Photo Picks
A photo culling tool that writes your star ratings into the files themselves, so they follow you into Lightroom.
The Curiosity
Culling a shoot is the same loop a thousand times: look, rate, next. Every tool that does it well wants to own your library first.
Could a browser tab do the loop, touch nothing but the files you point it at, and leave the ratings somewhere every other program can read?
The Build
Photo Picks uses the File System Access API, so it opens a folder on your disk directly. Chrome and Edge on desktop only. No upload, no server, no account.
Keys 1 to 5 set stars and advance to the next photo. 6 to 9 apply colour labels. Arrow keys move; up and down jump a row. Filter by rating or colour and copy the picks to a new folder in one click.
Ratings are written into the image's EXIF and XMP metadata, which is exactly where Lightroom, Bridge and Windows Explorer look for them.
- Files
- File System Access API, thumbnails loaded lazily
- Metadata
- EXIF and XMP written in place with exifr and piexifjs
- Safety
- A .original backup beside each file on its first edit, on by default
- Runs on
- Chrome or Edge, Mac and PC
Because it edits your originals, the first write to any file creates a .original copy beside it. That is on by default. It can be switched off, but it will never be the tool's idea.
The Result
It is small. It removes half an hour of invisible work from every shoot, and the ratings outlive the tool.
What We Learned
Writing into someone's original files is a trust problem before it is a technical one. The backup toggle, the warning box and the plain "Chrome only" notice took as long to get right as the metadata code.