Cull a shoot in the library

Culling is the pass where you decide which photos from a shoot are worth editing. In Litria you do it in the library: add the folder, mark each photo with a key, then filter down to the ones you kept.

Add the folder

Open Litria and choose Add a folder. Litria reads the photos where they are. It never moves, renames or overwrites a photo. The one thing it writes into the folder is a .litria folder that holds backups of your catalog, unless you choose a backup folder elsewhere.

If you want only a few photos from a folder, choose Add photos and pick them. They go under Added photos in the sidebar. The first time you open Litria in a browser, before you add anything, Try with sample photos gives you eight photos to practice on.

The folder appears in the sidebar under Folders. Open it and its photos fill the grid, newest first. More photos load as you scroll, so a long shoot needs no paging. If the folder has subfolders, they sit above the grid, and Include subfolders puts every photo beneath the folder into one grid. Thumbnail size makes the photos larger or smaller.

Mark each photo

Point at a photo and press a key. You do not have to click it first.

• 1 to 5 rate the photo with that many stars, and 0 clears the rating.
• ] raises the rating by one star and [ lowers it.
• P keeps the photo, X rejects it, and U clears the decision.

Hold Shift with any of these keys and Litria marks the photo, then moves on to the next one. That lets you go through a whole shoot with two keys: Shift and P for a keeper, Shift and X for a reject.

If you would rather use the mouse, the stars and the Keep and Reject buttons appear on a photo when you point at it, as long as the thumbnails are large enough to hold them. To judge a photo at a larger size, click it. It opens in the editor, and the same keys work there. Press ? for the list of keyboard shortcuts.

Mark several at once

1. Point at a photo and click its check to select it.
2. Click more photos to add them. Shift-click selects the range from the last photo you clicked to this one.
3. Press a rating or decision key. It applies to every selected photo.
4. Press Esc, or choose Clear selection, when you are done.

Once you have kept the photos you want, you can reject the rest in one step. Open More options above the grid and choose Reject unflagged photos. It covers every photo in the open folder that you have neither kept nor rejected, narrowed by any filter that is on, and it includes photos you have not scrolled to. Litria tells you how many photos that is and asks before it does anything. The notice that follows has an Undo, but it stays only a few seconds.

Narrow down to the keepers

Above the grid are three filters, and you can combine them.

• Rating. For review shows the photos you have not rated yet. Each star shows the photos with exactly that rating. Shift-click a second star to add it, or drag across the stars for a range.
• Show kept and Show rejected. Each one is a toggle, and both can be on at once.
• File type. RAW, Processed and Edited, and the ▾ opens one chip for each format your library holds. Edited shows the photos you have already adjusted.

Clear filters brings the whole folder back.

For review is worth turning on if you cull by stars. Each photo leaves the grid once you rate it, so what remains is what you have not rated.

To find one photo, type part of its file name into Search in the sidebar. Search looks through every folder at once, and it matches photo, folder and album names. Use the arrow keys and Enter to open a result.

Tags group photos from any folder. Select photos, press Tag in the selection bar, and pick a tag or type a new one. Open a tag in the sidebar to see its photos together.

What is kept, and what is deleted

Ratings and decisions are saved in Litria's catalog on your device as you make them. They are there the next time you open Litria.

Rejecting a photo does not remove it. The photo stays in its folder and in the grid, marked as rejected. If you do want rejected photos gone, turn on Show rejected, select them and choose the Delete button, which says how many photos it covers. Litria asks first, because Delete from disk removes the files from your disk. They do not go to the Trash, and it cannot be undone. Their edits, ratings and decisions go with them.

Open Litria

Open Litria in Chrome or Edge, or download the desktop app. Add the folder from your last shoot and go through it.