Review mode · Keyboard culling · Elite
The half-second your photo app takes to show the next frame is what makes culling unbearable — 900 times, it's an afternoon. Review mode shows the full-resolution preview your camera already wrote, so there is nothing to wait for. Keep, reject, rate and colour from the keyboard, check focus at 100%, then move the keepers out. Nothing is ever deleted automatically.
Nobody abandons a cull because deciding is hard. They abandon it because the app thinks between every photo. Half a second to draw the next frame doesn't sound like anything — until you multiply it by nine hundred and watch an afternoon disappear. So the folder gets left "for later", and later never comes.
Every RAW file has a full-resolution JPEG preview inside it, written by the camera at the moment of the shot. Review mode shows that, instead of developing the RAW from scratch. On a 20 MP Canon CR3 the preview arrives in about a tenth of a second at its full 5472 × 3648 — developing the same frame takes between 0.7 and 5.2 seconds. And the frames on either side of you are decoded before you get there, so the key press has nothing left to wait for.
How it works
Choose the folder and press Start. The review opens as soon as capture times are read — it never makes you wait for analysis to finish.
Arrow keys step through the folder in capture order — every shot, not only the bursts. The neighbours are already decoded.
Keep, reject, one to five stars, a colour label. It moves to the next photo for you, so a folder is one key press per photo.
Filter to what you want and copy or move exactly those photos to a folder — or send the rejects to the Trash. Undoable.
The keyboard
What a fast browser can't do
While you review, FolioSort is finding the sets of near-identical shots you fired seconds apart and scoring every frame for sharpness, face quality and open eyes. The sharpest of each set gets marked, and it offers to mark the rest as rejected — so you spend your attention on the decisions that are actually yours, not on picking between five frames of the same jump.
That analysis runs in the background while you are already culling, and it never arms anything behind your back. If you've started deciding, it asks first. You can stop it at any time and keep going — the review doesn't depend on it. See how Best Shots scores a burst →
When the pass is done
Review mode is the pass you make yourself. Best Shots thins the bursts before you get there. Find Blurry Photos clears the frames that were never sharp to begin with.
Walk the whole folder, one key per photo, with nothing to wait for.
This pageKeep the sharpest frame of every burst — scored for faces and open eyes.
Explore Best Shots → Clear the blurScore every photo for sharpness and sweep out the out-of-focus ones.
Explore Blurry →FAQ
Because it never re-renders your RAW files. Every camera writes a full-resolution JPEG preview inside the RAW, and that is what Review mode shows. On a 20 MP Canon CR3 the preview comes back in roughly a tenth of a second at full resolution, while developing the RAW to get the same picture takes between 0.7 and 5.2 seconds. Neighbouring photos are decoded ahead of you as well, so by the time you press the arrow key the next frame is already there.
K or T keeps, R or X rejects, U clears the mark. 1–5 give star ratings and 0 clears them. 6–9 apply red, yellow, green and blue colour labels (P for purple). Z cycles the zoom between Fit, 50%, 100% and 200%, F gives the whole screen to the photo, I shows or hides the EXIF panel, and the arrow keys move between photos. Pressing the same star or colour key twice clears it.
Yes — they are written as XMP:Rating and XMP:Label, which Lightroom, Adobe Bridge and Capture One all read. For proprietary RAW files such as CR3, NEF and ARW they go into an .xmp sidecar beside the photo, because nobody writes into a camera RAW. For DNG, JPEG, HEIC, TIFF and PNG they go inside the file itself, because cataloguers ignore sidecars for those formats. You confirm before anything is written.
No. Marking a photo as rejected changes nothing on disk — it's a note, not a verdict. Removing files is always a separate, confirmed step; they go to the Trash or a folder you choose rather than being permanently deleted, and the last batch can be undone.
While you review, FolioSort finds the sets of near-identical shots you fired seconds apart and scores each frame for sharpness, face quality and open eyes. The sharpest of each set is marked, and it offers to mark the rest as rejected — so the obvious calls are already made and you only confirm. It runs in the background and never interrupts the review. More on Best Shots →
No. Review mode is part of Elite, FolioSort's top tier — a one-time purchase (launch price €29.99, normally €49.99). No monthly fee, no annual renewal. See pricing →
One key per photo, nothing to wait for between them, and your stars and colours written where your editor will read them. Entirely on your own computer.