Opening, switching and closing
One library is open at a time. This page covers opening one, telling which is open, switching, adding photographs, and closing. What Vixlo remembers between sittings is on What comes back when you reopen a library.
Opening a library
On the launch screen, click the button on its row — Resume cull, Resolve holds, Hand off or Add photographs. All four open the library; the word only says what is left to do in it.
For a library that is not in the list — one you moved to another drive, or one you asked the screen to forget — click Open existing library… and choose its folder, the one that holds its library.sqlite3. From then on the list knows where it is. If nothing happens, see When Open existing library… does nothing.
A library whose drive is unplugged, or whose folder has moved, is not in the list until its folder can be read again. When a library is missing from the list says how to bring it back.
Knowing which library is open
The cull page says which library is open in three places:
- The window's title is Vixlo — Alpine week. The window hides its title bar, so the title shows in the Window menu.
- The title bar across the top of the page shows the name over its folder's path in the centre. An Earlier library has no folder of its own, so the line under its name counts what it holds instead, such as 2 cameras · 25 frames — or, after you scan a source into it, 120 files scanned until you close it. The two lines are one button: click it to open the library menu described below. At the right, Originals read-only and Saved with a tick — or Not saved, in red, if a decision did not reach the disk (Not saved, in red).
- The side panel's foot, under whichever pane is open, holds two standing facts. The first says where the photographs are, from where the frames actually point: Photographs copied in over Decisions are metadata · originals stay untouched. If some frames point at files outside the library's folder, it reads Originals referenced or, for a mix, a count such as 3 copied in · 120 referenced; scanning the same card again brings those frames inside. An Earlier library has no folder to measure against and reads Library in memory instead; see the caution below. The second is the free space on the library's disk, 1.2 TB free, over Originals stay untouched. A library with nothing in it yet reads Nothing imported yet over the same line.
Library in memory sounds as if an Earlier library's decisions were not kept. They are kept: each is written to the library's index in Vixlo's own Application Support/Vixlo7 folder the moment you make it, and the title bar's Saved says so. The words appear only because the library has no folder of its own to measure its photographs against.
Switching to another library
You do not have to go back to the list. Click the library's name in the title bar, or open the ⋯ menu at the end of the views line, under the photograph, and choose Library…. Either way a menu headed OPEN LIBRARY lists every library Vixlo knows, each with its path and what is left in it:
- 14 unreviewed, in orange — frames nobody has looked at;
- 3 holds, in amber — every frame reviewed, holds remain;
- ready, in green — no frame unreviewed and no holds, which is also what a library with no photographs reads;
- not connected — the library's folder cannot be found: its drive is unplugged, or the folder was moved or deleted. It cannot be opened until the folder is back.
An Earlier library you have never opened shows no state at all. The open library wears a tick. Click another and the cull page changes over to it: its frames, its counts, its pass. Nothing needs saving first — every decision was written the moment you made it.
Two more rows sit under the list:
- Scan a card or folder… adds photographs to this library; the next section follows it.
- All libraries… takes you to the launch screen.
Adding photographs to the open library
Scan a card or folder…, File ▸ Scan Source… (⌘O) and File ▸ Import… are one action reached three ways. A panel asks you to Choose a folder or card to scan for photos., and the Review this import sheet opens, the one the first import uses. Adding a card to a library you already have walks through it.
The photographs are copied into this library's own Originals folder, and nothing reaches the library until its copy is checked, so a frame never points at the card. The review's Working library row starts on that folder. Leave it there: a photograph copied outside the library's folder gets no XMP file and is left out when the index is rebuilt. An Earlier library's row starts instead on the Originals folder inside Vixlo's own Application Support/Vixlo7 folder. The review refuses a Working library or Backup — a separate drive folder that is on the card being scanned, with a sentence that says why (Keeping the library off the card).
A card you have scanned before is matched by what is in its files, not by their names, so what the library holds is not copied in again, and a second scan with a backup chosen can give every file its second copy. Scanning a card again follows it.
Continue to culling at the end adds the verified copies to the library and shows Source scan complete, with Group from metadata. Close keeps the copies in Originals without adding them; Rebuild the index… on the launch screen reads them in.
On the edit page the two File items take you back to the cull page first. While a review or a copy is on screen, none of the three starts another. With every window closed the two File items are greyed out until File ▸ New Window opens one, and with no library open the File menu has neither.
Closing a library
File ▸ Close Library (⇧⌘W) closes the library and returns to the launch screen, where it moves to the top of the list — except an Earlier library row, which stays at the bottom. All libraries… in the ⋯ menu does the same.
Renaming and forgetting
Both are on the launch screen, under the row's More menu. Rename changes the name Vixlo shows and leaves the folder's name alone; Forget… removes the row from the list and touches nothing on disk. Libraries on the launch screen has the words each one shows.