cullzy
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For photographers: sorting the archive, not the shoot

For one shoot, picking the best frames is a job for a culling app such as Photo Mechanic or Aftershoot. For years of folders on old drives, the job is different: decide where each set of files belongs, keep every RAW with its JPEG and sidecars, and sort the files before a catalog points at them. A keyboard sorter like cullzy does that one photo per keypress.

Two different jobs

Culling a shoot means going through 3,000 frames of one wedding and picking the 300 to deliver. The photos are nearly the same, and the work is comparing them: which frame has open eyes, which is in focus. Photo Mechanic, Aftershoot, Narrative Select and FilterPixel are built for that, with ratings, colour labels and face close-ups, and they hand your picks to Lightroom.

Sorting an archive means opening a drive from 2016 and finding client work, personal trips, test shots, phone dumps and three copies of the same import, in folders named untitled 4. The photos have nothing to do with each other, and the work is deciding where each one goes. Ratings don't help with that. Folders do.

This page is about the second job. If the first one is your job, use one of the apps above.

Plan the folders before you move anything

A structure that holds up over many years of work:

  • clients, then one folder per job: 2019-07 Patel wedding
  • personal, by year or by trip
  • portfolio: the photos you'd show someone, copied here rather than moved, so each job folder stays complete
  • reference: tests, lighting setups, gear checks
  • delete: an ordinary folder you look through once before it goes

Putting the year and month first, as in 2019-07, keeps job folders in date order when Finder sorts them by name.

A RAW never travels alone

A RAW file often comes with a JPEG the camera wrote beside it, an .xmp sidecar holding your Lightroom or darktable edits, and for some cameras a .thm preview or a low-resolution proxy. Move the RAW without the others and the edits are gone, or the JPEG ends up in a different folder.

In Finder, sort by name so files that belong together sit next to each other, and select them together before dragging. Any sorting app you use should move them as one.

Sort before the catalog, or tell the catalog

Lightroom Classic and Capture One remember where every photo was. Move a folder in Finder, or with any app other than theirs, and the catalog marks the photos as missing. Your edits are still in the catalog, but they can't be seen until you reconnect the photos.

  • Best: sort the archive first, then import the folders you've already sorted.
  • Already in a catalog: after moving files, use Lightroom Classic's Find Missing Folder (right-click the folder) to point it at the new place. Capture One has a similar Locate command.
  • Never open a Lightroom catalog folder or a Photos library and move things out of it. Their contents belong to the app that made them.

Duplicates from importing twice

A card imported twice, a backup restored on top of the original, a client export saved next to its originals: archives collect exact copies. Clear the exact copies first, since they need no decisions. Near-copies, such as exports and resized versions, need a look before you remove them. Both kinds, and the tools that find them, are covered in how to find duplicate photos in folders.

Moving between drives

A move to another drive is really a copy followed by a delete. If the copy is cut off, or the drive is failing, the delete can still go ahead. For an archive, check the copy before the original goes: compare file counts and sizes at the very least, or use a tool that checks every byte.

What cullzy does for this

  • A mode for it. Choose photography on the first screen and it starts in the order the camera recorded, with the camera, lens and exposure panel open, and suggests piles like Clients, Personal, Portfolio and Rejects. Nothing is hidden, and anything you change by hand stays changed.
  • RAW at full speed. It opens 37 RAW formats from the full-size preview every camera saves inside the file, so you can page through a card's worth of CR3s or RAFs at the speed you can decide.
  • Files that belong together move together. RAW and JPEG are one item, and the .xmp, .thm, .dop and .pp3 sidecars and GoPro or DJI proxies go with them. All of them move, or none of them do.
  • One key per folder. 1–9 file the photo on screen, and ⌘K files it into any other folder by name. Each folder can sort what it receives into year, month or day folders by the date the camera recorded.
  • Side by side when you need it. C shows two to four photos with one shared zoom, so the same eye is under the pointer in every frame, and a label marks the sharpest.
  • Keywords Lightroom reads. A RAW file is never changed. Keywords go into an XMP sidecar named the way Lightroom names it. If there's one there already, it's updated and your edits in it are kept.
  • Copies are checked. Between drives, every byte of the copy is compared with the original before the original is removed. If they differ, the original stays.
  • Nothing is deleted. ⌘Z undoes a move, even after quitting. Sending the delete folder to the Trash is a separate step, and it asks you first.

On the list for later

Ideas rather than promises, and the ones asked for most get built first:

  • Straight off the card: point it at an SD card and sort as it copies.
  • Bursts shown together: the same shot seven times as one group, keep one and the rest go to a pile.
  • Piles you reuse: the folder set you use every time, saved and back for the next card.

Cullzy runs on Macs with Apple silicon. The other ways to sort files into folders, including the free ones, are compared in the best apps for sorting photos into folders on a Mac.

Last checked . Something here out of date? Say so and it gets fixed.

Try cullzy on your own pile

It's a Mac app in early access. One email when it's ready.