01First steps

RawLine Selects is for choosing the photos of a shoot, fast. You look at them one by one, give stars, colors, picks and rejects, and the marks go into the XMP files Lightroom reads. The photos themselves are never changed.

1. Open the folder. Click it in the sidebar, drag it onto the window or choose File › Open Folder… (⌘O). A memory card works too, before you import.

2. Look. The grid shows every photo. Space or Return opens the selected one big; the arrows go to the next.

3. Rate. 1–5 for stars, 6–9 for colors, P to pick, X to reject. Hold ⇧ to rate and move on in one go.

4. Go on in Lightroom. The marks of the RAW files are already in their XMP sidecars: import the folder, or drag the photos you want out of the grid.

03Disks, folders and favorites

The sidebar works like Photo Mechanic's. Under Disks are the Mac, external and network disks and memory cards. The arrow shows a folder's subfolders; a click on the folder (or Return) opens it.

• A memory card appears as soon as you insert it, already unfolded, and disappears when you eject it.
• Favorites: drag the folders you use most here, and drag them again to change the order. Right-click any folder for Add to Favorites, Remove from Favorites and Show in Finder.
• Drag a folder or a photo onto the start screen or onto the Dock icon, or open it from the Finder with Open With › RawLine Selects. A photo opens its whole folder, on that photo.
• With no tab open, the start screen shows the last folders, with how many photos each has.

Tabs

Every folder opens in its own tab, and the tabs come back when you reopen the app. Opening a folder that's already open takes you to its tab. Drag the tabs to change their order; ⇧⌘] and ⇧⌘[ move between them, ⌘1–⌘9 jump to one (⌘9 is always the last).

Levels

Inside a tab there are two levels: the grid and the photo. Space, Return or a double click go down to the photo. Esc goes back up one level at a time: from 100% to the fitted photo, from the photo to the grid. In the grid Esc does nothing, so you never close a folder by mistake.

File › Close Tab (⌘W) goes back to the grid from the photo, and closes the tab from the grid. In the photo, the folder name at the top also takes you back to the grid.

Subfolders

If the photos are in subfolders, Selects says so and offers Show All: the photos of every subfolder in one grid. View › Include Subfolders turns it on and off for the tab. The _Scartate folder is never included.

04The grid

The grid shows the photos of the folder as they came off the card: RAW, JPEG, HEIC, TIFF and PNG. The RAW and the JPEG of the same shot sit side by side, the RAW first.

• Arrows move the selection. ⇧ with an arrow, ⇧-click and ⌘-click select several photos, ⌘A all of them. Home, End, Page Up and Page Down work too.
• Space, Return or a double click open the selected photo big.
• Thumbnail size: the slider at the bottom right, or View › Larger Thumbnails (⌘=) and Smaller Thumbnails (⌘-).
• Under each thumbnail are the file name and the marks. A rejected photo is dimmed, with a red cross.
• Right-click a photo for the same commands as the Photo menu: stars, colors, pick, reject and stacks.

Sort

The Sort menu at the top left (also View › Sort By) puts the photos of the tab in order of Capture Time, File Name, Modification Date, Camera Body, Rating or File Type, ascending or descending. Every tab remembers its own. Capture time is the default, corrected with each camera's clock: see Shooting time and camera clocks.

Dragging photos out

Drag the selected photos to the Finder, the desktop, Photoshop or Lightroom's import window. They're always copied, never moved, and every RAW takes its XMP sidecar along.

05The viewer

The photo big, fitted to the window. The arrows go to the previous photo (← ↑) and the next one (→ ↓), and the grid follows. The marks are always visible at the bottom center.

Zooming

• Z: the photo at 100%, one pixel of the photo for one pixel of the screen, inside the window. Drag to move around; the arrows stay at 100%. Z again, or Esc, goes back to Fit.
• ⇧Z: the zoom chosen in the menu at the bottom left: Fit, 25%, 50%, 100%, 200% or 400%.
• Space (hold): the same zoom while you hold it; let go and you're back.
• Click and hold: a loupe at 100% under the pointer.
• Pinch on the trackpad, or the slider in the inspector, from 10% to 400%.

The menu starts from Settings › Zoom start at every launch (100%, unless you change it).

Sharp at 100%

Selects first shows the preview inside the file, which is immediate. When you zoom and stay on a photo, it develops the RAW in the background and swaps in the sharp version. Holding an arrow down develops nothing: only the photo you stop on.

I shows the position of the photo, the preview in use and how long the photo took to appear.

A photo that can't be read shows a message and leaves the arrows working. If the disk is removed while the folder is open, Selects says so and offers Try Again.

06Stars, colors, picks and rejects

The keys are Lightroom's. In the grid they apply to every selected photo, in the big photo to the one on screen.

• 1–5: stars. 0 takes them away.
• 6, 7, 8, 9: red, yellow, green, blue. The same key again removes the color. Purple has no key: choose it from the Photo menu, the right-click menu or the inspector.
• P picks, X rejects, U removes the pick or the reject.

