Ratings and picks

Culling is two decisions: how good is this one, and is it going in. Reveal keeps them apart.

Stars

1 to 5 rate the photo you are on; 0 clears the rating. With several photos selected, the rating applies to all of them. A rated photo shows its stars in its top-left corner.

A rating is written into a small .xmp file beside the photo, as the standard xmp:Rating field. Reveal’s own index only mirrors it. So your ratings are not locked inside the app. The sidecar is named after the whole file, IMG.RAF.xmp, the way darktable, digiKam and Immich name theirs, so they see the same stars, and Reveal reads the same field when a rating was given there. Lightroom and Camera Raw look for IMG.xmp instead, so they will not pick Reveal’s sidecar up on their own.

The quick collection

q adds the photo to the folder’s quick collection, or removes it. A photo in the collection has a filled dot in its top-right corner, and the folder gets a dot in the sidebar.

The collection is not a rating and not a copy. It is the folder’s story: a plain Markdown note named after the folder, sitting in it, with one line per picked photo. Delete the note and the collection is gone; open it in any editor and you can read it. Picking is how a story starts, and the collection is what Stories writes up and what Publishing to the Garden puts online.

Use the star menu’s Quick collection option to see only what you have picked.

Stars or collection?

They answer different questions, and you can use one without the other.

• Stars rank. They stay with the photo, wherever it goes, and any program can read them.
• The collection selects. It belongs to one folder and one story.

A common rhythm: first pass with stars, then filter to “≥ 3 ★” and press q on the ones that tell the story.