Culling JPG/RAW pairs, keeping mostly JPGs, with RAWs for a few

I’ve been frustrated with my current process where I only keep RAW files from the camera and I “have to” edit everything. I want to rely much less on post-processing and have straight-out-the-camera JPG for 90% of my photos, with a few RAW for either my amazing shots or ones I know the edit will make it a lot better.

This is essentially the process I’m currently planning to do:

  1. Import all photos from SD card (JPG/RAW pair)
  2. Geotag all that with HoudahGeog
  3. Cull all of them
    3.1 Delete the bad ones (the pair)
    3.2 Mark the good JPGs from the needs-editing or amazing photo I want to keep the RAW
    3.3 Delete the RAW files for the good JPGs
    3.4 Edit the remaining RAW files as needed
  4. Export JPG originals or edited ones to add to Apple Photos (family is there, Aspect is for my persona camera)

I’ve been playing with Aspect and so far it is the closest app I’ve seen that matches what I want (and it is beautiful, most of the apps out there make me want to pull my eyes out). Is item 3.3 something that can be done today? And more in general is this a good usage of Aspect?

I think it would be kinda possible to do this, albeit not pretty:

  1. Use the collection bar to only show photos from the “good” collection
  2. Move those photos to a temporary event (moves RAW+JPEG pairs together)
  3. Switch back to all photos by clicking the “good” collection again
  4. Enter “raw” in the search bar and choose the TYPE raw suggestion
  5. Switch from “Workspace” to “All Files” view mode
  6. “Edit” → “Select All”
  7. “Edit” → “Delete n Files”
  8. Move the “good” photos back to the event

Having this as a simple “Delete RAW Files of Selected RAW+JPEG Pairs” function would help a lot and I can personally see this being useful as well. I’m not sure though whether this is good to include as a core functionality or too specific to a certain workflow. That’s why my first thought when reading this was actually that I wished we had already implemented a “script snippet” functionality.

In contrast to the “addons” that you can already use to extend the application, a snippet would simply add a custom menu entry that executes a small script that can just be copy-pasted instead of having to set up and install a full-blown add-on. I’ll see if I can actually squeeze that in to one of the next releases.

I wished we had already implemented a “script snippet” functionality.

As a small update, script snippets are now in 1.0.0-rc.21 and I’ve posted a snippet that will delete the RAW files of all selected RAW+JPEG pairs. So with that the approach would now look like this:

  1. Use the collection bar to only show photos from the “good” collection
  2. “Edit” → “Select All”
  3. Switch back to all photos by clicking the “good” collection again
  4. “Edit” → “Invert Selection”
  5. “File” → “Delete RAWs of Selected RAW+JPEG Pairs”

Alternatively you could also enter “not in good” in the search bar and select the COLLECTION ⦸good entry to only show the photos that are not in the “good” collection and then do “Select All” and “Delete RAWs of Selected RAW+JPEG Pairs”.

An even more efficient approach would be to save that search expression, without the leading EVENT item, as a saved search. Then, from any event or collection, clicking that saved search while holding Ctrl would only show the non-good photos.

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