PhotoTaken
Try it free
PhotoTaken photo organizing and culling software box for Windows and Mac
Windows 10 & 11  ·  macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon)

Organize/Cull thousands of photos. Without the wait.

PhotoTaken is a photo browser built for the way pros actually work. Load a card, rip through the contact sheet, choose your best images, and hand off. No editor lag. No cloud detours.

Try it free for 14 days See what it does

Every feature, 14 days, no credit card. Buy it once when you're sure.

What it does

Built around the actual workflow.

Every feature exists because a working photographer needed it on a real deadline. Nothing here is for show.

Just added
New
▯

Import straight from your phone

Plug in an iPhone or Android phone, unlock it, and click Phone in Ingest. Bring in only what's new since your last import, and turn HEIC into JPG on the way in if you like. It works on Mac and Windows, and nothing is ever deleted from the phone.

New
❀

Import from Apple Photos

On the Mac, pick an album and a date range and the originals land in an ordinary folder you control. Photos that live only in iCloud download as they come, with progress shown. Nothing in your Photos library is changed.

New
⌂

Find every photo folder you own

Can't remember which drive a shoot is on? Pick the drives to look through and Find Photo Folders lists every folder that holds photos. Search by any part of the name or path and add one to Favorites with a click. Folders on unplugged drives stay in the list. Part of PhotoTaken Pro.

◰

A contact sheet that keeps up

Thumbnails stream in as fast as your drive can serve them, and the window never freezes, even on a shoot of thousands of frames. Come back to a folder you've already opened and it's there instantly.

⌕

Find any shot by what's in it

Search your whole library by the things that actually describe a frame: camera, lens, ISO, aperture, shutter, focal length, date, flash, white balance, caption, copyright, location, and more. Type a plain word and it looks everywhere, including dates written the way you say them: July 2013, 4 July 2013, or 2013-07. Short codes work too, so R5 finds the body and RF finds the lens. Need something precise? Click a filter together, field, then value, and stack as many as you want. No query syntax to memorize.

☁

Works with cloud files

Online-only photos from OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive, plus iCloud on the Mac, show up with a cloud badge instead of breaking the view. Double-click to pull one down when you want it, so a folder synced to the cloud still browses cleanly.

⇌

RAW + JPEG, paired

Shoot RAW+JPEG and PhotoTaken treats the pair as one file. Rename, move, or drag out and both halves stay together. Nothing gets orphaned.

★

Tags that travel to every tool

Color tags and star ratings go straight into standard XMP. Your picks follow the photos into Lightroom, Bridge, Photo Mechanic, or anything else that reads XMP. No database. No lock-in.

⎘

Ingest with a real backup drive

Copy from the card to two destinations at once. A file only counts as ingested when both copies land intact. If the backup drive hiccups, the primary rolls back. For the shoots you can't reshoot.

✎

Batch rename with templates

Rename hundreds of files with one template. Tokens for dates, sequences, camera model, ISO, aperture, lens. Live preview. Even cyclic renames just work.

▤

Stationery Pads for IPTC

Reusable templates for creator, copyright, credit, keywords, and location. Stamp a whole ingest with one click. Stop retyping the same IPTC fields on every shoot.

ℹ

Full IPTC and EXIF editor

Read and write the full IPTC field set and key EXIF fields through ExifTool. Caption, copyright, GPS, lens, and date taken. Edit one file or hundreds at once without touching the fields you didn't change.

⊞

Compare and full-size view

Double-click to see a frame at full size with pan and zoom. Select two, three, or four and press C to line them up side by side (a 2x2 grid for four). Pick the best of the burst without leaving the app.

▤

PDFs and everyday image formats

PDFs show their first page as the tile with a page count, so a folder of scans, contracts, or delivery notes is something you can look through instead of guess at. WebP, AVIF, GIF, and BMP browse and tag like any other picture. Double-click a PDF and it opens in whatever viewer you already use.

▶

Video, right in the sheet

Clips from the same card show up as poster-frame tiles with a play badge and duration, alongside your stills. Color and star tag them like photos; double-click to play in your system player.

⌨

Built for the keyboard

Every common action has a shortcut. Rate, tag, move, and cull with your hands on the keys and your eyes on the photos. Coming from Lightroom Classic or Photo Mechanic? Switch to their keys, or set your own.

↥

Export and convert, with watermarks

Make web or client-ready copies without leaving the app: resize, convert between JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and WebP, and drop on a logo watermark, in a corner or placed by hand on a single image. Copyright travels, GPS is stripped, and a whole folder runs in the background.

