Adding a card to a library you already have
A library can take more photographs at any time: a second card from the same shoot, or a folder you forgot. This page covers the three ways to start, which all do the same thing, and where the copies go.
Three ways in
Open the library, then use any one of these:
- ⋯ ▸ Library… ▸ Scan a card or folder…. ⋯ is at the right-hand end of the views line.
- File ▸ Scan Source… (
⌘O). - File ▸ Import….
A panel asks you to Choose a folder or card to scan for photos. Choose it and press Scan, and the same Review this import sheet opens in the library that is open. It copies and verifies exactly as Importing from a card or a folder describes. Nothing reaches the library's catalog until you press Continue to culling, and every frame it adds is the library's own copy, not a link to the card.
A few things about the File items:
- On the edit page, either one takes you back to the cull first, where the review is drawn.
- While a review or a copy is on screen,
⌘Oand File ▸ Import… do nothing, even from another window on the same library. Finish or cancel the one that is open first. - With two windows on the same library, the review opens in the window you used.
- With no window open, both are greyed out; open one with File ▸ New Window. On the launch screen the File menu has neither, because no library is open: a first import starts from Create library.
- Cancel in the folder panel does nothing at all.
Where the copies go
The review's Working library row names the open library's own Originals folder, the one inside its folder, and ALREADY IMPORTED counts the files that library already holds there, every time you scan. Choose… beside the row lets you choose another folder for that review only. The next review starts from Originals again, and so does the first one after you open another library. A copy made in another folder is outside the library, so scanning the card again offers those files as new and copies them into Originals (Importing the same card again).
The Backup — a separate drive row works differently: it keeps the folder you chose in an earlier review. Look at it each time, and press Choose… to change it. It is also how a card imported without a backup gets its second copy: scan it again with a backup chosen (Importing the same card again).
The three Earlier libraries have no folder of their own, so the row proposes a folder inside Vixlo's support folder, Application Support/Vixlo7/Originals. Importing an Earlier library copies one into a library of your own.
What it does to the library
Adding photographs clears the library's ⌘Z history. Every decision already made is kept; only the steps to undo them are gone. A scan that adds nothing, because the card holds nothing new or because the run only made backup copies, changes nothing, and the history stays.
An empty library reads No photographs yet on the launch screen, and its button says Add photographs. Pressing it opens the empty library, whose canvas says This library is empty and Scan a card or a folder to put photographs in it.; the ⋯ at the right-hand end of the views line is the way in.
If the scan cannot read what you chose, the sheet says Couldn't scan that source with the reason, and nothing has been copied.