Support
Photo Culler · What's new

What's new in Photo Culler

Every release in plain language — what changed, when it shipped, and why it matters. Organized by Mac App Store version, newest first.

The short version. This is the photographer-facing changelog — what you'd actually notice, not the engineering detail. Your picks, ratings, and labels are written to plain-text .xmp sidecars next to your photos, so updates only ever change how the app works, never your existing decisions. Photo Culler is a one-time purchase on the Mac App Store; every release below was a free update.

1.1.5 May 24, 2026

A faster loupe

  • The loupe feels noticeably quicker on arrow navigation: the surrounding photos load in the background while you're looking at the current one, so most arrow taps land instantly.
  • No more flash to black between photos — the previous frame stays up until the next is ready, and a soft preview bridges the wait on slower decodes.
  • DNG files now look sharp at fit-to-screen. Some DNGs (Adobe DNG Converter "medium," older iPhone ProRAW, some phone exports) were being shown from a tiny embedded preview; the decode now falls back to the full sensor data when the preview is too small.
  • Stepping backward through photos you just viewed is reliably fast — recently-seen frames stay warm in memory.
1.1.4 May 15, 2026

Sort the grid

  • Sort by filename, capture date, rating, or import order — ascending or descending — from the header or the View menu. Your choice is remembered between launches. Date sort uses EXIF capture date, falling back to file date.
  • Double-click a thumbnail to jump straight into the loupe.
  • Fixed: in the loupe, arrow keys now follow the order shown in the grid (including any active filter or sort) — multi-camera shoots no longer looked like they were stuck on one camera.
  • Fixed: numeric filenames now sort naturally everywhere — IMG_2 before IMG_10.
1.1.3 April 21, 2026

Reliable round-trips, clearer errors

  • XMP sidecars from Lightroom, Adobe Bridge, and other tools that split metadata across multiple blocks now round-trip without corruption — hierarchical keywords and plugin metadata are preserved byte-for-byte when you re-export.
  • Keywords containing special characters (&, <, >, ") survive a re-export cleanly instead of being doubled or mangled.
  • Export and delete failures now show a clear dialog with Try Again instead of silently closing — and your decisions are kept across the retry.
  • "Import Folder" is now "Open Folder" throughout the app — the folder is read in place, not copied into a library, so "Open" is the honest word.
1.1.2 April 8, 2026

Dialogs that behave

  • Typing in the export dialog and Settings no longer fires culling shortcuts in the background — your keystrokes land as text.
  • The progress bar now reflects how far you've moved through the folder, not just how many decisions you've made. Leaving a photo uncategorized on purpose still counts as reviewed.
  • "Clear existing description" is now a per-export checkbox in the export dialog, so captions from earlier sessions are no longer wiped silently.
  • Revisiting a folder that already has XMP sidecars no longer falsely warns about unsaved changes.
  • Full keyboard control of the export, success, and completion dialogs — Return confirms, Escape cancels.
  • A single press of Z reliably toggles zoom again after moving to the next photo.
  • Added support for Olympus high-resolution .ori RAW files.
1.1 March 24, 2026

First update from real feedback

  • Auto-advance is now optional — turn it off in Settings → Behavior to stay on the current photo after tagging.
  • Clear All Decisions now asks for confirmation before it resets your session.
  • Color labels now appear in the info panel and the sidebar, matching the pick and rating badges.
  • Clearer export summary when metadata applies to every photo, plus a gentle reminder when copyright isn't set in Settings.
1.0 March 18, 2026

Keyboard-first culling

  • Open a folder and separate the keepers from the rest — pick (Space), reject (X), rate (1–5), and color-label (6–0), one keystroke per decision, with auto-advance to keep your rhythm.
  • Decisions are written as Adobe-compatible XMP sidecars and read back on open, so they round-trip with Lightroom, Capture One, and Photo Archive Lite — and everything else in the sidecar is preserved.
  • EXIF inspector (camera, lens, shutter, aperture, ISO), visual filters, multi-level undo, optional IPTC copyright/creator/keyword stamping, and a session report.
  • Delete Rejects moves rejected photos to the macOS Trash — never a permanent delete.
  • One-time purchase. No subscription, no cloud, no account.