◎

Check focus and exposure as you cull

In the full-size viewer, press F for focus peaking, E for blown-highlight and crushed-shadow warnings, and H for a histogram. By default they read your actual RAW sensor data, so it's a true exposure and focus check while you cull, not a guess off the embedded preview. Pick your own peaking and clipping colors in Preferences.

Reviews

How it stacks up

What you get from each tool.

Honest comparison. Some tools beat us on some rows; we say so. We're after the photographer for whom the rows below add up to PhotoTaken.

PhotoTaken Photo Mechanic Lightroom Classic Adobe Bridge Capture One FastRawViewer XnView MP FastStone
Browse a folder instantly, no catalog or import step ✓ ✓ — ~ ~ ✓ ✓ ✓
RAW+JPEG paired as one file (rename, move, drag) ✓ ~ ~ — — ~ ~ ~
Video clips in the contact sheet, tagged like photos ✓ ~ ✓ ✓ ~ ~ ~ ~
Online-only cloud files shown without downloading the whole folder ✓ ~ — — — — — ~
Dual-destination ingest with integrity verify ✓ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ — —
Limit a card import to a capture date-and-time window ✓ — — — ~ — — ~
Focus peaking while you cull ✓ — — — ✓ ✓ ~ —
Histogram in the viewer while culling ✓ ✓ ✓ — ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Highlight and shadow clipping warnings ✓ ✓ ✓ ~ ✓ ✓ ✓ —
Tags in portable XMP, no proprietary catalog ✓ ✓ — ✓ — ✓ ~ —
Search camera settings + IPTC across folders, no catalog or import ✓ ~ ~ ~ ~ — ~ —
Export or convert with resize (JPEG, PNG, TIFF, WebP) ✓ ~ ~ ~ ~ — ✓ ✓
Logo watermark on export ✓ ✓ ✓ — ✓ — ✓ ✓
Native Windows + Mac ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ —
Runs offline; no account or cloud ✓ ✓ ~ ~ ~ ✓ ✓ ✓
One-time purchase; no subscription required ✓ ✓ — ~ ~ ✓ ✓ ✓
Built-in RAW developer — — ✓ — ✓ ~ — —
Years on the market — ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
✓ Yes ~ Partial or with caveats (hover for detail) — No
Why we built it

We tried every other tool. They all let us down somewhere.

PhotoTaken started the way a lot of indie software does: out of frustration. We're working photographers and we already owned, demoed, or wrestled with every serious tool in this category. Each one was good at something. None of them was the one tool we actually wanted.

Photo Mechanic. The category benchmark for two decades, and we wanted to love it. On our machines it freezes constantly, sometimes badly enough that we have to kill the process before we can do anything else with our computer. Add the per-seat cost across machines and the missing pieces around RAW+JPEG pairing and verified dual-drive ingest, and we kept walking away frustrated.

Lightroom Classic. A great editor. As a culler, it makes you wait through an import before you can scroll, and the catalog wants to own your photos. We didn't want our culler to also be our database administrator.

Adobe Bridge. Free to download, which sounds great until you load a card with five thousand frames and watch the contact sheet crawl. No ingest with verify. No RAW+JPEG pairing that survives a rename.

Capture One. Beautiful renderer. Heavy app. Premium price. Overkill if all you want to do today is choose your best images from yesterday's wedding.

FastRawViewer. Honestly fast at what it does. But the rest of the workflow, the rename templates, the IPTC stationery, the dual-destination ingest, lives in a different app, and now you're juggling two.

XnView MP and FastStone Image Viewer. Free, fast, and great as general-purpose image browsers. Neither is built around a pro-cull workflow: no XMP-first tagging that travels to your editor, no RAW+JPEG pairing that survives a rename, no dual-destination ingest with verify. FastStone is also Windows-only, which is half the team out the door on day one.

The bottleneck wasn't our eye. It was the tool. Every option we tried made us choose between speed, price, lock-in, and workflow. So we stopped choosing.

PhotoTaken is the tool we wished existed. Fast on big folders. Pairs RAW+JPEG correctly. Tags written to standard XMP that travel into whatever you use next. Dual-drive ingest with verify. Native on Windows and Mac. Bought once, kept forever.

Every feature, top to bottom

The complete list.

Everything PhotoTaken does, grouped the way you'd actually use it. For step-by-step detail on any of these, see the documentation.

◆ marks features that need PhotoTaken Pro. Everything else is in both editions.

