RapidCulling

A fast, Capture One-style RAW (and JPEG) culling app. Browse a folder, group near-duplicate frames by visual similarity, rate and pick/reject with single keystrokes, and drag finished shots straight into a folder — all in a native desktop app (Tauri: Rust backend, React/TypeScript UI), no separate runtime to install.

Part of a family of apps by Chris Cork Photography, alongside RapidRetouch and RapidTimelapse.

New to RapidCulling? Watch the tutorial:

⬇ Download the latest version

Free and open-source, licensed AGPL-3.0.

Installing

Grab the latest build for your OS from Releases.

These builds aren't code-signed (that needs a paid developer certificate this project doesn't have yet), so your OS will warn that the publisher is unverified on first launch. That's expected for unsigned beta software, not a sign anything's wrong:

• macOS: Direct download (.dmg, Apple Silicon + Intel). Open the .dmg, drag RapidCulling.app into Applications. Gatekeeper will refuse to open it the first time — recent macOS versions no longer reliably let you bypass this with right-click → Open, so use one of these instead:
  • Terminal (quickest): run this once, then launch normally:

    xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/RapidCulling.app
    

  • System Settings: try to open the app once (it'll be blocked), then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down to the security notice about RapidCulling, and click Open Anyway.
• Windows: Direct download (.msi installer). Run the .msi or .exe. SmartScreen will show "Windows protected your PC" — click More info, then Run anyway.
• Linux: Direct download (.AppImage). chmod +x the .AppImage and run it directly (works on Debian, Arch, Fedora and most others), or install the .deb/.rpm for your distro.

Usage

1. Browse to a folder in the Library tree in the sidebar (or pin frequently-used ones to Favourites with the star icon), then double-click it — or click ▶ — to open it for culling. A second/external drive shows up automatically in the "Drives…" picker at the top of the tree if you have more than one connected.
2. Rate and sort. Single-click a photo to focus it, then:
   • 0–5 — star rating
   • P — pick
   • X — reject
   • ↑/↓ — next/previous photo or group
   • ←/→ — scroll through similar shots in a group A photo can never be both picked and rejected at once. Use the star/ picked/rejected filters in the sidebar to narrow the grid to just what you're deciding on.
3. Group near-duplicates. The Photo similarity slider controls how aggressively burst/continuous shots get grouped into one row — 100% groups only near-identical frames, lower values group shots further apart in time or content. Grouping applies automatically after a scan; adjust the slider afterwards and click Update grouping to re-run it.
4. Move your picks. Drag a photo (or a multi-selection) onto any folder in the sidebar tree to move it there — the culling grid updates immediately, and a moved file's rating/pick travels with it since both live in an XMP sidecar next to the RAW/JPEG, not in the app.

Ratings and picks are written as a standard xmp:Rating field plus a rapidculling:Pick boolean in a .xmp sidecar next to each photo — never into the RAW/JPEG file itself, and readable by other tools that honor xmp:Rating (Lightroom, Capture One, Bridge, darktable, etc.).

Data safety

• A move never overwrites an existing file. If the destination folder already has a file with that name, the incoming one is saved as name (2).ext instead — camera-assigned filenames (IMG_0001.CR2 and the like) recur constantly across cards and shoots, and silently clobbering a same-named file would be a real way to lose a photo.
• A photo's RAW, its .xmp sidecar, and any paired JPEG always move together, and a partial failure part-way through a large batch move leaves already-moved files correctly reflected in the app's state rather than stranding them in limbo.
• Sidecar writes are atomic (written to a temp file, then renamed into place), so a crash or power loss mid-write can't leave a corrupted .xmp — it's always either the old content or the new, never truncated garbage.
• RAW/JPEG files themselves are never rewritten by this app — only their .xmp sidecars.

Building / running

Requires Node 18+ and a Rust toolchain (see tauri.app/start/prerequisites).

npm install
npm run tauri dev      # run in development
npm run tauri build    # produce a native installer for the current OS

tauri build produces a .AppImage/.deb/.rpm on Linux, .dmg/.app on macOS, and .msi/.exe on Windows — run it on each target OS (or via CI) to get that platform's installer; Tauri doesn't cross-compile installers from one OS to another.