You already cull before you import, you already work from the keyboard, and you already expect the next frame on screen the moment you press the arrow key. Palomino works the same way.
Palomino runs on macOS 15 Sequoia or later, on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs.
Palomino keeps the part of Photo Mechanic that matters most. Ratings go to standard sidecar files the instant you press a key, with no export step. Open any folder on a drive and every star, pick, and color label lands in an .xmp beside the RAW as you work. Your editor reads them on import, the same way it reads Photo Mechanic's.
The speed comes from the same place too. Palomino reads the JPEG preview your camera wrote into each RAW file, so a 61 megapixel frame appears as fast as a 24 megapixel one and the sensor data is never decoded.
Culling comes before import. You cull first and hand your editor only the keepers, so Lightroom or Capture One never builds previews for frames you already rejected.
The keyboard does the work. 1 through 5 set a star rating, P picks, X rejects, and 6 through 9 set a color label. Each one advances to the next frame.
Filters control what the arrow keys see. Narrow to picks, a star threshold, a color label, a burst, or a capture day, and navigation skips everything else.
Copy to Folder builds file names from a template you set in the sheet, so [Job]_[YYYYMMDD]_[####] renders as SmithWedding_20260614_0001. Tokens cover the job name, the original stem, a zero-padded sequence, capture date and time, and every camera setting the info panel shows. The rendered name drives the RAW, its JPEG companion, and the .xmp sidecar together, so a renamed file and its sidecars stay one matched set.
Palomino uses star ratings 1 through 5 and four color labels. There is no direct mapping to Photo Mechanic's eight color classes, so treat the two as separate systems.
This is the Photo Mechanic pattern, and on a folder it works identically in Palomino.
You copy the card to your drive, in Finder or any ingest tool you already use.
You open that folder in Palomino.
You cull the shoot with stars, picks, and color labels.
Palomino writes an .xmp beside each RAW as you rate. The sidecar appears the moment you press a key.
You open the same folder in your editor. The ratings arrive with no export step.
If this is how you already work, nothing on the rest of this page changes your routine.
This one is faster for a quick turnaround right after a shoot, and it is the one place Palomino behaves differently.
You open the card in Palomino, from a reader or a camera connected over USB.
You cull the shoot with stars, picks, and color labels.
Palomino saves your session on your Mac. The card itself stays untouched.
You copy your selects to a drive. Each RAW arrives with its .xmp beside it.
You import that folder in your editor. Your ratings are already there.
You can eject the card at any point and come back later. As long as you do not format it, Palomino recognizes the card the next time you insert it and restores every rating.
One habit to keep. If you rate a card in Palomino, copy it off with Palomino. That copy step is what writes the sidecars next to your photos. Copying the card in Finder instead leaves your ratings behind on your Mac.
In the classic Photo Mechanic workflow you cull the card in place and the sidecars are written onto the card, next to your RAWs. Palomino keeps them on your Mac until you copy the photos off, then writes them beside the copies. That difference is deliberate.
Writing to the card made sense for where that workflow came from. It was built for the newsroom of the early 2000s: small cards, tight deadlines, and images filed to the wire minutes after they were shot. The card was working media, and writing to it was how the work traveled.
Cards are far more reliable now than they were then, and they are still the most fragile link in the chain that runs from the shutter to your backup. Their file systems never changed. A card is still exFAT or FAT32, with no journaling, where one interrupted write through a loose reader connection can corrupt the index and take every frame with it. Meanwhile a single card grew to hold an entire wedding or a week of travel, so the cost of losing one became the whole job.
That makes the trade a lopsided one. Until a shoot is copied and backed up, the card holds the only copy of that work in existence, sitting on the weakest device you own. Writing to it risks everything, and the only thing it buys is skipping a copy you were going to make anyway.
So your ratings are saved on your Mac while you cull, the card is recognized every time you insert it, and the sidecars appear the moment your photos land on a drive. The card goes back in your bag exactly as the camera left it.
Palomino makes the read-only handling visible rather than silent. A "Card, read-only" pill appears in the status bar when a card source is detected, and the copy option that moves unrated files to the Trash is turned off, because Palomino does not change files on a card.
