Getting around in Photo Archive

Before you start: what Photo Archive is

Your photos are already organized in folders. Photo Archive works with that — it opens a folder and shows you what's inside, right now, with no import step and nothing copied into a library. Rate, flag, and keyword your photos; everything you do is written to small Adobe-compatible .xmp sidecar files next to the originals.

It's the lightweight member of the suite: a browser and a rater, not a RAW developer and not a full catalog with saved collections and rule-based smart albums. When you want to develop a photo, hand it to Photo Developer — it's one keystroke (see step 9). Your originals are never modified.

The walkthrough

1. Open a folder

Press ⌘O, or drag a folder onto the window. Photo Archive reads RAW (including Olympus .ori), JPEG, TIFF, HEIC, and PNG, and it browses MOV, MP4, and M4V video alongside your stills. If your photos already have .xmp sidecars — from a previous session or from Lightroom — their ratings, picks, and keywords load with them.

To include everything in subfolders, toggle Include Subfolders in the toolbar or with ⌘⇧S. Very large recursive scans (over ~3,000 photos) ask first, so you don't accidentally pull in your whole drive.

2. Browse the grid

Thumbnails load progressively, and a folder you've visited before comes back nearly instantly from cache. RAW and JPEG versions of the same shot are grouped — press J to collapse or expand those stem groups. Press G to cycle how much each thumbnail shows (full badges → minimal → none). Video clips sit in the same grid as your stills, with a poster thumbnail and duration, and take the same rating, pick, keyword, sort, and filter treatment.

3. Rate and flag

The same number keys you know, all multi-select aware:

• 1–5 — star rating; 0 removes it
• P — pick; U — unflag; X — reject

Select several photos first (Shift-click for a range, ⌘-click to add, ⌘A for all) and one keypress applies to the whole selection. ⌘Z undoes; ⌘⇧Z redoes.

4. Keyword and stamp rights

Open the inspector with ⌘I. There you can add and remove keywords, and fill in copyright and creator fields. For several photos at once, use ⌘⇧K (batch keywords, with autocomplete) and ⌘⇧R (batch copyright/creator). If you've set defaults in Settings, ⌘⇧D stamps them onto the selection in one move.

5. Filter down and find

The filter bar narrows the grid by rating, pick status, file type, keyword, date range, rights, and whether a sidecar exists. A second row filters by the technical EXIF — camera, lens, focal length, aperture, shutter speed, ISO. The ⚡ bolt menu has one-click presets (All Picks, All Rejects, Unrated, No Copyright, No Sidecar). ⌘F focuses search (filename, camera, keywords); ⌘⇧X clears every filter at once.

6. Look closely — the loupe

Press Space or E (or double-click a thumbnail) to open the full-screen loupe. Z toggles fit ↔ 100% (or double-click the photo); pinch and drag work on a trackpad. I cycles the info overlay, T toggles the filmstrip along the bottom, and the arrow keys move between photos. Esc or G returns you to the grid.

Open a video in the loupe and Space plays or pauses it; ⇧← / ⇧→ skip back and forward 10 seconds, with native transport controls and no hand-off to another app. To cull as you go, ⌘⌫ sends the photo you're viewing to the Trash and steps straight to the next one — turn on Settings → Behavior → “Skip delete confirmation” for one-key culling. Deletes always go to the Trash, and ⌘Z undoes.

7. Export

Press ⌘E to export your selection as JPEG, with quality presets (Web / Print / Archive), resize-by-longest-edge, and filename patterns. The Metadata picker decides what travels with each file:

• All — full XMP and EXIF (your archival default)
• Rights Only — keeps copyright and camera EXIF, strips GPS and keywords (for client delivery)
• None — no metadata at all (for anonymous web sharing)

8. Organize in place

Photo Archive tidies your real folders — no import layer in between. Drag photos onto a folder in the sidebar to move them (hold ⌥ to copy), or use Move to…, Copy to…, and Move to Trash. The whole shot travels together: a RAW, its JPEG, and its .xmp sidecar move as one, never orphaned. A name clash asks Keep Both / Replace / Skip; deletes go to the Trash and are undoable several steps deep. You can also create, rename, and reorganize folders straight from the sidebar.

9. Hand off to the suite

With photos selected, ⌘↩ opens them in Photo Developer, ⌘⇧↩ in Sandwich, ⌘⌥↩ in Refract (when installed). Because everything is XMP sidecars, your ratings and keywords are already there when they arrive. ⌘⇧F reveals a photo in Finder.

Three things that will make you happier on day one

Your metadata lives next to your photos. Ratings, keywords, and rights are written to .xmp sidecars in the same folder as each file. Delete the app and they stay; move the folder to another drive and they follow. Nothing is trapped in a database.

Nothing you do touches the originals. Rating, keywording, filtering — none of it modifies your photo files. Even Export creates new JPEGs; your originals are left exactly as they were.

Revisiting is fast. Photo Archive caches the EXIF it reads, so the second time you open a folder it fills in almost immediately.

If you only remember one thing

XMP is the contract. Everything you do here is written as plain, Adobe-compatible sidecars that Lightroom, Capture One, Photo Developer, and other XMP-aware tools can read — so your work is portable and survives even if you switch apps. How sidecars keep your work portable →

Quick reference: the shortcuts from this guide