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The New library card

The New library card is where a library starts. It sits at the top right of the launch screen. This page covers its controls, the recent folders it offers, why the library must not sit on the card you import from, and what happens to a library you began if you leave the wizard before the photographs are in. The wizard itself, step by step, is in Creating a library.

The card​

Under its title the card says Choose where it lives, then a source.

  • Choose location… starts the three-step wizard: location, source, rules.
  • Start from the detected card · EOS_DIGITAL appears only when a card is in the Mac: a removable disk with a DCIM folder. Any other removable disk reads Start from NAME. Either opens the wizard with that disk as the source.
  • Open existing library… opens a folder picker that says Choose an existing library's folder — the one that holds its library.sqlite3. This is how you open a library that moved, or one you asked the launch screen to forget.
  • Under RECENT LOCATIONS, up to three folders that hold the libraries on the screen are listed, most recently opened first, each with its disk's free space (1.2 TB free) when the disk reports it. Click one to start the wizard there.

The Earlier libraries count as libraries here. They live in Vixlo7, a folder inside Library/Application Support in your home folder, so until your own libraries sit in three different folders one of the paths ends in Library/Application Support itself. That is the Mac's shared folder for the files of every app, not a place for your work; Vixlo's own folders, Vixlo and Vixlo7, are two of the folders inside it. Choose one of your own folders instead.

The New library card with a detected card, Open existing library and two recent locations

Keeping the library off the card​

When you start from a card, choose a location on a different drive. The card is what you will format, so a library folder on it, or a backup folder on it, can never hold the copies that make it safe. The review refuses both, in red under the folder rows, and Start import stays greyed out until they are elsewhere:

  • The working library folder is on the card being imported — formatting the card would erase every copy in it. Choose a folder on another drive.
  • This backup folder is on the card being imported — formatting the card would erase it, so it can never be the second copy. Choose a folder on another drive.

On a camera card, anywhere on the card's disk is on the card. For a folder you scan that is not a camera card, anywhere inside that folder is.

If it is the library that sits on the card, press Cancel on the review. While Originals is still empty that forgets the library and removes its empty folder, as the next section says, and you can start again from Choose location… with a place on another drive. Choosing another folder in the review's Working library row would put the copies outside the library's folder, which Opening, switching and closing advises against.

Leaving the wizard after Create library​

Create library makes the library before anything is copied into it, so what becomes of it when you leave the import sheet that follows depends on what is in its Originals folder.

  • While Originals is still empty, Cancel on the review, Close on Couldn't scan that source, or Esc forgets the library again. Its folder is removed too if it is still the empty folder Vixlo laid down; a folder with anything else in it is never touched.
  • Once Originals holds anything, Close or Esc keeps the library on the launch screen like any other, and nothing in Originals moves.

The second case begins sooner than the first photograph. Start import puts a small hidden file into Originals before it copies anything, so that an import that stops can carry on, and a run that is cancelled keeps it. Press Start import and stop the run before its first photograph lands — Cancel import and then Close, or Esc — and the library stays, with its folder, reading EMPTY, No photographs yet and Add photographs.

Only Continue to culling puts the copies into the library. A library closed before that reads EMPTY, No photographs yet and Add photographs, whatever its Originals folder holds. Rebuild the index… under More reads that folder in.