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Cull Mode

Summary

Cull Mode is the focused culling workspace. The active photo fills the screen. The top bar shows your live progress. The bottom strip shows the active frame's burst. One photo at a time, two keys per decision (Pick, Maybe, Reject, or Unflag), arrow to advance. The fastest way to walk a thousand frames in one pass.

  • Full-screen focus

    The active photo fills the screen. No grid, no rail, just the frame you're judging.

  • Two keys per decision

    P picks, M maybes, X rejects, U unflags. Arrows walk the queue. Tab jumps past the current burst.

  • Live progress

    Top bar tracks reviewed, picks, rejects, and a session-rate ETA. Coverage chips below catch under-shot segments.

Cull Mode workspace with the top bar showing reviewed/picks/rejects counts, a single photo filling the stage, and the burst strip plus coverage chips along the bottom. Cull Mode workspace with the top bar showing reviewed/picks/rejects counts, a single photo filling the stage, and the burst strip plus coverage chips along the bottom.
Cull Mode. Top bar with live counts, photo at native aspect, burst strip and coverage row below.

Opening Cull Mode

Open the Command Palette with Cmd+K (or Ctrl+K) and pick Open Cull Mode. Cull Mode opens around the first unreviewed photo in your library and reads the active library filter. If you have filtered to "Maybes only," Cull Mode walks just that subset.

The keymap

  • Triage (right hand)

    P Pick · M Maybe · X Reject · U Unflag

    Pick, Maybe, and Reject auto-advance to the next frame. Unflag stays in place so you can correct a stray keystroke without losing your spot.

  • Rating (left hand)

    0 clear · 1 to 5 star rating

    Set a star rating without touching the mouse. Counts as a decision for the ETA estimate.

  • Navigation

    Right next · Left previous · Tab next burst

    Arrows walk every frame in capture-time order, skipping rejected ones so you never re-touch a frame you already binned. Tab jumps past the rest of the current stack.

  • Cadence

    A toggle audio · Esc close

    Audio cadence adds a soft click on Pick and a low thump on Reject. Off by default; flip it on for a tactile rhythm during a long pass.

The top bar

Close-up of the Cull Mode top bar showing the CULL MODE label, reviewed and pick counts, and the rejects count. Close-up of the Cull Mode top bar showing the CULL MODE label, reviewed and pick counts, and the rejects count. 
Cull Mode  ·  347 / 2000 reviewed  ·  89 picks  ·  71 rejects  ·  ~2h remaining
Field What it means
reviewed Photos that have any flag or any star rating set.
picks Photos with Pick flagged.
rejects Photos with Reject flagged.
remaining Session-rate estimate. Hidden until you make 10 decisions so the estimate isn't noisy. Resets each time Cull Mode opens.

The burst strip

When the active photo is part of a stack, the bottom of the screen shows every member of that burst. The keeper (earliest frame) is ringed in amber and labeled CAND (candidate). Click any thumbnail to jump straight to that frame. Press Tab to skip past the whole burst.

Close-up of the burst strip at the bottom of Cull Mode. Three thumbnails of a stack member sit centered; the keeper carries an amber ring and a CAND label, the other two carry a thin white ring. Close-up of the burst strip at the bottom of Cull Mode. Three thumbnails of a stack member sit centered; the keeper carries an amber ring and a CAND label, the other two carry a thin white ring.

Why CAND, not Auto-Pick

Cull Mode never picks for you. The candidate marker is a hint, not a decision. Every flag is still your call. The math runs in your browser. No model, no cloud.

Auto-flag badges

Jade GT scores every photo on three signals and shows them as small badges along the bottom of the thumbnail. None of them auto-reject. They point your eye at the obvious "thin me" frames so you find them first. The math runs in your browser. No model, no cloud.

Badge What it means How Jade GT scores it
Soft Soft focus next to the rest of the burst A sharpness score on a small grayscale copy. The bottom 10% of each stack gets the badge. Singletons get a fixed floor.
Bright Highlights clipped (over-exposed) 25% or more of the pixels sit at pure white.
Dark Shadows clipped (under-exposed) 25% or more of the pixels sit at pure black.
Burst N Stack of 8 or more frames Jade GT carries this badge over from Photo Stacks. It invites you to thin the burst.

Filter the scroller to any of the auto-flag categories from the Auto chips in the library-filter bar (Soft, Exp., Burst 8+). The chips compose with the existing flag, color, and rating filters, so "Picks plus Soft" surfaces the picks you should double-check before you commit.

Why the badges do not pick for you

A soft frame may be an intentional bokeh portrait. A clipped frame may be a deliberate silhouette. Jade GT will not file the photo away on its own. The badges are a heatmap on top of the gallery. Every flag is still your call.

