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Culling

In the panel: Culling is your private review of a gallery. You rate with the keyboard, filter, and archive what the client should not see.

A gallery in the panel with six wedding photos, star ratings on each thumbnail and the Photos, Favorites and Comments tabs
The gallery grid is where a culling pass starts: every photo can be opened, rated and filtered from here.

Culling is the pass you make before the client sees anything: you look at every photo, decide which ones are worth keeping, and remove the rest from view. In Picstome it all happens inside the gallery, with the keyboard, and nothing you do here is visible to the client.

What the client sees

Section titled “What the client sees”

Nothing, unless you want them to. Your stars, your ratings and your filters exist only in your panel. The client sees the photos you left visible, and the hearts they marked themselves.

Your tools Visible to the client
1–5 stars Never
Rating filter and sorting Never
Archive No: the photo disappears from their gallery
Heart Yes, it is the same field as their selection

Culling, in four steps

Section titled “Culling, in four steps”
  1. Open the gallery and press the first photo. The viewer fills the screen and the arrow keys walk the gallery in the same order you see in the grid.
  2. Rate while you look. 1 to 5 rate and jump to the next photo. 0 clears. You never touch the mouse.
  3. Filter what is left. Show only your four and five stars, or only the client’s favorites, or only what is not archived yet.
  4. Archive the rest. Archived photos leave the client’s gallery and the ZIP download, but the files stay on disk.

The shortcut sheet

Section titled “The shortcut sheet”

These work in the photo viewer, wherever you are in the gallery.

Key What it does
→ / ← Next / previous photo in the current filter
1–5 Set the rating and move on
0 Clear the rating and the heart
F Heart or un-heart the photo
A Archive or restore the photo
Delete Ask to delete the photo for good

Ratings and hearts are the same scale for the client, which is explained in Rate and heart. If you want the full list of what each gesture means, that is the page.

Section titled “When the gallery is huge”

A wedding of 3,000 photos is not culled in one sitting. Filter by rating, sort by name or date, close the browser and come back: the stars are saved the moment you press the key, not when you finish.

The order in the viewer always matches the order on screen. If you sorted by rating, the arrow keys follow that order; if you filtered to four stars, pressing → only walks four-star photos.

What comes next

Section titled “What comes next”