Windows 10 & 11 · macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon)

A dedicated culling app, not a general viewer like XnView MP.

XnView MP is a free, capable image viewer and organizer that opens almost any file you throw at it. PhotoTaken does one job instead: get you through a full shoot fast, so the shots you'll use land in your editor and the rest gets out of the way.

Try it free for 14 days See the full PhotoTaken site

WHY PHOTOGRAPHERS OUTGROW A GENERAL VIEWER

A viewer opens photos. Culling is a workflow.

XnView MP is genuinely good at what it is: a broad viewer, browser, and batch converter that handles hundreds of formats and costs nothing for personal use. That is real value, and we will not pretend otherwise.

But culling a card of a few thousand frames is a specific job, and a general viewer is not built around it. That is where we come in. Our app is called PhotoTaken, and it is built to do only this: rip through a contact sheet, rate and reject, keep RAW+JPEG pairs together, and move on. Your ratings and color labels are written to standard XMP, so every pick travels straight into Lightroom, Capture One, or whatever you edit in next. No re-tagging, no lock-in.

PhotoTaken vs XnView MP

Side by side, honestly.

Honest read: XnView MP is free for personal use, edits and converts images, and opens far more formats than we do. If that is what you need, use it. We win when the job is culling: speed on big RAW folders, RAW+JPEG handled as one, and picks that travel cleanly.

	PhotoTaken	XnView MP
Free for personal use	—	✓
Purpose-built culling workflow (rate, reject, rip through a shoot)	✓	~
RAW+JPEG pairs shown as one tile	✓	—
Verified copy-from-card ingest	✓	—
Fast on large RAW folders	✓	~
Ratings and color labels written to portable XMP	✓	~
Image editing, conversion, and 500+ formats	—	✓
One-time purchase, no subscription	✓	✓

✓ Yes ~ Partial or with caveats (hover for detail) — No

The bottom line

Use both, if you like

These two can live side by side. Keep XnView MP for the odd format, a quick batch convert, or a fast look at a folder. Reach for PhotoTaken the moment a shoot comes in and you need to cut a few thousand frames down to the shots you'll use. Because we write standard XMP, the picks you make here show up wherever you edit next, so nothing you do gets stranded. One job, done fast, then handed off.

Questions

What people ask before they try it.

Mostly about formats, and about paying for something when a free viewer is right there.

XnView MP is free. Why would I pay for this?

Because culling a shoot is a workflow, not just opening files. A few thousand frames stay responsive, RAW and JPEG behave as one shot, ingest verifies a second copy before you wipe the card, and your picks land in standard XMP.

For a quick look at a folder or an odd format, keep the free viewer. The two sit together fine.

Will it open all my formats?

26 RAW formats, plus JPEG, TIFF, PNG and HEIC, with video clips shown as poster frames in the same contact sheet. That covers a working shoot rather than every format ever written, and the full list is on the home page.

Do my ratings and labels carry over?

Yes. We write standard XMP, embedded for JPEG and TIFF and as a sidecar for RAW, so your picks follow the files into your editor.

Is this a replacement for XnView MP?

For the cull, yes. For batch conversion and the long tail of formats, no, and there is no reason to uninstall anything. Reach for this when a shoot comes in and thousands of frames need cutting down.

Is it a subscription?

There is a 14-day trial of the Pro edition, with no credit card. After that it is $69 for Light or $189 for Pro, bought once. No subscription, and every feature on the roadmap arrives as a free update.