Show the complete feature list Hide the complete feature list

Workspace & navigation

  • Three dockable side panels: Favorite Folders, Tabs, and Metadata, each independently movable to either side, collapsible, or hidden.
  • Layout (panel sides, visibility, window geometry) saves automatically and restores on next launch.
  • Light and dark theme, toggleable from the toolbar.
  • Favorite drives and folders pinned at the top of the Favorite Folders panel.
  • Favorite Folders panel: right-click to Rename, Delete, or Show in Finder / Explorer (label matches your OS), and drag thumbnails onto a folder to move them, RAW+JPEG and .xmp sidecars together.
  • Find Photo Folders: pick the drives to look through and get a searchable list of every folder that holds photos, with one click to add any of them to Favorites. It has its own toolbar button, right beside Favorites. ◆
  • Folders on a drive that isn't plugged in stay in the list, grayed out with the drive's name, and light up again when the drive comes back. ◆
  • The list keeps itself current while PhotoTaken is open; Rescan covers network drives. ◆
  • Multi-select folder picker that remembers the last location you browsed.
  • Vertical Tabs strip (not horizontal tabs) with drag-to-reorder, bold active indicator, and per-tab close.
  • Tab history with Back / Forward via toolbar buttons, Alt+Left / Alt+Right, or mouse side buttons.
  • Reopen the last closed tab with Ctrl+Shift+T.
  • Each tab remembers its selection and scroll position when you switch away and back.
  • All open tabs restore on next launch.

Contact sheet

  • Thumbnails decode in the background as fast as your drive can serve them, with an inline progress bar (“Generating thumbnails (47 of 183)”) while a large folder builds.
  • Filter the grid by Color (All, Untagged, Tagged, or any of the 17 palette colors), by Rating (Any, Unrated, exactly 1 through 5, or ≥1 through ≥5), and by File Type (JPEG, RAW, each specific format, video, and more, showing only the types actually in the folder); all three combine. Press D to cycle the File Type filter without the mouse.
  • Color-managed display: wide-gamut JPEGs (Adobe RGB, ProPhoto, Display P3) are converted to sRGB so colors match Lightroom and Photos, in both thumbnails and the viewer.
  • Nine preset thumbnail sizes from 128 to 512 px, via slider or dropdown.
  • Sort by filename, date, or size, ascending or descending; persists between sessions.
  • Optional caption rows below each thumbnail: date, size, and rating, each independently toggleable.
  • Live auto-refresh when an external app writes a file into the active local folder.
  • Folder watching skipped on network shares, where OS notifications are unreliable.

PDFs & everyday image formats

  • PDFs appear as tiles in the same contact sheet as your photos, showing the first page with a page count in the corner.
  • Double-click opens the PDF in your system's default viewer; PhotoTaken hands off rather than reading it inline.
  • Rate, color, rename, filter, and search PDFs like a photo. Tags go to an adjacent .xmp file, so the document itself is never rewritten.
  • WebP, AVIF, GIF, and BMP browse and tag like any other picture, each with its own tile rather than hidden behind a same-name JPEG. Animated GIFs and WebPs show their first frame.

Video clips

  • Video files appear as tiles in the same contact sheet as your stills, no separate mode or import.
  • Each clip shows a poster-frame thumbnail with a play badge and its running time (e.g. 1:32).
  • Poster frames decode in the background like photo thumbnails, so a folder full of clips still scrolls instantly.
  • Color tags and star ratings apply to video exactly as they do to photos, written to an adjacent .xmp sidecar so the container is never rewritten.
  • Double-click or Enter opens the clip in your system's default player; PhotoTaken hands off rather than playing inline.
  • Rotate and Flip work on clips (to stand up a sideways video); other image-only actions (Convert to DNG, Edit EXIF / IPTC) and the fullscreen Viewer, Compare, and Slideshow stay photo-only and skip video.
  • Broad container coverage; see the full format list.

RAW + JPEG handling

  • RAW+JPEG pairs shown as a single tile (the JPEG), with the RAW kept attached invisibly.
  • Rename, move, drag, and delete keep every member of the pair in lockstep.
  • Multi-RAW shots (e.g. after a Convert to DNG) collapse to one tile; the caption shows every format, like IMG_0001.JPG/NEF/DNG.
  • Drag out of PhotoTaken exports the JPEG by default; Ctrl-drag exports the RAW.
  • Right-click "Ctrl+drag RAW as" submenu picks which RAW format Ctrl-drag sends to your editor.
  • TIFF and PNG treated as primary deliverables, never hidden behind a same-stem JPEG.
  • 26 RAW formats from Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Olympus / OM System, Pentax, Leica, Sigma, Samsung, Minolta, Epson, Kodak, Hasselblad, Phase One, Leaf, Mamiya, and Adobe DNG; see the full format list.

