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Sets kept whole

An exposure bracket and a panorama sweep are each one photograph shot as several files. Cull one down to a single winner and you have not tidied it, you have broken it. So Vixlo looks for these on its own and keeps each one together as a set. This page covers what a set is, how it shows on screen and what kept whole does and does not mean. How Vixlo recognises a set has the rules it goes by.

What counts as a set​

There are three kinds, and a frame is in at most one of them.

  • A bracket is three or more frames of one scene taken at different exposures.
  • A panorama is four or more frames panned across a scene, each overlapping the one before.
  • An HDR panorama is a panorama whose frames also differ in exposure, or a sweep of brackets.

Vixlo does not go by file names or by any bracketing or panorama mode in the camera. It works from the exposure each frame was taken at and from the picture itself.

What a set looks like​

A set is one stack with a chip that says what it is and how many frames are in it: bracket of 3 · kept whole, panorama of 6 · kept whole, HDR panorama of 15 · kept whole.

  • In Frames, the chip sits at the top-right of the set's cover. It is drawn only on a row tall enough to carry it. With similar frames stacked, the cover stands for the set and its badge counts the frames behind it; with stacks expanded, every frame of the set wears the chip.
  • In the Stack Resolver, the chip stands beside the STACK RESOLVER label, and the line under it names the kind, as in 6 frames · panorama. A set carries no percentage there, because Vixlo measured it in stops and frame widths, not on the scale of how alike two pictures look.
  • In Single there is no chip. Single is one frame at a time, and ← and → still step through every frame of a set.

A Frames cell for a bracket's cover, with its count badge and the chip bracket of 3 kept whole

Press ↩ on a frame of a set to open the resolver. Frames covers what you can do in it.

The Stack Resolver open on a panorama, with the chip beside its label and the six frames in the strip

Which frame is the cover​

The cover is the frame that stands for the set.

  • A bracket is led by its base exposure. When the camera varied its exposure compensation from frame to frame, that is the frame nearest zero. When it did not, as in a bracket rolled by hand in manual, or when no compensation was recorded, it is the middle exposure; with an even number of frames, the darker of the two in the middle.
  • A panorama, or an HDR panorama whose exposures vary across the sweep, is led by the frame in the middle of the sweep.
  • An HDR panorama made of brackets is led by the base exposure of its middle bracket.

What kept whole means​

Keeping a set whole is about grouping. It decides nothing.

  • The Similar photos slider never cuts a set and never folds it into a bigger group. A set is the same stack at every setting.
  • A frame in a set joins no other stack.
  • Vixlo proposes nothing about the frames of a set, so it can never suggest binning one frame of a bracket. See The nine rules.
  • Every frame is still yours to decide. Take, Hold or Reject any of them one at a time, or use Reject Entire Stack in the resolver, which asks first.