Your originals are never changed
Culling and developing a shoot means thousands of small writes; this page says where each lands, and why none reaches the photograph or the card it came from.
What a decision or an edit writes
Mark a frame Take, give it four stars, put a colour label on it, crop it, clean a spot, lift its shadows: each is written into the library folder, never into the photograph.
A decision, rating, colour label, keyword, caption or note goes to two places, in this order:
- The library's index,
library.sqlite3in the library folder, at once, the instant the key returns. - An XMP file beside the photograph, a moment later in the background. It is a small
.xmptext file named after the frame (DSCF1234.xmpbesideDSCF1234.RAF), inside the library'sOriginals/folder.
A crop, a spot clean or a slider goes the other way round. The XMP file is written at once, and it is the record. The index keeps a copy so that a big library opens quickly, and when the two disagree Vixlo trusts the file. A frame you have never decided, rated, labelled, keyworded, captioned, noted or developed has no XMP file at all.
While Learn from my decisions is on, a decision is also counted, as a line of numbers, in the log proposals learn from, in Vixlo's own folder. Nothing decides for you says what that log holds.
None of these writes opens the photograph. It is the same bytes it was when it was copied in, and the cull page's title bar says so on every library: Originals read-only.
What you see is the photograph plus its XMP file
Every view of the frame draws the photograph through its current adjustments and crop. That is the launch screen's What you see is the metadata applied: one photograph, one set of settings, read by every view. Another program that opens Originals/ sees your rating, label, keywords and caption in the standard fields.
Export builds a new file
Export is the one control that writes a full-size image file. It reads your original, applies your develop settings, and writes a new JPEG or TIFF into the folder you choose, with its own .xmp sidecar carrying the rating, label and favourite. The picker says Nothing is written to your originals. Export: full-size files covers the formats.
Hand off writes sidecars into a folder you choose
Hand off takes… (⌘E) writes one .xmp sidecar per Take plus a decisions.json manifest, into a folder you choose. No image bytes move. Write to folder… opens a folder picker that says: Choose a folder for the XMP sidecars and decisions.json. Nothing is copied, moved, or deleted — your originals stay exactly where they are. When it is done, the sheet's message ends with Your originals were not touched. Using a hand-off in your editor covers getting the sidecars beside your photographs.
The card or folder you imported from
An import copies each file into the folder on the review's Working library row, which starts as the library's Originals/ folder, checks each copy against the file it came from, and adds a frame to the library only as that verified copy, never at its place on the card. So the source is read at import, and never written to: no XMP file goes into it, no file is marked as imported, nothing is deleted from it, during the import or afterwards. The import sheet says Originals stay untouched on the source the whole time. The review also refuses a Working library or Backup — a separate drive folder on the card itself, so nothing is written there (What counts as the card).
Every way of starting an import opens the one Review this import sheet. A file whose copy did not verify is left out, and the card stays the only place it exists until you scan it again. Importing from a card or a folder walks through the sheet.
Vixlo never formats a card. Safe to format is information for you to act on in the camera; When a card is safe to format has the rule.
Choose… on the review's Working library row accepts a folder outside the library's own folder, and that import's copies go there. Vixlo refuses a folder on the card, but it does not check the row against the library.
The photographs are copied and verified, and you can cull them, but the index points at the copies where they sit. They get no .xmp file, so their decisions live in the index alone and adjustments cannot be stored for them; a rebuild does not find them; and Empty bin… refuses them. An Earlier library has no folder of its own, so a scan into one starts in Application Support/Vixlo7/Originals, and the same follows. Leave the row where it starts. To bring frames that are already outside the library inside it, scan the same card or folder again with the row on the library's own Originals folder (Scanning a card again).
A name already in Originals
Importing never replaces a photograph in Originals/ with different bytes. When a file arrives whose name another photograph already has, as when two cameras both write DSCF0100.RAF, it is copied beside the first under the next free number: DSCF0100-2.RAF, its JPEG DSCF0100-2.JPG, and whatever you later write about it in DSCF0100-2.xmp. A name belongs to one photograph whatever its extension, so a RAW+JPEG pair is never split across two numbers.
A file the library already holds, with its copy in Originals/ still there and unchanged, is not copied again. A file that is the same photograph as the one under that name, but that the library has no record of, is copied again onto the same name: Vixlo verifies the new copy and then replaces the identical file with it. What an import copies has the rest.
The three Earlier libraries and the earlier build's folder
The three Earlier library rows on the launch screen come from before each library was a folder of its own. Their photographs are bundled in the app, read where they sit and never moved, and no XMP file is written for them: their decisions, ratings and labels live in the index alone, and develop settings cannot be stored at all (Known limits). Import this library… copies a row's photographs, with your decisions, into a new library through the same verified copy as any import (Importing an Earlier library). If this Mac has sessions from the earlier build of Vixlo, the app asks once whether to bring their decisions across, reading that folder and never writing to, moving or deleting it (Decisions from the earlier build).