Color tags & star ratings

  • 17-color palette: Red, Orange, Yellow, Lime, Green, Teal, Cyan, Sky Blue, Blue, Indigo, Violet, Purple, Pink, Magenta, Brown, White, Gray.
  • Star ratings 0 through 5.
  • Optional auto-advance (Preferences > Thumbnails): a rating or color key jumps to the next photo, so you rate a whole shoot key by key without the arrows. On for a single selection, in the grid and the viewer.
  • Stored in standard XMP (xmp:Rating, xmp:Label) so they travel with your photos.
  • XMP embedded inside JPEG, TIFF, and PNG.
  • XMP written to an adjacent sidecar for camera-native RAW and DNG, so a 30 to 50 MB DNG isn't rewritten on every keyword change.
  • Reads embedded XMP for legacy DNGs tagged before sidecar mode; the next write produces a sidecar.
  • Imports a handful of legacy tagger label names on read (one-way), then writes back PhotoTaken's own names.
  • Auto-detects and cleans up "Windows Explorer Copy" orphan sidecars.

Single-image viewer

  • Double-click or Enter to open the selected image full size.
  • Step through the folder with Left / Right arrows or the mouse wheel (down = next), in the current sort order.
  • Cursor-anchored zoom: Ctrl / Cmd + mouse wheel zooms toward the point under the pointer (the cursor becomes a crosshair target), the way Photoshop and Lightroom do, so you dial straight onto a face or detail with no panning after.
  • Snap zoom levels from Fit up to 11:1: Z toggles Fit and 1:1, Ctrl+0 snaps to Fit, Ctrl+1 to 1:1, and + / - zoom smoothly in ~15% steps.
  • Zoom and pan carry across navigation, so you can hold 1:1 through a burst and focus-check every frame as you arrow through.
  • Pan when zoomed in with click-drag or Ctrl / Cmd + arrow keys.
  • Full-resolution re-decode past 1:1 for a genuinely sharp 1:1 view (toggle in Preferences > Viewer).
  • Focus peaking (F): the parts of the frame in sharp focus light up in a color overlay, so you can confirm critical focus across a burst without pixel-peeping every frame.
  • Exposure clipping warnings (E): blown highlights flagged in red, crushed shadows in blue.
  • Histogram (H): a live RGB histogram over the image.
  • By default focus peaking, clipping, and the histogram read your actual RAW sensor data, so it's a true focus and exposure check rather than a guess off the embedded preview; peaking sensitivity, clipping thresholds, and the overlay colors live in Preferences > Viewer (and in Compare the overlays apply to every pane).
  • Info bar shows filename, color tag, and star rating.
  • Tag, rate, and clear directly from the viewer using the same shortcuts as the grid.
  • Delete from inside the viewer; Ctrl+Z restores from the Recycle Bin / Trash.
  • Live refresh when an external editor saves to the open image.
  • Optional windowed viewer (Preferences > Viewer) for screen recordings and demos.

Compare view

  • Select two, three, or four images and press C: two show side by side, three or four fill a 2x2 grid.
  • Tab cycles the focused pane: all panes together (synced), then each pane in turn, then back to synced.
  • Arrow keys and the mouse wheel step the focused pane through the folder, or move every pane together when synced; zoom works the same way.
  • Right-click or keyboard shortcuts tag the focused pane only.
  • Tag keys are intentionally no-ops while synced, so a single keypress can't tag the wrong image.
  • Delete is intentionally disabled in Compare so you can't lose the wrong image during a close-call review.

Slideshow

  • Start a slideshow on a selection of two or more thumbnails (F5).
  • Configurable interval, 0.5 to 60 seconds, in half-second steps.
  • Space pauses and resumes; arrows step manually and reset the timer.
  • Same windowed-vs-fullscreen choice as the viewer.

Rename

  • Single-file rename keeps the extension automatically and renames the whole RAW+JPEG+sidecar group together.
  • Batch rename with a template engine and a live preview table of every old and new name. ◆
  • Tokens for stem, ext, zero-padded sequence numbers, capture date in any format, ISO, camera, lens, aperture, shutter, focal length. ◆
  • Two-pass renames so cyclic templates ("shift every file by one") work without collisions. ◆
  • Sidecars and RAW siblings are renamed alongside their files in the same pass.

Metadata panel

  • Full EXIF and IPTC for the selected image, read on a background thread so big RAWs don't stall the UI.
  • GPS coordinates (when present) are click-through links that open Google Maps.
  • Three sections: File (always visible), Camera & Capture (collapsible), IPTC / Description (collapsible).
  • Caption and Copyright are inline-editable and write to IPTC, EXIF, and XMP for portability.
  • Empty rows are hidden so the panel only shows fields that exist on the file.

