RawCull Documentation on RawCull

Security & Privacy

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Security & Privacy

RawCull is built from the ground up with macOS security and user privacy as first-class concerns. The following is a precise and detailed account of every security mechanism the application employs, derived directly from the source code and project configuration.

App Sandbox

RawCull runs inside the macOS App Sandbox (com.apple.security.app-sandbox = true), enforced by the operating system. The entitlements file contains only this single declaration — no additional entitlements are granted. This means:

Culling Photos

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

RawCull is not a tool for image editing; it is solely intended for selecting and copying selected images for editing by dedicated software such as DxO PL, Lightroom, and others.

A photo culling application is specialized software designed to assist photographers in efficiently reviewing, organizing, and selecting the most suitable images from a photo shoot. RawCull supports Focus Peaking and Focus Points.

Persistent Marking and Session Recovery

RawCull automatically saves your marking decisions as you work, allowing you to pause and resume your culling session at any time. Your marks, ratings, and review status are saved to disk, so if you need to continue later, simply reopen the same folder and your progress will be restored.

Sharpness Scoring

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Sharpness Scoring

RawCull can automatically rank every image in a catalog by sharpness, so the sharpest frames rise to the top and out-of-focus or motion-blurred shots sink to the bottom. This page explains what the score means, how to run it, and how to interpret the results.

Overview

When you click Sharpness, RawCull analyses each RAW file using a multi-step pipeline:

A small thumbnail is extracted directly from the ARW file — fast, no full RAW decode needed.
Apple Vision locates the main subject in the frame and, when classification is enabled, identifies what that subject is (bird, person, animal, etc.). A salient region is accepted when it covers more than 3 % of the frame or when Vision’s confidence is ≥ 0.9 — the high-confidence path means a small but clearly identifiable subject (a bird on a stick, a distant raptor) is never discarded for being too small.
A Gaussian pre-blur smooths the image to suppress high-ISO noise before edge detection. The radius adapts automatically: it scales proportionally with √(ISO/400) to compensate for noise at high ISO values, and with √(imageWidth/512) to maintain consistent spatial-frequency selectivity on larger images. Both factors are capped at 3×.
A Laplacian edge-detection kernel measures per-pixel sharpness energy across the entire frame. The outer 4 % of each border is excluded from the full-frame score to prevent Gaussian edge artifacts from inflating the result.
The edge response is amplified, then scored with a robust tail score — the mean of values above the 95th percentile, clipped at the 99.5th — so a single sharp feather edge cannot carry a blurry frame.
Two scores are computed separately: one for the full frame (minus the border strip) and one for the salient subject region. They are fused as 25 % full-frame + 75 % subject region. If no salient region is found, the full-frame score is used directly. A small proportional bonus is applied for subjects that fill more of the frame.
All scores are normalised against the p90 of the catalog: that anchor becomes 100, and every other frame is expressed as a percentage of it. Using p90 rather than the maximum prevents a single noise spike from collapsing the rest of the scale.

Because scores are relative to your catalog, a score of 60 does not mean the image is soft — it means it is 60 % as sharp as the sharpest typical frame in that session. Opening a catalog of sharper images will recalibrate the scale.

Focus Peaking

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Focus Peaking: The Laplacian of Gaussian Method

Note: To obtain the most optimal results in Focus Peak view (extract), it is recommended to extract the JPG file from the ARW file. While it is possible to view Focus Peek by creating thumbnails, the mask is more effective when applied to JPGs. To access Focus Peek, double-click on the image in main view. In the Settings menu, Thumbnails tab, disable the “Use Thumbnail for Zoom” to use JPGs as base for Focus Peak.

Settings

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Settings view

RawCull provides settings to customize your culling experience and optimize performance:

Cache Management: Control thumbnail cache location and size to balance performance with disk space usage
Thumbnail Quality: Adjust thumbnail generation settings to optimize preview quality and loading speed
Memory Settings: Configure memory allocation for handling large photo catalogs efficiently

Access these settings via RawCull → Settings to fine-tune RawCull for your specific needs and system configuration. The cache statistics present the memory hit-rate when viewing photos.

Focus Points

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

RawCull facilitates native extraction of Focus Points from Sony A1 ARW files. Users have the option to activate or deactivate the Focus Points feature in both the primary thumbnail view and the extracted zoom views.

Focus Point off:

Focus Point on:

Both the Focus Point and the Focus Peak can be applied simultaneously.