard while zoomed, and RawCull advances to the next image automatically after a rating key.

Zoom view can use either generated thumbnails or extracted JPG previews, depending on your thumbnail settings.

Filters

The rating filter row lets you show only rejected images, keepers, or images with a selected star rating. Filtering is only a view option; it does not change saved ratings.

Assisted Culling

Run Sharpness Scoring to sort sharper images first. After scoring, you can apply a threshold to mark likely keepers and rejects, then review the result manually.

Use Similarity to find near-duplicates and analyze bursts. A practical workflow is to score sharpness first, group bursts, then review the best candidates from each group.

Memory Tip

Large catalogs can use several gigabytes of memory. If the UI slows down, reduce cache sizes in Settings or turn off extra thumbnail badges while browsing.