Edit IPTC Info (Ctrl+I)

  • Full IPTC field set: creator and contact info, copyright, rights usage, credit, source, headline, caption, instructions, keywords, location.
  • The Keywords box suggests as you type, from your own keyword tree plus every keyword already on your photos, so you stop retyping and stop misspelling.
  • Multi-file editing with a <multiple values> placeholder for fields that disagree across the selection.
  • Only fields you actually edit are written; untouched fields are preserved per file.
  • Background save with progress dialog, Cancel, and inline Retry on failure.
  • Partly available in Light: Copyright and Caption are editable across a whole selection. The other fourteen fields need Pro.

Edit EXIF Info (Ctrl+E)

  • Edit capture-level EXIF: Date / Time Taken, Lens model, GPS latitude and longitude. ◆
  • Same multi-file semantics as the IPTC editor. ◆
  • Validation rejects malformed dates or non-numeric GPS before writing. ◆
  • GPS accepts decimal degrees with optional N/S/E/W direction letters. ◆

Keywords panel (Ctrl/Cmd+4)

  • Your own keyword tree, built as you go: Animals holds Birds, Birds holds Owl.
  • Tick a word to tag the selected photos, and the whole branch goes on, so a search for "birds" finds your owl shot. ◆
  • The checkbox is also a readout: ticked means every selected photo has it, a dash means some do.
  • Shift-click to apply the single word instead of the whole branch. ◆
  • Unticking removes only the word you clicked, never one you didn't point at. ◆
  • Writes plain keywords every program reads, plus the hierarchy Lightroom uses to rebuild your tree on import. ◆
  • Keywords already on your photos that aren't in your tree are gathered under "Ungrouped", so an existing library is easy to file.
  • Filter as you type, see how many photos carry each word, and jump to a search for it.

Stationery Pads

  • Named, reusable IPTC templates: creator, copyright, credit, caption, keywords, location, and more. ◆
  • New / Edit / Duplicate / Remove from the pad manager. ◆
  • Stamp a pad onto any selection, or onto every file as it ingests. ◆
  • Empty fields don't overwrite, so multiple pads layer cleanly (default creator plus shoot-specific caption). ◆
  • Keywords are appended, not replaced. ◆
  • Pads stored in the PhotoTaken settings file and travel with your user profile. ◆

Ingest

  • Copy from a card or staging drive into your library; originals on the card stay untouched.
  • Import from an iPhone or Android phone, on Mac and Windows: plug it in, unlock it, and click Phone…. Photos come in by default, with videos and screenshots a tick away.
  • After the first phone import the dialog opens on Since last import, so only what's new comes in. Nothing is ever deleted from the phone.
  • Import from the Apple Photos library on the Mac: pick an album and a date range, originals or your edited versions. Photos kept only in iCloud download as they come, and the library is never changed.
  • Convert HEIC to JPG as photos come in, keeping capture date, camera, lens, GPS, and the color profile. ◆
  • Type a Destination folder that doesn't exist yet and Start offers to create it.
  • Import again without closing: when a copy ends, Start comes back on for the next card, phone, or album.
  • Optional second destination for a real backup: a file only counts as ingested when both copies land intact, and the primary rolls back on backup failure. ◆
  • Live thumbnail strip below the progress bar fills as each file finishes copying.
  • Optional Stationery Pad applied to every file as it lands, on both primary and backup. ◆
  • Subfolder field accepts template tokens, e.g. {date:yyyy-mm-dd} produces 2026-04-14 from the shoot's capture date.
  • Filter by capture time: restrict the import to a From / To date-and-time window (defaults to all of today), with RAW+JPEG pairs kept together.
  • New Folder… button in the destination pickers creates a shoot folder without leaving the app.
  • Source, destination, and backup destination remembered between sessions.
  • Custom folder picker reveals /Volumes on Mac (where the native picker hides external drives) and includes a typeable path bar.
  • macOS sidecar files (._FILENAME) skipped automatically so they never land on your destination drive.
  • Drag a folder, a single file, or a hand-picked selection from Finder / Explorer onto the grid, a tab, or a folder in the tree to launch ingest pre-filled.

Convert to DNG

  • Right-click any camera-native RAW and convert to Adobe DNG. ◆
  • A few formats Adobe's converter won't accept (FFF, KDC, MOS, X3F) report its reason per file; browsing and tagging them is unaffected. ◆
  • Wraps the free Adobe DNG Converter, with a guided install link if it's missing. ◆
  • Modal progress per file with Cancel, no partial DNG ever left on disk. ◆
  • "Delete originals after successful conversion" checkbox, remembered between runs. ◆
  • EXIF, IPTC, and XMP (including rating, label, caption, copyright) carry through to the new DNG. ◆
  • Multi-folder selections each land beside their source files. ◆