Rate and move on

With ⇧, or with Caps Lock on, every rating key also goes to the next photo. If you want it always, turn on Settings › Advance automatically after rating and choose the delay: another key during the delay cancels the move. At the last photo it stops.

Undo

Edit › Undo (⌘Z) and Redo (⇧⌘Z) go back step by step through ratings, stack changes, clock corrections and moved rejects, in the order you made them.

The same marks are in the Photo menu (No Stars, from ★ to ★★★★★, the colors, Pick, Reject, Unflag) and in the inspector. Every rating is saved at once: if the Mac switches off, nothing is lost.

07Counter and seen photos

At the bottom of the grid and of the big photo: Viewed 312 of 1,840, kept 87, rejected 140. It always counts the whole folder, even with the filter on.

• Viewed: the photos you've seen big for at least three tenths of a second. Scrolling through the grid doesn't count.
• Kept: the photos with a pick, stars or a color, and not rejected.
• Rejected: the photos marked with X.

The viewed photos are remembered with the ratings: when you reopen the folder another day, you know where you got to.

08HDR stacks

The shots of an exposure bracket become one stack: one cell in the grid, the frame closest to 0 EV on top, two cards behind it and the label HDR · 5. Stacks appear a moment after the folder opens, once the photo details have been read.

• Selects reads the bracket from the camera data when it's there. Otherwise it deduces it from the exposures, and the label says probable.
• Return or a double click opens the stack where it is: the frames line up, marked HDR 2/5. Esc closes it again. The Photo menu has Open Stack and Close Stack too.
• A rating on a closed stack applies to all its frames, RAW and JPEG twins included.

Fixing a stack

• Photo › Split Stack (⇧⌘G): every frame becomes a photo of its own again.
• Photo › Remove from Stack: in an open stack, takes the selected frames out.
• Photo › Group into Stack (⌘G): the selected photos and stacks become one stack.

Your changes are remembered for the folder, and ⌘Z undoes them. Nothing is written into the photos. View › Show Stacks turns the stacks off: every photo on its own again.

09Panoramas

Shots with the same locked exposure, a few seconds apart, whose framing moves step by step in one direction, are proposed as a panorama stack: PANO · 6 · probable. A panorama is always probable: check it, and fix it like an HDR stack.

To find them Selects compares the small previews inside the files, on the Mac: nothing is sent anywhere. View › Show Panoramas, or Settings › Propose panoramas, turns the proposals off.

Panoramas and HDR stacks can reach Lightroom as keywords: see XMP and Lightroom.

10Shooting time and camera clocks

By default the photos are in order of capture time, hundredths of a second included, so bursts and photos from two cameras fall in their real order. While the times are being read, the band says Reading capture times with how far it has got, and the photos not read yet wait at the end.

Two cameras, two clocks

If a camera's clock was behind, or still on home time, its photos land in the wrong place. There are two ways to fix it:

• Photo › Align Time… (also with a right-click): select in the grid two photos of the same moment taken with two cameras, and choose which one had the right time. The other camera moves by the difference.
• Photo › Camera Clocks… (⌥⌘T): Selects looks for the same scene taken with different cameras and proposes how far apart their clocks are, with how much to trust it and the two photos to compare. It also tells a time zone from a clock that was off. Accept, Correct… by hand, or Ignore.

When a good proposal is waiting, a discreet Clock proposal for… appears next to the Sort menu. Nothing is ever applied on its own.

11Filter and search

The filter is in the band above the tabs, on the right: stars (none, 1★ to 5★), colors (and no color), picks, unflagged, rejects. A click turns a value on or off.

Within a group one value is enough; across groups all must match. 4★ and 5★ with the pick show the photos with four or five stars that are also picked. Next to the filter you see how many are shown, such as 87 of 1,840.

• View › Turn Filter Off (⌘L) shows everything again but keeps your choices: ⌘L brings them back.
• View › Clear Filter removes the filter and the search together.
• In the big photo the arrows move only among the photos that pass; Filter on at the bottom reminds you.

Quick search

The field at the top of the sidebar (Edit › Quick Search, ⌥⌘F) finds the photos whose name, title, caption, keywords, author, place, camera or lens contain all the words you type. Upper case and accents don't matter.

Advanced search

Edit › Advanced Search… (⌘F) has two parts:

• Name List: paste the names the client chose, from Pixieset, PhotoShelter or an email. Commas, spaces, quotes and extensions don't matter, and a number alone finds the photo that ends with it. Selects says how many it found and which names aren't in the folder. Show Only shows them; Show and Assign also gives them stars, a color or a pick, in one step you can undo.
• Criteria: camera, lens, from and to a date and time, ISO and focal length. A photo without that detail doesn't pass.

Clear Search turns them off. While they're on, an icon in the band reminds you.

12Inspector and histogram

The panel on the right (View › Show Inspector, ⌥⌘I, or the button at the top right) shows the active photo: in the grid the selected one, in the big photo the one on screen. At the next launch it's open or closed as you left it.