While you cull, every rating is written to an .xmp sidecar beside each RAW, instantly. To reach your editor, import the folder. The ratings are already there.
While you cull, your ratings are saved on your Mac, and Palomino writes nothing to the card. To reach your editor, copy your photos off the card in Palomino. The sidecars are written next to the copies.
Palomino analyzes the shoot in the background while you cull, so part of the first pass is already done when you start.
Burst sequences are grouped automatically and ranked by sharpness, and the suggested keeper is marked with a crown. ⌘⇧X keeps that frame and rejects the rest of the burst.
Press ⌘F to paint a translucent green overlay over the areas of the photo that are in focus. The mask answers the question you would otherwise zoom in for: is the focus on the eye, or on the branch behind it? A sensitivity slider in Settings sets how strict the threshold is.
When Palomino ranks the frames in a burst, it locates the subject's eye and measures sharpness there instead of across the whole frame. This matters when autofocus lands on a rock beside an animal, because the frame that reads sharpest overall can be the one that missed the eye. Palomino locates eyes on people and on many animals, including dogs, cats, foxes, and deer. Birds and insects have no eye model available on macOS today, so those bursts are ranked by overall sharpness.
Soft, overexposed, and underexposed frames get a badge, and each becomes a filter chip you can click.
Press V to zoom to the largest face at 300 percent, so checking focus and expressions takes one key. A badge marks frames where someone blinked.
Compare view holds one frame as a reference while you move through the rest of a burst in the other pane.
Session stats show your total time, your photos-per-minute rate, and how the ratings came out.
Palomino copies your selects to a folder. It is a culling app, and the ingest features you may rely on live elsewhere.
Palomino does not write to two destinations at once. You choose one folder per copy.
Palomino does not stamp IPTC metadata, captions, or keywords.
Palomino does not build contact sheets or web galleries.
Palomino does not edit, develop, or grade photos.
If your download step depends on a simultaneous backup to two drives, keep the tool that does it and point Palomino at the copied folder. That is the first workflow on this page, and it works the same in every respect.
Palomino is free to download and exports up to 50 photos per session. Palomino Pro removes the limit for a one-time $29.99 purchase. There is no subscription and no account.
No. Palomino detects a camera card and treats it as read-only. Your session is stored on your Mac and keyed to that card, so your progress is restored the next time you insert it. The sidecars are written during the copy, next to the copied files.
Yes. Palomino writes standard XMP sidecar files, the same format Lightroom and Capture One already read. For a folder on a drive the sidecar appears the moment you press a key. Rejected photos are written with a rating of -1, which Lightroom recognizes as Rejected.
No. On a folder, Palomino works the way you are used to. Ratings go to .xmp sidecars live while you work, and your editor sees them as soon as you import that folder.
Yes. The Copy to Folder sheet has a File names field where you build a template from tokens, so [Job]_[YYYYMMDD]_[####] renders as SmithWedding_20260614_0001. Tokens cover the job name, the original stem, a zero-padded sequence, capture date and time, and every camera setting the info panel shows. The rendered name drives the RAW, its JPEG companion, and the .xmp sidecar together, so they stay one matched set on import. Leave the field empty and the copies keep their original names. Palomino copies your selects rather than ingesting a whole card, and it writes to one destination per copy.
No. Palomino uses star ratings 1 through 5 and four color labels, and there is no direct mapping to the eight color classes. Treat them as separate systems.
Yes. Press ⌘F to overlay green on the areas of a photo that are in focus, with a sensitivity slider in Settings to set how strict the threshold is. Palomino also measures sharpness at the subject's eye when it ranks the frames in a burst, so the crown goes to the frame that got the eye rather than the one that reads sharpest overall.
Palomino reads the embedded JPEG preview rather than decoding sensor data, and it prefetches the next frames in the background, so navigation keeps up with the arrow key on large shoots. Both apps take the same approach to preview speed.
Palomino is free to download and exports up to 50 photos per session. Pro removes the export limit for a one-time $29.99 purchase.
Palomino is on the Mac App Store, free to download. Open your next shoot in it and cull it down to your keepers the way you already work.