Export / Convert

  • Write web or client-ready copies from the Export / Convert toolbar button, Ctrl+Shift+E, or the right-click menu, on a selection or a whole folder of finished images. ◆
  • Pick the output format: JPEG, PNG, TIFF, or WebP, and the settings adapt (JPEG / WebP quality, lossless WebP, PNG compression level, TIFF compression). ◆
  • Resize to a long edge (e.g. 2048 px) or keep full size; images are downscaled only, never enlarged. ◆
  • Optional logo-PNG watermark dropped in a corner, with adjustable opacity and size. ◆
  • With a single image selected, Place on image opens it enlarged so you can drag the logo to move it, drag a corner to resize (Shift keeps its proportions), and drag a handle to rotate, then export exactly as placed. ◆
  • Copyright and IPTC carried over, GPS left off, and everything color-managed to sRGB. ◆
  • Runs in the background with a cancelable progress bar; RAW files use their paired JPEG and RAW-only files are skipped. ◆

Print

  • Print the currently displayed photo (Ctrl+P) from the viewer or the contact sheet, scaled to fit with aspect ratio preserved. ◆
  • Print a contact-sheet proof of all visible (or selected) thumbnails (Ctrl+Shift+P). ◆
  • Contact-sheet options: 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 8 columns, with optional filename, date, time, file size, color tag swatch, and star rating below each tile. ◆

Rotate & flip

  • Lossless rotate left, right, or flip 180° from the thumbnail right-click menu, no re-encoding.
  • Thumbnails update immediately; viewer and Compare panes reload in place.
  • Works on video clips too: stand up a sideways clip (common on some cameras) with a standard rotation flag written to a fresh copy, so it plays upright everywhere, not just in PhotoTaken. A mixed photo-and-clip selection rotates in one step.
  • Multiple rotations compose correctly.

Delete & undo

  • Local-drive deletes go to the Recycle Bin (Windows) or Trash (Mac).
  • Confirmation dialog by default, with an optional toggle for fast cull workflows.
  • RAW siblings and .xmp sidecars always deleted alongside the file they belong to.
  • Ctrl+Z restores the most recent batch with all tags, ratings, captions, and copyright intact.
  • Restored thumbnails are reselected and scrolled into view.
  • Network deletes always confirm and warn that they're permanent on Windows.

Search & filter

  • Toolbar search box (Ctrl+F to focus), scoped to Open tabs, This folder, or your whole indexed library. ◆
  • Searches deep into metadata: camera, lens, ISO, aperture, shutter, focal length (and its 35mm equivalent), exposure compensation, exposure program and mode, metering, white balance, flash (and whether it fired), color space, orientation, dimensions, date, and file type, plus your own caption, creator, copyright, credit, headline, and city / state / country.
  • Type any plain word and it also matches the other values a photo carries, so a lens name or a light source turns up even without its own search operator. Dates work the way you write them (July 2013, 4 July 2013, 2013-07), short codes like R5 find the camera, and a number matches a whole number rather than a fragment of a longer one.
  • Point-and-click filter builder: add rows of field, operator, and value and combine as many as you want ("camera is X and ISO at least 3200 and flash fired"), with no query syntax to learn. ◆
  • Value dropdowns are filled from the actual values in your library: pick one, type part of one, choose a number or date range, or match several at once with "is any of". ◆
  • keyword:owl (or kw:owl) searches your keywords and nothing else, matching whole words: it finds a photo tagged “Barn Owl” but not one tagged “landmark”. Typing the plain word still searches names and captions too.
  • Results open in a dedicated tab (marked with a magnifier). Your open searches reopen on next launch and re-run the moment you click back to one.
  • A folder is indexed the moment you open it, so search coverage grows as you browse and nothing crawls in the background at startup. To cover more, right-click a Favorite and index it and its subfolders in one go, or drop it back out of the index. Files deleted outside the app fall out on their own.

Preferences

  • Tabs: General, Thumbnails, Viewer, Files, Panels, Performance, Library, Updates.
  • Library tab: pick which folders are searchable and how eagerly PhotoTaken indexes them (only folders you open, your whole library, or on demand).
  • Toolbar-as-icons-only mode for crowded toolbars.
  • Quit confirmation toggle.
  • Tunable thumbnail cache and folder snapshot cache sizes.
  • All changes apply immediately, no restart needed.

Update checking

  • Background version check on launch, with release notes.
  • Checks again once a day while the app stays open. A red dot and "Update available" appear at the bottom right, never a popup, so it won't interrupt a cull.
  • Open button hardened: only fires for phototakensoftware.com, lormarsoft.com, or github.com over HTTPS.
  • Toggleable in Preferences > Updates.

