Pick a folder

The first time you open LightPhotos, the home page has one main button: Open Folder. Pick the folder holding the shoot you want to work on. LightPhotos scans it and fills the grid right away — and there is no import step, nothing to copy into a library. The files stay exactly where they are. Once you have added a folder, the home page lists your folders on the left instead; click one to open it.

• The web build asks for permission. Your browser wants confirmation before any page may read a folder. Grant it for the folder you picked; that is the only access LightPhotos gets, and it covers one folder, not your whole drive.
• Keep several folders at hand. Click Add Folder above the Folders list on the left, or press Cmd+O. Each folder stays in the list; click one to show its photos. To take a folder off the list, right-click it and choose Remove Folder from LightPhotos. Its photos and edits stay on disk.
• Keep separate lists. The Folders list belongs to the open catalog, named in the header. Make another catalog to keep, say, client work apart from family photos — see catalogs.
• Pick up where you left off. The desktop app reopens the last folder, photo and view when it starts. The web app lists your folders again at startup; click one and the browser asks for access again.
• Your settings live next to your photos. Ratings, labels and edits are written into a .lightphotos folder inside the folder you opened. Move the folder and the edits travel with it; delete that folder and you lose the edits, never the photos. The catalog keeps only a copy of the ratings, flags and labels, so nothing somewhere else holds your work hostage.
• Only some files show up. The grid lists the formats LightPhotos can open — see supported formats for the full set and for what else gets written to disk.

The scan happens in the background. Thumbnails decode as they scroll into view, so you can start rating the first frames while the rest of the folder is still being worked out — how browsing works.