How a shoot is grouped
Vixlo never asks you to sort a shoot by hand. Every group it shows is read from the photographs' own metadata or from your own marks: when they were taken, which camera and lens took them, the stars you gave them. This page covers what those groups are, how a session is cut and named, and where you change the grouping. You need it when the headings in Frames or the tree in the Groups pane are not the shape you want.
Grouping is a way of looking
Grouping moves nothing. No file is renamed or moved and no decision is written, however you group a shoot. A new library starts grouped by Camera body, then by Session, sorted by capture time, with similar frames stacked — the arrangement the files themselves suggest — and the grouping you choose is remembered with the library.
Choosing a grouping also leaves you exactly where you are. The frame you are on stays on screen, in the view you are in; the groups rearrange around it.
The axes
Each axis reads one piece of metadata, and the grouping menu says which under every row:
- Session — capture time, split on a gap (see below).
- Capture date — the month. Frames heads each month; the Groups pane's tree opens each month into its days.
- Camera body — the body named in the file's EXIF.
- Source card — the folder each frame's file is in. See the caution below.
- Lens — the lens model in the EXIF.
- Rating — the stars you have given.
- Culling state — Undecided, Take, Hold or Reject.
- Session cards — one card per session instead of rows; see Session cards.
Source card does not split a shoot by card. It names each group after the folder the frame's file is in, and an imported frame's file is the library's own copy, which Vixlo puts straight into the folder named in the review's Working library row, normally the library's Originals folder, with no folder for the card. So every frame copied in groups under one heading, the name of that folder, normally Originals, whichever card it came from. An import you pointed at another folder with Choose… groups under that folder's name. The one other exception is a frame an earlier version of Vixlo left pointing at its card: it groups under the card's folder name until a second import of that card brings it into the library, and then it joins the copied-in frames. The line under the axis in the grouping menu, Card or tether the files came from, promises more than 0.1 does.
To tell the parts of a shoot apart, group by Session or Capture date, which read capture times and so follow the shoot rather than the folder.
A grouping has at most two levels: Group by and Then by. The second level never offers the axis the first is already using, and it never offers Session cards, because the cards are one level with nothing under them.
Sessions: capture time, split on a gap
A session is a run of frames with no silence in it longer than the gap you choose: 15, 30, 45 or 90 minutes, and every library opens at 45. Change it and every session is cut again at once; a message says what that did, Session gap 30 min · 6 sessions from capture time, and nothing on disk moves. Frames with no capture time make one session of their own at the end, called Undated. Each session is named only from facts the library holds, the named people in it, the time of day and the place: Maya and Noah · afternoon · Rome, Italy. Sessions covers the gap, how a name is built and everywhere it appears.
Where to change the grouping
Two places change the arrangement, and they are one setting.
- The Frames header. Under the count line, a sentence reads Grouped by Camera body → Session · similar frames stacked · sorted by capture time · in sections, and each phrase with a chevron is a menu on those very words. Click the words that say what you want to change.
- The Organise and filter pane in the side panel, which lays every choice out as chips you can see the whole of — see Organise and filter.
The Groups pane builds its tree from the same two axes and names them in its header, but has no control that changes them — see The Groups pane.
The grouping menu's first row is From the photographs’ metadata — camera body, then session. Choose it to put the two axes, the sort and the stacking back to what the files say; a message confirms Grouped from metadata and that nothing moved on disk. Under it are the first level, then SECOND LEVEL · MAXIMUM TWO with None at the top.
Stacks: a burst behind one cover
Frames that look alike — a burst, a run of near-identical frames — are stacked behind one cover, and the cover's cell carries a count badge. similar frames stacked and stacks expanded are the two settings, on a phrase of the Frames header (the second, or the third under Session cards) and on a switch in Organise and filter. How alike frames must be to stack is the Similar photos slider in the same pane; no setting of it rejects anything. Press ↩ on a frame that is in a stack to open the stack and look through it.
Some stacks are never cut by that slider: an exposure bracket, a panorama sweep and an HDR panorama, which Vixlo calls sets. They are one photograph spread across several files, so Vixlo keeps them whole at every setting, and the cover says so — bracket of 3 · kept whole, panorama of 6 · kept whole. Sets kept whole covers what that means, and How Vixlo recognises a set the rules it finds them by.
Sections, or one grid
The Frames header's last phrase, in sections or in one grid, is the one arrangement that lives only there. In sections, each group has its heading. In one grid, the whole pass is one sheet in its sort order (a search's own order, while a search is up; see Organise and filter) with no headings at all, the way a phone's photo library scrolls. It is a display choice: the pass, the frame you are on, the tree and the stacks are the same either way, so you can switch mid-pass without starting over.