Keyboard-first design

  • 0 through 5 to set or clear a star rating.
  • Letter keys (R, O, Y, L, G, T, X, S, B, I, V, P, K, M, N, W, A) for every color tag.
  • \ to clear the color tag.
  • F1 help, ? for a quick shortcut cheat sheet, Enter to view, C to compare, Delete to delete, Ctrl+Z to undo.
  • Ctrl+W close tab, Ctrl+Shift+T reopen tab, Ctrl+F focus search.
  • Ctrl+I Edit IPTC.
  • Ctrl+E Edit EXIF ◆, Ctrl+P print ◆, Ctrl+Shift+P print contact sheet ◆, Ctrl+Shift+E Export / Convert ◆.
  • In the viewer: F focus peaking, E exposure clipping, H histogram.
  • Ctrl+, Preferences, Ctrl+1 / Ctrl+2 / Ctrl+3 toggle each panel.
  • F5 slideshow, Space pause, Tab cycle compare pane.
  • Every toolbar tooltip shows its keyboard shortcut.
  • Prefer different keys? Pick a Lightroom Classic or Photo Mechanic layout, or set your own, in Preferences > Keyboard.

Native, offline, and yours

  • Windows 10 / 11 and macOS 12+ on Apple Silicon.
  • One-click installer (Windows .exe, Mac .dmg) or portable zip on either platform.
  • Settings survive upgrades, reinstalls, and switching between installer and portable.
  • No cloud, no account, no subscription, no plugin marketplace.

Want the full step-by-step? Open the documentation.

Will it open my files?

Every format PhotoTaken reads.

Generated from the app itself on every build, so this list is never out of date with the version you download.

Photos

  • JPEG (JPG, JPEG) and HEIC / HEIF (HEIC, HEIF), the format iPhones and many recent cameras shoot.
  • TIFF (TIF, TIFF) and PNG (PNG), each shown as its own tile rather than hidden behind a same-name JPEG.
  • WebP (WEBP), AVIF (AVIF), GIF (GIF), and BMP (BMP), the everyday formats that pile up alongside a shoot. Animated GIF and WebP show their first frame. Ratings and colors are written into the file itself, except BMP, which gets a sidecar because the format has nowhere to keep them.
  • Photoshop (PSD), read-only: browse, view, and tag it; PhotoTaken never rewrites the file.

RAW, 26 formats

CanonCR2, CR3, CRW
NikonNEF, NRW
SonyARW, ARQ, SR2, SRF
FujifilmRAF
Panasonic / LumixRW2
Olympus / OM SystemORF
Pentax / RicohPEF
LeicaRWL
SigmaX3F
SamsungSRW
MinoltaMRW
EpsonERF
KodakDCR, KDC
Hasselblad3FR, FFF
Phase OneIIQ
LeafMOS
MamiyaMEF
Adobe DNGDNG

Every one of these was tested against a real file from that camera before it shipped. Ratings, colors, keywords, and captions go to an adjacent .xmp sidecar, so your RAW file is never rewritten. Extension matching is case-insensitive.

Video

  • 3G2, 3GP, AVI, FLV, M2TS, M2V, M4V, MKV, MOV, MP4, MPEG, MPG, MTS, MXF, QT, TS, VOB, WEBM, WMV.
  • Clips appear as poster-frame tiles in the same contact sheet as your stills, with a play badge and running time. Tag and rename them like a photo.

Documents

  • PDF.
  • A PDF shows its first page as the tile, with a page count. Rate, color, and rename it alongside your photos; double-click opens it in whatever PDF viewer you already use. PhotoTaken never rewrites the document, so its tags go to a small file alongside it.

Shooting something that isn't here? Tell us at support@lormarsoft.com. Formats get added because photographers ask for them.

What's coming

What we're building next.

A plain look at what's on the way.

Also exploring:

Why it exists

Because culling shouldn't be the slowest part of your day.

If you shoot weddings, sports, events, or anything high volume, you already know the drill. You come home with thousands of frames and a client waiting. The tool you use to choose your best images is the bottleneck, not your eye.

PhotoTaken was built to get out of the way. It loads fast, responds fast, and puts every rating and color tag on a single key, so your hands stay on the keyboard. It runs on Windows and Mac natively, with no subscription, no cloud, and no plugin marketplace you have to learn.

Works with every major RAW format. 26 of them: CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, DNG, ORF, RW2, PEF, X3F, IIQ, 3FR and more.
PhotoTaken viewer and metadata panel
Pricing

One purchase you keep forever, NOT a subscription.

Light is $69 and covers the whole cull: the contact sheet, color tags and star ratings, focus and exposure checks, compare, and the full-size viewer. Pro is $189 and adds the jobs that come after the cull. Either one is yours forever, on up to two of your own computers, Windows or Mac.

The 14 day trial is the Pro edition with everything switched on, so you can shoot a real job before you decide. Pick Light now and want Pro later, you pay the difference and keep the same license key.

