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The three presets

Vixlo ships three keyboards. They differ only in the keys for Take and Reject, and in Additional Take, which each preset sets beside Take; every other shortcut is the same in all three. Choose the one your hands already know, or keep Vixlo's own.

Choosing a preset​

  1. Choose Vixlo ▸ Keyboard… from the menu bar. It opens with a library open, and from the launch screen with none.
  2. At the top of the sheet, under Presets, are three cards. Click one.
  3. A line in orange just above the list of keys confirms it at once — The Lightroom keyboard: Adobe’s own flag keys — P pick, X reject, U unflag — and every key in the list changes with it.
  4. Click Done.

The chosen card is lit; the other two are plain. The menu bar, the decision buttons on the pass line, the Your keys panel and the held map all name the new keys.

A few hints on the edit page are fixed text: the hover text on the undo arrow beside Back to cull and on Reset all, which name ⌘Z, and the Shortcuts reminder's Arrows move between takes. All three presets use those keys, so a preset never makes them wrong; they would be out of date only if you changed Undo, Previous or Next by hand. See Keys on the edit page.

The three preset cards at the top of the Keyboard sheet, Vixlo lit

Each card carries a line saying whose keyboard it is:

  • Vixlo — T take · R reject · H hold · Space full screen
  • Lightroom — Adobe’s own flag keys — P pick, X reject, U unflag
  • Photo Mechanic — Camera Bits’ tagging key T, with X for the bin

What differs​

ActionVixloLightroomPhoto Mechanic
TakeTPT
RejectRXX
Additional Take⇧T⇧P⇧T

In each preset, Additional Take is ⇧ plus Take. Recording a new key for Take by hand changes Take and nothing else: Additional Take stays where it was until you change it too, so Take on J does not give you ⇧J.

Vixlo is the app's own: T, R and H sit together under one hand, and the space bar shows the photograph full screen.

Lightroom puts Take on P and Reject on X, two of the three letters its card names. The third, U for unflag, is Clear to undecided in every preset.

Photo Mechanic keeps Take on T and puts Reject on X, as its card says.

What stays the same​

Everything else is identical in all three presets. Hold is H in every one, Hold both in Compare is ⇧H, Clear to undecided is U and Full screen is Space. So are the arrows, Z, E, C, G, [, N, A, ↩, the digits for the star rating, and the shortcuts with ⌘. The full list is on Every key on the cull page.

When the map is nobody's preset​

Change any one key by hand and the map is no longer a preset. The three cards all go plain and a line under them says so: Your own keys — no preset matches this map. Nothing else changes; your keys are exactly as you set them. Clicking a card again puts that whole keyboard back, replacing every key you changed.

The Keyboard sheet after a change by hand: three plain cards, the line under them, and the confirmation above the list

Reset to defaults, at the foot of the sheet, is the Vixlo keyboard again — the same as clicking the Vixlo card.

tip

The preset is a fact about you, not about a library. Open any library on this Mac and the keys are the ones you chose. See Changing a key for where they are kept.