Ratings and your editor

Palomino writes standard XMP sidecars next to your RAW files and never modifies the originals. Every rating, pick, and label you assign lands in a plain text file your editor already reads.

When you rate, pick, or flag a photo, Palomino writes an .xmp sidecar file next to it in your source folder. DSC01234.ARW gets a DSC01234.xmp alongside it. This follows the Adobe/Lightroom XMP convention, so Lightroom, Capture One, and most other XMP-aware tools read it without any conversion. A rejected photo is written with a rating of -1, which Lightroom recognizes as Rejected.

What Palomino writes and where

Palomino also writes a .palomino-session.json progress file in the same folder, which it uses to restore exactly where you left off (your ratings, picks, and which frames were grouped as bursts) the next time you open that folder. You can ignore it; it doesn't affect your RAW files or your ratings in Lightroom.

When your source is a camera card, Palomino writes nothing to the card. Your session is saved in Palomino's own storage on this Mac instead, so your progress is restored the next time you open the same card. Sidecars for a card source are written during copying, next to the copied files. See Getting Started.

Your originals are safe

Palomino does not move, rename, compress, or modify any RAW file. The only files it writes alongside your photos are the .xmp sidecar and .palomino-session.json, and for a card source it writes neither. If you delete both of those, nothing Palomino ever did is visible.

Ratings travel to your editor

Because sidecars use the standard XMP format, your stars and color labels arrive in Lightroom or Capture One immediately when you import the folder. No extra steps are needed. The Include XMP sidecars preference in Settings (⌘,) controls whether sidecars are also copied alongside photos during the copy; it is on by default, so a photo and its ratings always travel together. For a card source, that copy step is where the sidecars are created, so your ratings arrive with the copied files.

Coming from Lightroom

P and X work exactly as they do in Lightroom's Library module. Star ratings with 1–5 and color labels with 6–9 match Lightroom's defaults. Your .xmp sidecars written by Palomino are readable by Lightroom without any extra steps: import the copied folder and your ratings are already there.

Coming from Capture One

Capture One's culling keys differ from Lightroom's: it uses number keys for color tags and has no single "Pick" flag by default. In Palomino, P flags a keeper and X rejects. Star ratings and color labels write to .xmp sidecars that Capture One reads. Import the copied folder into Capture One and your ratings appear in the Metadata panel.

Using Hasselblad Phocus

If you finish your work in Phocus, Palomino can carry your star ratings into it. Turn on Include Phocus sidecars in Settings, and copying a Hasselblad .3fr file writes a Phocus sidecar alongside the copy so the rating and color label show up in Phocus. See Copying Your Selects.

Starting a source over

If you reopen a card or folder and ratings from an earlier cull reappear, Palomino restored its stored session for that source. To wipe that memory and start fresh, right-click the source in the welcome window's recent folders list and choose Clear Session Memory…. A confirmation lists what will be removed: the stored ratings, flags, and labels for that source, along with its cached burst and quality analysis. Your photos and any .xmp sidecar files stay untouched, and every other source keeps its stored session.

A card does not need to be inserted: Palomino clears the memory it keeps on your Mac either way. If a card carries its own session file, clearing while the card is connected removes that file too.

The unsaved changes indicator

If a write fails, for example because you ejected an SD card while the session was still running, an amber Unsaved changes pill appears in the status bar at the bottom of the window. Your decisions are still held in memory for the rest of the session. Any write that failed during the outage is retried automatically the next time a write succeeds, so no work is lost as long as you do not force-quit the app.

When you quit, Palomino finishes writing any pending ratings before it closes (it waits up to five seconds if needed).

Where Palomino stops and your editor starts

The following are intentional absences, not missing features:

The goal of these constraints is speed. Every feature that wasn't about getting through a shoot faster was left out.