Working in Choose

Choose helps you review a shoot through four phases, with keyboard controls for keeping, rejecting and rating photographs.

Press C to open Choose. Use , and . to move between phases. On iPhone and iPad, the same phases and views use touch controls. In Choose’s grid, a first tap picks a photograph, marked by the selection brackets, and a second tap opens it; Keep and Reject then move on to the next photograph, so a sweep can run in the grid. Double-tap a photograph to mark it Keep, or to clear a Keep or Reject to Not set; only that photograph changes, and the change can be undone. Keep gives a medium haptic on supported devices and clearing gives a light selection tick. A second tap on the chosen photograph might begin a double tap, so that photograph opens a moment after the tap; every other tap in the grid acts at once. The verdicts are coloured discs, filled once in force. When Duo is closed, undo, the phase and its controls stand on the rail down the right edge, where Rate and Inspect draw the five stars as one meter filled from the bottom: tap a star, or slide along it and lift on the rating. Opening or folding a Duo leaves a comparison as it is; see Folding the device. In Choose and Browse, ⌘← or ⌘↑ selects the first photograph in the current list; ⌘→ or ⌘↓ selects the last. These jumps follow the current filter, sort order and folded sets, and work even when nothing is selected. In text fields, Command-arrow keys retain their normal text-navigation behavior.

1. Sweep shows undecided photographs. Press P to keep, X or ⌫ to reject, and U to clear a verdict. On a Mac with a US keyboard, \ and ] do the same. A judged photograph leaves the phase, so the next one is under your hand, and it flies to the phase now holding it. A rating given here moves on to the next photograph. This also applies when rating the single selected photograph through the info panel. Rating one photo in a multi-photo comparison preserves the comparison’s selection.
2. Rate shows kept, unrated photographs. Press 1–5 to rate or 0 to clear a rating. A rated photograph leaves the phase, so the next one is under your hand.
3. Inspect shows kept photographs at or above the selected rating threshold. Set it from 1 to 5 in the Inspect segment; the default is 3.
4. Cleanup shows rejected photographs. Press P to keep one, or use the delete button at the bottom of the rail to remove rejects after confirmation.

Sets. A set draws as a strip while two or more of its members are still in the phase. Judging a member takes it out, so the strip shrinks as you work through it, and a set down to one member in view draws as a single photograph. Every phase shows only the photographs matching its filter, so Cleanup never includes kept members beside rejected ones.

The task card. Choose’s left rail is a card for the phase you are in. It says what the pass is for, shows its actions with their keys, counts how many photographs you have worked through and how long the rest will take, and offers the next phase: Next in Sweep and Rate, Develop these (D) in Inspect. In Rate and Inspect each star shows the meaning you gave it in Settings, and a line under the stars says that 0 clears the rating. Inspect adds a legend of its keys: space zooms to 100%, K toggles focus peaking and ⌘3 opens Compare. Its rating threshold stays in the phase bar. Use the left-sidebar button with the other panel controls at the bottom right to narrow the card to a 64 pt rail or widen it again. Frames remembers which you chose. On iPhone the phase’s job and a progress line sit under the phase menu while the grid is showing. On iPad the phase’s sentence and its progress sit in the bar under the photographs when the row is wide enough to hold them.

When a pile empties. The stage shows what you did, such as Swept. 12 kept · 5 rejected, and a button for the next phase. Frames never moves you on by itself. ⌘Z brings the last photograph back, and on iPhone and iPad Undo does the same. A phase that is empty when you arrive says which phase feeds it and offers to take you there.

How far you have got. An inset line inside the active phase’s segment shows how much of that pile has gone, and the card shows the same progress in words. It stays within that segment even at 100%. Counts reserve space for transfers between piles, so crossing a digit boundary does not shift the control during a pass. A larger collection or import can increase that reserved space. Counts pulse when they change. Progress switches to the new pile when you change phases. Reduce Motion suppresses the pulses, photo flights and progress animation. Rapid verdicts start the next photo flight immediately while the previous photo briefly fades from its current position. Once you have judged enough for the pace to mean anything, the status bar says roughly how long the rest of the phase will take.

Views. Use ⌘1 for Grid, ⌘2 for Loupe or ⌘3 for up to six photographs in Compare. Switching views preserves the selection. A selected photograph hidden by one phase can reappear when another phase includes it. Browse and Choose remember their views separately.

Pausing on a photograph in Loupe can fetch its original. Moving quickly past it does not. Compare’s download controls are described in its topic.

Shortcuts. Rating and verdict shortcuts work in every phase, even when their buttons are absent from the rail. For example, 3 rates in Sweep and P keeps in Cleanup.

Deletion. No key deletes a photograph. ⌫ rejects without changing the file. Only Cleanup’s delete button removes photographs, after confirmation.

See The rail, Grid, Loupe, Looking closely, Compare, Deleting, in Cleanup only.