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Picstome Rater

In the panel: Rater is a desktop app that receives a gallery's favorites and writes them as stars into your files with exiftool.

The export favorites dialog with the App tab selected and the Rate my images button
Picstome hands the favorites to the Rater from here: one button, no login.

What it does

Section titled “What it does”

Rater connects two worlds that do not talk to each other: the selection that lives on the web and the files that live on your disk. You hand it a gallery’s favorites and it writes that selection as stars in the files themselves, so Lightroom or Capture One see it without importing anything.

It does not upload photos, does not ask for an account and does not keep a copy of the selection in the cloud. It only writes metadata.

How to use it

Section titled “How to use it”
  1. In Picstome, open the gallery and go to the Favorites tab.
  2. Press Export favorites.
  3. On the App tab, press Rate my images.
  4. Choose how many stars you want, confirm the folder with the originals and press Apply rating.

The app remembers the last folder. The next time you export favorites from the same shoot, you only have to confirm.

What it writes

Section titled “What it writes”
  • The rating in the EXIF/XMP metadata, not in a separate file.
  • It looks up each photo by file name, case-insensitively. The folder must contain the originals you uploaded.
  • It stores the rating on the 0–100% scale that Lightroom and Capture One read as stars.

When you open that folder in your editor, the favorites are already rated and you can filter them without touching the mouse.

Before installing

Section titled “Before installing”

Download the latest version from the GitHub releases. There are builds for macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon) and Windows.

  • It needs exiftool on the computer. On macOS, brew install exiftool; on Windows, put exiftool.exe on the PATH. If the app cannot find it, it tells you.
  • The macOS build is unsigned. The first time, open it with right-click → Open, not a double click.

What it does not do

Section titled “What it does not do”
  • It does not delete or move photos. It only writes metadata.
  • It is one-way. Rating on the computer does not send anything back to Picstome; the stars live in your files, which is where your editor reads them.
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