Separate choosing from organising
Use Loupe to judge one image, Compare for alternatives and Survey for a selected group. Stars, flags and labels express your decisions. Albums and filters gather the resulting set without needing to duplicate files. A Reject flag is different from deleting a file.
If an expected photo disappears, clear filters and check Rejected, the current album and stack state before importing again. Use 100% to judge detail rather than relying on a small thumbnail. The reference covers views, selection, stacks, variants and batch metadata.
Library
The Library is where you look at everything you have, choose what is worth developing, and keep it organised.
The left panel has Library and Browse tabs. Library shows your catalog; Browse explores folders and drives, previews their photos in the main grid, and imports only the photos you tick. Ctrl+I goes directly to Browse. Import settings appear on the right, with no separate photo import window.
The layout
- Sources (left): All Photographs, Quick Collection, Previous Import, Recently Added, Recently Edited, Recently Exported, Rejected, Offline, the folder tree, albums, smart albums, keywords and mounted devices. Every count is live.
- Browser (centre): the grid of cards. The toolbar above it holds search, the star, flag and label filters, the funnel for more filters, saved filters, sort order and the card size.
- Inspector (right): the histogram, every metadata group, keywords and the sidecar state. Switch to Develop to adjust a photo or apply a preset.
- Filmstrip (bottom): the same photos as a strip, with the current one marked. Drag the scrollbar beneath the previews to browse left or right; the arrow buttons select the previous or next photo.
Views
- Grid (G): cards with thumbnail, stars, flag, label dot and badges. A badge shows the format, an edited mark, what the edit holds (crop, local adjustment, retouch), a pin for a place and a warning triangle for a sidecar changed outside OmaRAW.
- Loupe (E or double-click): one photo large. Roll the mouse wheel over the picture to zoom around the pointer; drag to pan. Wheel zoom also works on individual pictures in Compare and Survey.
- Compare (C): the current photo beside the other selected one, or the next.
- Survey (N): every selected photo at once.
- Detail list (L): the browser as a table. Click a column header to sort by it.
Selecting photos
Click a photo to select it. Hold Ctrl while clicking to add or remove individual photos. Click the first photo, then Shift-click the last to select the range between them. These controls work in Grid, Detail list and the Filmstrip. Ctrl+A selects every photo in the current view; Ctrl+D clears the selection. Selected photos have an accent-coloured border.
Albums
Select one or more photos, right-click a selected photo and choose Add to Album, then choose an existing album. The same command is under Library ▸ Albums. Nested albums include their parent names, for example Travel / Italy. New Album from Selection… creates an album and adds the selected photos. You can also right-click an album in Sources and choose Add Selection. Smart albums collect matching photos automatically through their rules.
Transferring adjustments
Right-click an edited photo and choose Copy Settings…, tick the adjustment groups to copy, then click Copy. Select the destination photos, right-click one of them and choose Paste Settings.
For a single batch, select the source and destination photos together, right-click the source and choose Sync Settings…. The dialog names the source and the other selected photos. Choose the adjustment groups and click Sync. These commands work directly in Library, including Detail list. Groups you do not choose keep their settings on each destination photo. Check copied masks and crop positions when the photos have different compositions. These commands act on catalog photos; return from Browse to Library first.
Finding photos
Search covers file name, camera, lens, path, keywords, title and caption. The star, flag and label buttons filter; the funnel adds type (RAW or not), edited state, place and camera. Sort by capture time, import time, file name, rating or edit time, and by Custom Order inside an album. Saved filters (the bookmark) keep a whole set under a name.
The status bar
Real totals for what is shown and selected, the current catalog, the engine's state and the colour configuration in use.
Photos with embedded GPS show latitude and longitude in the inspector. Open location in browser opens OpenStreetMap and shares those coordinates with the site only when you click it. Output’s Location (GPS) switch controls whether exported files include location data.
Automatic tags
The inspector's Automatic tagging switch enables or disables offline subject scanning. It also controls tagging on new folder imports. Off stops the worker and keeps existing tags, corrections and queued scans. Turn it back on to resume. Use Scan selected for existing photos while enabled, or Pause/Resume to stop work temporarily without changing the import switch.
Detected tags appear as removable labels. Click a label's cross to exclude it, or use Add / correct… to search 80 supported subjects and tick missed ones. Corrections survive rescanning. Use detections restores the last scan's labels. Manual corrections work even while scanning is off. Virtual copies share their original's tags; your keywords, edits, originals and exported metadata are unchanged.
Settings… chooses automatic collections for this catalog. People, Animals, Transport, Sports equipment and Food are selected initially and appear only once matches exist. Other objects and individual collections can be enabled separately. Unticking hides a collection and preserves its name and tags. Custom smart albums can use individual subjects or whole groups in the Auto tag rule.
Detection is a sorting aid: small, hidden or unusual subjects may be missed, and pictures or toys can be mistaken for real objects. Scenery such as landscapes, beaches and sunsets is outside this model's supported subjects.
Catalog maintenance and browsing speed
Open File ▸ Catalog Maintenance ▸ Overview… to see the active catalog's location and size, the latest backup folder, and browsing-cache usage. Check Catalog Integrity… runs in the background and leaves a result in this window. Show report includes the check time, locations and individual results; Copy report copies it for diagnosis. The check covers catalog structure and references plus the Develop databases' structure. It does not verify original photos or how edits look, and it makes no repairs. If errors are reported, keep the current catalog and restore a verified backup into a separate folder.
Back up now leaves a visible success or failure message, including the saved location. Backups include catalog and Develop data; original photos and external profiles need separate backups.
OmaRAW keeps browsing previews on disk between sessions and recent photo records in memory. Cache and memory settings… opens Preferences ▸ Performance, where you can see the cache folder, usage and size limit (4 GiB by default). Older browsing previews are removed automatically. Clearing this cache keeps photos, edits, edited preview masters and Smart Previews; browsing previews rebuild as needed, so clearing it is not a routine speed-up step.
Culling and rating
The cull is one key per frame. With Photo ▸ Auto-Advance After Rating on, every rating, flag or label moves you to the next photo.
- Stars: 0 to 5, keys 0 to 5.
- Flags: P pick, X reject, U unflag. Rejected photos leave every ordinary view and collect under Rejected.
- Colour labels: six colours from the dots on a card or the Edit menu; 6 to 9 set red, yellow, green and blue. Edit ▸ Label Names… gives each colour a meaning (Client, Print…) that the menus and tooltips show.
- Keywords: type in the inspector.
Travel/Italy/Venicemakes a level for each part, shown as a tree in the sidebar. Recent keywords sit under the field as chips; synonyms (right-click a keyword ▸ Synonyms…) make search find a photo by any of its words.
All of these act on one photo or the whole selection.
Stacks
Select a burst and press Ctrl+G to stack it. The grid shows the top photo with a count; S expands or collapses, Shift+S makes the current photo the top, Ctrl+Shift+G unstacks. Auto-Stack by Capture Time in the card menu groups shots taken within a chosen number of seconds.
Variants
Ctrl+' makes a virtual copy on the same file that starts from the photo's current edit and then goes its own way. Rename, Promote to Master and Delete Variant are in the card menu. A variant exports as its own file.
Duplicates and batch metadata
Photo ▸ Duplicates ▸ Checksum Selection reads the files once; Select Duplicates then selects every shown photo that shares a checksum with another. With several photos selected, the inspector's Title, Caption, Copyright and Creator fields apply to all of them and read Mixed when they differ.