• At the top: the file name and the shot in one line.
• Zoom: Fit, 100% and a slider from 10% to 400%, for the big photo.
• Histogram: red, green, blue and brightness, as in Lightroom, with how much is clipped in the shadows and in the highlights.
• Rating: stars, the five colors (purple too) and Pick, Unflagged, Reject.
• Shooting, Camera, File, Location, IPTC: only the details the photo really has. With a camera clock corrected, Shooting also shows the corrected time. With GPS, Open in Maps.
• All Metadata: everything in the file, group by group, to select and copy. Closed until you open it.

Click the title of a section to close or open it: Selects remembers.

13XMP and Lightroom

Stars, colors, picks and rejects go into the XMP sidecar next to each RAW (DSC01234.xmp), the file Lightroom, Bridge and Capture One read. If the sidecar is already there, with Lightroom's adjustments say, only the rating, the label and the flag change: everything else stays as it was.

• The writing happens in the background. The bottom bar says XMP: all written, or how many are still being written.
• If a sidecar can't be written (a read-only folder, a disk removed), the bar turns orange. The ratings stay in RawLine Selects all the same.
• When you open a folder, Selects reads the sidecars already there: photos rated in Lightroom or Photo Mechanic show their marks.
• JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, PNG and DNG keep their XMP inside the file, and Selects never writes into the photos: their ratings stay in RawLine Selects. A JPEG next to its RAW never overwrites the RAW's sidecar.

Color label names

Lightroom shows a color label only if its name is in Lightroom's language: Red in English, Rossa in Italian. In Settings › Color label names in XMP, Automatic uses the names already in the folder's XMP files, otherwise the language of the Mac; or choose Lightroom in English or Lightroom in Italian.

Importing into Lightroom

Import the folder after choosing: Lightroom reads the sidecars as it imports. If the photos are already in the catalog, select them and choose Metadata › Read Metadata from Files.

Stacks in Lightroom

Lightroom doesn't read stacks from XMP files. Turn on Settings › Write stacks to XMP for Lightroom: every RAW of a stack gets a keyword such as RawLine › HDR › HDR-0007 in its sidecar. In Lightroom click the keyword, select the photos and press ⌘G. Your other keywords aren't touched, and Remove RawLine Keywords from This Folder takes ours away.

14Rejected photos on closing

When you close a tab (✕ or ⌘W) or quit the app and the folder has rejected photos, and only then, Selects asks: There are 140 rejected photos in “Tenerife”. Set them aside?

• Move to _Scartate: into a _Scartate folder next to the photos.
• Move to Trash: into the macOS Trash, where you can still recover them.
• Leave Them (Esc): everything stays where it is.

Each photo travels with its RAW+JPEG twin and its XMP files. A photo whose twin you kept stays where it is, and so does one you picked again in Lightroom after rejecting it. Nothing is ever overwritten, and nothing is ever deleted for good.

Remember for this folder applies the same choice next time without asking. Settings › Rejected Photos When Closing lists those folders, to change the choice or forget it.

Bringing them back

⌘Z right after brings the photos back. Later, even after a restart, Photo › Restore Moved Rejects brings back what was moved from that folder. Photo › Move Rejected Photos… asks the same question whenever you want.

15Settings

RawLine Selects › Settings… (⌘,), from top to bottom:

• Hardware accelerator: faster and lighter on the Mac. Turn it off only if a photo looks strange.
• Group bracketed shots into stacks and Propose panoramas.
• Write stacks to XMP for Lightroom, with the button that removes our keywords from the open folder.
• Advance automatically after rating, with the delay (0 to 2 seconds).
• Zoom start: where the zoom menu starts at every launch.
• Color label names in XMP.
• Camera Bodies: the clock corrections shared with RawLine Rename, to reset one by one or all together.
• Rejected Photos When Closing: the folders with a remembered choice.
• Language: same as the Mac, English or Italian. The app reopens to change it; the open folders stay.
• Check for updates automatically, and Check Now.

Whether this guide opens at launch is decided by Show at launch, at the bottom left of the guide.

16Keyboard shortcuts

The same list is always in Help › Keyboard Shortcuts.

Rate

Move

Zoom

Folders and Commands

17Speed

Selects is made to keep up with your hand, even on a card with thousands of RAW files, without weighing on the Mac.

• The photos are shown from the previews inside the files, at the size of your screen. The RAW is developed only when you zoom in and stay on a photo.
• The next photos are prepared while you look at this one. Holding an arrow down doesn't pile up work: Selects prepares the photo you stop on.
• The grid asks only for the thumbnails on screen, and a couple of rows above and below.
• Photo details, stacks and clock proposals are read in the background: you can start rating at once.
• Settings › Hardware accelerator, on by default, makes decoding faster and lighter.

Want to see the numbers? In the big photo press I: among other things it shows how long the photo took to appear after the key.

18Questions