Questions, answered.

ShotSelect is a keyboard-first photo culling app for Mac. Open a folder of RAW or JPEG files, rate keepers and rejects with single keystrokes, and export your ratings as Lightroom-compatible XMP sidecars. It's the cull pass — the part between download and edit — done at the speed of your fingers.

macOS 12 Monterey or newer, on Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) and Intel. The app is universal-binary and 92 MB. Apple Silicon is the recommended target — embedded JPEG previews render in 10–20 ms there and the on-device CLIP model uses the Neural Engine.

Not yet. Mac today, Windows soon. If you want to be told when the Windows build ships, leave your email on the download page.

40+ formats including Canon CR3/CR2, Sony ARW, Nikon NEF, Fujifilm RAF, Adobe DNG, Olympus ORF, Panasonic RW2, Pentax PEF, Leica DNG, plus standard JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, and PNG. The cull view uses the camera's embedded JPEG preview so RAW format almost never matters in practice.

About 50 ms from keystroke to next frame on Apple Silicon. A typical 3,000-frame wedding takes around 90 minutes end-to-end. A 10,000-frame sports match takes a working session on a press-row laptop.

• Arrow keys — navigate frames
• ↑ / ↓ — pick / reject
• 1–5 — star rating (0 clears)
• 6–9 — color labels
• Tab — cycle within a burst group
• C — compare mode (2–4 frames side by side)
• ⌘E — export XMP sidecars

All 50+ keystrokes are remappable from Settings → Keyboard. See the full keyboard guide.

Frames captured within 1 second of each other (configurable) collapse into one group. Cycle through them with Tab, pick the keeper, and optionally auto-reject the rest. Time-of-capture-based grouping respects gaps, so unrelated frames don't get merged.

ShotSelect ships a CLIP model that runs on your Mac's Neural Engine. Type "people laughing", "wide shot of the ceremony", or "tight crop of hands" — the app surfaces the most likely matches across the loaded folder. The model never sees your photos outside your machine.

Yes. The last 20 sessions are persisted in a local SQLite store. Quit mid-cull, reopen, and pick up exactly where you stopped — ratings, current frame, view mode, filters.

ShotSelect writes standard XMP sidecar files next to each RAW. Open the same folder in Lightroom (or Capture One, or Bridge) and your stars, picks, color labels, and keywords show up natively. There's no "import to Lightroom" step — the sidecar is the handoff. See the XMP guide.

On the free tier, no. ShotSelect runs 100% on-device. The AI model is bundled with the app. There's no upload step, no cloud account, no third-party processing. The app works fully offline. A future paid Share-link tier will involve opt-in upload, clearly marked when it ships.

Anonymous diagnostics only — app launches, crash signals, and feature counts (bucketed, not raw). No filenames, no tag content, no paths, no photo data ever. You can opt out in Settings. The full event vocabulary is enumerated on the privacy page.

No. The AI model is bundled, there's no license check, there's no account. You can cull on a press-row laptop with airplane mode on, or in a remote location with no signal.

The app is closed-source today. The privacy contract is enforced by automated tests and described in plain English on the privacy page. We may open-source parts of the codebase over time.

Today: it doesn't. ShotSelect is bootstrapped and the app runs on your Mac, so there's no server bill. Later: paid workflow features (client review links, team sync, studio multi-seat). Single photographers keep the free tier they have today.

Yes. Wedding photographers, sports stringers, photojournalists, commercial shooters, hobbyists — all welcome. The license permits commercial use at no fee.

No. The core cull workflow stays free. Paid tiers, when they ship, are additive — new features, not features clawed back.

Email [email protected] for product issues, or [email protected] for everything else. Responses come from a working photographer, not a ticket queue.