Rebuild the badges any time

Open the Command Palette and pick Rebuild auto-flag badges to rescore the shoot, or Clear auto-flag badges to drop every Soft, Bright, and Dark mark. Rebuilding is safe to do mid-cull; your picks and rejects do not move.

Coverage stats

Jade GT splits a long shoot into segments using capture-time gaps. Two photos land in the same segment when their capture times are within ten minutes of each other. A longer gap starts a new segment. The strip of segment chips along the bottom of Cull Mode (and the small panel above the file list in the main app) shows live counts of picks, photos, and rejects per segment.

Close-up of the Cull Mode coverage row. Four amber-bordered segment chips with a time and a pick count, a sparkline below, and a SHOT LIST input at the bottom. Close-up of the Cull Mode coverage row. Four amber-bordered segment chips with a time and a pick count, a sparkline below, and a SHOT LIST input at the bottom.
Chip color What it means
Amber border No picks yet in this segment. The badge invites you to either confirm under-coverage was intentional or shoot another pass.
Emerald border One or more picks landed. The count to the right of the slash is the segment's photo total.

The little sparkline below the chips is a heatmap of picks per segment: full-height bars where you picked the most, short bars where you barely covered. Useful for catching "I forgot the bridal party" in five seconds instead of five hours.

Click a segment chip's label to rename it ("Getting Ready", "Ceremony", "Reception"). Renames persist for the session and survive a page reload.

Coverage checklist

Below the segment chips is a freeform shot list. Type a shot ("cake cut", "first dance", "group portrait") and press Enter. The item lands on the list with a hollow circle.

The list auto-ticks when you press P on a photo whose keywords match the label. It also ticks if the description or headline contains the label anywhere in the text. Capitalization does not matter. Tag a photo with the keyword cake-cut, press P, and the cake cut item ticks on its own.

Manual ticks still work. Click the circle to toggle done, or the × to remove the item. The checklist sticks with the project. It survives a page reload but doesn't ride along in the workspace export.

Why match keywords, description, and headline?

Wedding photographers already type into these fields to sort their shots for delivery. Re-using them avoids inventing a second list to maintain.

Add a shot without leaving the keyboard

Open the Command Palette (Cmd+K) and pick Add a shot to the coverage checklist to add a new item from anywhere in the app, including inside Cull Mode.

Audio cadence

With the audio toggle on, every Pick fires a short click and every Reject fires a low thump. Maybe and Unflag are silent. Your browser plays the sound locally. Nothing leaves your device.

Why a cadence?

Wedding photographers describe a "click thump click thump" rhythm when they're in the zone on a long cull. The cadence makes it audible. The toggle lives next to the close button in the top bar so you can flip it from the keyboard (A).

Where the values live

Picks, rejects, Maybes, star ratings, and color labels all stay in Jade GT on this device, the same as the triage row. Cull Mode never writes to EXIF. Your decisions survive a session restore, hold through a page refresh, and roll into the commit pass when you press Ctrl+S.

Troubleshooting

Audio cadence is silent

Check the A toggle in the top bar. If it's on and you still hear nothing, your browser may have muted the tab. Click the speaker icon in the tab title (Chrome and Edge) or open your system sound settings and unmute the browser.

The ETA never appears

The estimate stays hidden until you make 10 decisions, so a fresh session doesn't show a noisy number. Keep going. The timer also resets each time Cull Mode opens.

A coverage checklist item won't tick on its own

The list auto-ticks when P lands on a photo whose keywords match the item exactly, or whose description or headline includes the item anywhere in the text. Capitalization does not matter. Double-check the spelling on the keyword pill, or click the circle to tick it by hand.

Tab keeps landing on the same burst

Tab jumps past the current burst to the first frame of the next one. If the next burst is also a single-frame stack, the cursor lands there. Press Tab again to keep skipping.

A photo I already rejected keeps showing up

Arrow keys skip rejects on the way forward. If you walked backward with Left, you can land on a rejected frame again. Press Right or Tab to step past it.

  • Preview tab

    The triage row, prev/next navigation, and Compare / Survey. Same keystrokes; Cull Mode just gives them a focused full-screen home.

  • Photo Stacks

    Bursts collapse into one card. Cull Mode walks every member of every stack, with the candidate ringed amber in the bottom strip.

  • Keyboard Shortcuts

    The complete keystroke list for the app, including the Cull Mode keymap.

  • Glossary

    Definitions for Pick, Maybe, Reject, candidate-reject, burst, stack, and the rest of the cull vocabulary.