Try it free for 14 days Compare the editions
FAQ

Common questions.

Quick answers to the questions photographers ask most often. Don't see yours? Email us and we'll add the answer here.

What are the system requirements, and is it safe to install?

PhotoTaken is a native desktop app, no cloud, no account, no subscription. It runs on:

  • Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit).
  • macOS 12 (Monterey) or later on Apple Silicon (M1 and later).

It reads 26 RAW formats (CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, DNG, ORF, RW2, PEF, X3F, IIQ, 3FR and more) plus JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and HEIC / HEIF (the format iPhones and many recent cameras shoot), and shows video clips (MP4, MOV, MKV, AVI, MTS and more) as poster-frame tiles right in the same contact sheet. It writes ratings, color labels, keywords, and captions as standard XMP so Lightroom and other tools pick them up. Everything runs locally, your photos never leave your machine.

The Mac build is signed with our Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so macOS Gatekeeper opens it normally, with no "unidentified developer" warning and no Privacy & Security detour. The Windows build is code-signed as LorMarSoft, LLC, so the installer shows our name as the publisher instead of "Unknown"; a fresh release may still show a one-time SmartScreen screen until Windows trusts the download. The full first-launch notes are in the documentation.

Can PhotoTaken work alongside Lightroom?

Here's how it would work:

  1. Pop the card in and use PhotoTaken's Ingest to copy the photos to your hard drive (or browse the card directly if you prefer).
  2. Cull at full resolution. PhotoTaken has a fast fullscreen viewer with zoom, so you can review every shot 1:1 and decide what stays.
  3. Mark the shots you'll use. Star ratings (1 to 5) and color labels (red, yellow, green, blue, purple) are applied with single keystrokes. You can also add keywords, captions, and copyright info.
  4. Import into Lightroom. Point Lightroom at the folder and it will pick up everything PhotoTaken wrote: the star ratings, color labels, keywords, captions, all of it.

The reason this works seamlessly is that PhotoTaken writes tags using the same standard Lightroom uses (XMP). For JPEGs and TIFFs the metadata is embedded directly in the file. For RAW files (CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, DNG, 3FR, etc.) it's written to an adjacent .xmp sidecar file, which is exactly what Lightroom expects and reads on import.

So you keep Lightroom as your catalog, nothing changes there, and just use PhotoTaken as the fast culling and tagging step before import. A lot of photographers use it precisely that way: cull first in something quick, then import only the shots you'll use (already rated and tagged) into Lightroom.

One small note: if you ever import a folder into Lightroom before tagging it in PhotoTaken, you'll want to right-click in Lightroom and choose Metadata › Read Metadata from File after PhotoTaken finishes its writes, so Lightroom picks up the new ratings. If you tag first and import second, it just works automatically.

PhotoTaken doesn't have its own catalog database. It reads the folder you point it at and writes XMP back to the files (or sidecars). That's deliberate: no catalog to maintain, no risk of getting out of sync with your Lightroom catalog. The XMP on disk is the only state.

Does it handle video clips from my card?

Yes. Most cameras drop video onto the same card as your stills, and PhotoTaken shows those clips right in the contact sheet next to your photos, no separate mode and no import step. Each clip appears as a poster-frame thumbnail with a small play badge and its running time, and the folder still scrolls instantly because poster frames decode in the background just like photo thumbnails.

You can color tag and star rate a clip with the same keystrokes you use on photos. Those tags are written to an adjacent .xmp sidecar (the same approach used for RAW), so the video file itself is never rewritten and your picks travel into Lightroom, Bridge, and anything else that reads XMP.

Double-click a clip and PhotoTaken hands it off to your system's default player rather than playing it inline. Rotate and Flip work on clips too (handy for a sideways video), while other image-only steps (Convert to DNG, the EXIF / IPTC editors) and the fullscreen Viewer, Compare, and Slideshow stay photo-only and quietly skip video. Supported formats include MP4, M4V, MOV, AVI, MKV, WebM, MTS, M2TS, WMV, MPEG, 3GP, MXF, VOB, and FLV.

Can I find a shot by its camera settings, not just the filename?

Yes. PhotoTaken searches deep into the metadata your camera and you already write: camera and lens, ISO, aperture, shutter, focal length, date, flash, white balance, and more, along with your captions, creator, copyright, and location. Type a plain word and it looks across everything a photo carries, so a lens name or a light source can surface a shot even when it's nowhere in the filename.

Don't want to remember search operators? Click a filter together instead. The filter builder lets you stack rows of field, then value ("camera is X", "ISO at least 3200", "flash fired") and combine as many as you like, with the value dropdowns filled from the actual values in your own library. Your open searches come back the next time you launch, and re-run the moment you click into one, so you always see current results.