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Photo Stacks

Summary

Jade GT groups burst-shot frames into a single card so you cull the whole burst with one keystroke. A stack is two or more photos taken within three seconds of each other that also look alike. Stacks appear automatically a few seconds after you load a shoot; press P, X, or U on a stack card and the decision applies to every frame inside.

  • Burst-only

    A stack needs both: photos within three seconds AND visually similar. A wide and a tight shot of the same person at the same instant stay separate cards.

  • One-keystroke culling

    Press P on a collapsed stack and Jade GT picks every frame in the burst. Press X and it rejects every frame. Press U to clear the flag and re-decide.

  • Inline expand

    Click the 1 of N badge to expand a stack inline. The individual frames slide in below the keeper. Click again to collapse.

The Photos panel with a stack keeper card. A dark "1 of N" pill sits in the top-right corner of the thumbnail, marking the keeper of a burst. The Photos panel with a stack keeper card. A dark "1 of N" pill sits in the top-right corner of the thumbnail, marking the keeper of a burst.
A stack keeper card in the Photos panel. The dark 1 of N pill marks the burst and toggles the inline expand.

How a stack gets built

Jade GT builds stacks in your browser. Two photos belong in the same stack when both of these are true:

  1. Their capture times fall within three seconds of each other.
  2. Their visual fingerprints (the same kind that powers near-duplicate grouping) look enough alike to be the same scene.

No model, no cloud. The keeper is the earliest frame by capture time, so the same shoot picks the same keeper every time, even after you rename files.

When stacks appear

Jade GT starts a background build a few seconds after each import so the EXIF read finishes first. To rebuild any time, open the Command Palette with Cmd+K and pick Build photo stacks from bursts.

What the keeper card shows

A stack keeper looks like a regular photo row with a dark 1 of N pill in the top-right corner. The pill works two ways: it marks the photo as a stack and it expands the stack when you click it.

Close-up of a stack keeper card. The thumbnail carries a dark "1 of 3" pill in the top-right corner, with the file name, size, capture date, and No Location chip to the right. Close-up of a stack keeper card. The thumbnail carries a dark "1 of 3" pill in the top-right corner, with the file name, size, capture date, and No Location chip to the right.

The keeper holds the staged metadata for the whole burst until you expand and edit a frame on its own. Triage flags, color labels, and star ratings you set on a collapsed keeper carry to every member at write time.

Close-up of an expanded stack. The keeper sits at the top with its "1 of N" pill flipped to an up-arrow, and a sibling frame appears below it. Close-up of an expanded stack. The keeper sits at the top with its "1 of N" pill flipped to an up-arrow, and a sibling frame appears below it.

Cull a stack in one keystroke

The shortest path from "open a shoot" to "deliver a gallery" with heavy burst shooting:

  1. Open the shoot. Wait for the Found N burst stacks toast.
  2. Scroll the gallery. Every burst is one card.
  3. For each stack card:
    • If the burst is good: press P. Every frame in the stack is picked.
    • If the burst is throwaway: press X. Every frame is rejected.
    • If you need to look closer: press C with only the keeper selected. Compare and Survey opens with up to four stack members synced for pixel-level review. Pick the keeper inside Compare with P and the others auto-reject.

The toast confirms how many frames the decision touched: Picked 1 photo (3 stacked frames included).

Expand when you want per-frame control

Click the 1 of N badge once and the stack expands inline. Now P, M, X, U, color labels, and ratings act on the selected frame only. Collapse again from the same badge.

Reject one, candidate-reject the rest

Once a stack is expanded, rejecting a single frame inside it does not auto-reject the others. Instead, the rest pick up a soft candidate-reject hint (a red dotted ring). The hint says "the rest of this burst probably belongs in the bin too." Press X to confirm any candidate, or U to clear the hint. The hint also clears on its own when you change the original frame's flag away from Reject. See the candidate-reject glossary entry for more.

Command What it does
Build photo stacks from bursts Force a rebuild now. Useful after you load more photos or after large metadata edits.
Expand all photo stacks Show every frame inside every stack. Use before a per-frame pass.
Collapse all photo stacks Hide stacked frames so only the keepers show. The default view.
Disband all photo stacks Remove all stack assignments. Photos stay in your library; they just stop being grouped.

All four live in the Command Palette under the View group. Open the palette with Cmd+K (or Ctrl+K).

When stacks are NOT created

  • Photos more than three seconds apart, even if they look alike.
  • Photos within three seconds that look different (a wide and a tight, two cameras, two subjects).
  • Photos that could not be read for visual hashing (rare; usually a corrupt file). They appear as normal cards and stay unstacked.

Stacking does not change your files

Stacks live in your browser, like picks and color labels. They survive a reload. They never write to EXIF and never change your photos. Disband all stacks any time without losing data.

Troubleshooting

No stacks appeared after import

The stack build runs a few seconds after the EXIF read so it has accurate capture times to work with. Wait for the Found N burst stacks toast. If it never arrives, open the Command Palette (Cmd+K) and pick Build photo stacks from bursts to force a rebuild.

A burst is split into two stacks

The gap between two frames probably crossed three seconds, or the visual fingerprints diverged (a quick zoom, a recompose). Stacking is per-cluster, not per-burst. Pick a keeper in each stack, or live with the split.

Two photos that shouldn't be together got stacked

They were captured within three seconds AND look enough alike to share a fingerprint. Expand the stack and treat each frame on its own, or run Disband all photo stacks from the Command Palette to drop every stack assignment.

The keeper is the wrong frame

Jade GT picks the earliest frame by capture time so the choice stays the same across runs. To pick a different keeper, expand the stack and triage the frames one at a time, or open the burst in Compare (C) and press P on the frame you want.

I rebuilt and my picks moved

Picks and color labels are per-photo, not per-stack. A rebuild only changes which photos group together. Your decisions stay on the frames you applied them to.

  • Preview tab

    Where the triage row and Compare / Survey live. Press C on a stack keeper to compare the whole burst.

  • Find near-duplicates without AI

    The same fingerprint that powers stacking, applied across the whole shoot.

  • Keyboard Shortcuts

    The full keystroke list including the stack toggles.

  • Glossary

    Definitions for fingerprint, keeper, burst, and the rest.