Compare
Compare shows two photographs at once: the frame you are on, at the left, and at the right the best other frame Vixlo can find to set against it. Use it to choose between neighbours, or to settle a Hold. It measures and never decides: nothing in it changes a frame unless you press a decision key.
Opening Compare
Press C on the frame you want to settle. There is no button for it and no View menu item. From Frames, C leaves the contact sheet for Compare. It opens on the frame you are already on and moves nothing, and it does not gather your holds: to work through them, click Holds on the views line first, then press C. Keys in Compare lists every key it answers.
Two buttons lead here too, and each shows Compare on the screen you press it from. Review holds, in the Hand off dialog, closes the dialog and opens Compare on the frame you were on, whether you were in Single or in Frames. Pressed from the edit page, it takes you back to the cull first (Hand off takes). Resolve gap, on a session card, chooses the session's first Hold, or its first frame when it has none, and shows Compare on it in place of the cards (Session cards).
What is on screen
Above the photographs a heading reads RESOLVE HOLDS, with a line under it such as 4 frames need a decision · same session first. The number is every frame in the library that is on Hold, whatever pass you are in. At the right end are two buttons, covered under Looking closer.
The card at the left is headed CANDIDATE: the frame you are on, drawn raised with a brighter edge. Every decision key acts on it, and the header above Compare is about it. The card at the right is headed BEST IN THIS SESSION when it came from the group the candidate was filed under at import and CLOSEST ELSEWHERE when Compare had to look further. Each card shows the decision as a badge (Take, Hold, Reject or Undecided) and, under the photograph, the file name, the sharpness, the time taken and the exposure, each only when Vixlo has it. With proposals on, a frame that carries one also wears its mark and proposed Take or proposed Reject, and a frame the app asks you to look at wears its mark and look at this — no proposal.
Compare has no row under the photograph, so it has no Develop, Focus check or colour label tag. ⋯ ▸ Colour label… and the edit page still work.
How Compare chooses and measures says which frame goes at the right, what the sharpness figure is and what the line under the pair means.
Looking closer
Two buttons end the heading. Neither has a key, and neither is remembered: a library reopens with Linked and fit.
- 100% enlarges the photographs about a third, about their centres, and then reads Fit. The zoom stays on as you step through the pass.
- Linked means both enlarge together. Click it and it reads Independent: only the candidate enlarges, and the frame at the right stays at fit.
100% is not a pixel view. It enlarges the 2048-pixel culling preview by a third and cannot be panned. To judge focus on the file's own pixels, press Space to put the candidate full screen and zoom in there with ⌘-scroll, a pinch or a double-click; past the preview's own pixels Vixlo sharpens to the full-size picture (Full screen). Compare stays where it is underneath. On a Retina display you can also press G, point at a frame and hold Z for the loupe, but on any other display the loupe stays on the preview (Zoom and the focus check).
Deciding in Compare
T, H, R and U, the stars 0 to 5, N and the three buttons on the pass line act on the candidate and never touch the frame at the right. With auto-advance on, a decision moves the candidate to the next frame in the pass and Compare chooses a new frame for the right. To decide the frame at the right, make it the candidate by stepping to it, if the pass holds it.
The exception is a proposed pair: one frame proposed as the Take and the other for the bin. There ↩, ⇧↩, H and ⇧H decide both frames at once, and ⌘↩ accepts the pair just as ↩ does. A proposed pair in Compare says what each does.
These keys act on the pair only while Compare is on screen. Press G and the contact sheet takes over, though Compare waits behind it for your return: H then holds only the frame under the orange ring, ↩ does what it does in Frames, and ⇧↩ and ⇧H do nothing. The full screen that Space opens over Compare is the same (Full screen).
If the library holds no other photograph, the right-hand card is a dashed box reading Nothing else to compare against, with This is the only frame in the pass. under it.
The canvas reads Nothing to compare only when the library holds no photograph at all. In an empty pass of a library that has photographs, Compare opens on the library's first photograph, which is not in the pass, and the decision keys decide it (When a pass is empty).
Leaving Compare
Compare is a second canvas for Single, so leaving it means putting the photograph back. Any of these does it, and the frame you are on stays the frame you are on:
- Press
Cagain.Cis a toggle: it opens Compare from Single or Frames, and from Compare it shows Single. Holding the key down toggles once, not over and over. - Press
Esc. It closes whatever is open nearer first, one thing for each press, and with nothing else open it shows Single. The order is under Switching between them. - Click Single on the views line, which is lit while Compare is up, or choose View ▸ Single (
⌘1). - Go to Frames with
G, then double-click a frame or click the one with the orange ring. Single opens on it. A double-click on a stack's cover opens the Stack Resolver instead.
G alone does not leave Compare. It takes you to the contact sheet, and G again, or Esc, brings you back to Compare, because that round trip returns you to the canvas you left.
Vixlo remembers the canvas with the library, so a library you quit in Compare reopens in Compare. The same ways out apply.