User Manual

BurstPick scores and curates RAW burst photos locally on your machine — no cloud, no uploads, no account. Point it at a folder of photos and it groups your bursts, scores every frame on focus, eyes, exposure, composition, noise, and context, and helps you pick the keepers fast. Your originals are never modified unless you explicitly export with Move.

This manual is a complete reference. Use the section list on the left to jump around.

What BurstPick is for. BurstPick is a fast, wildlife-tuned cull tool: it helps you find the keeper in each burst and clear a shoot quickly. It is not a catalog or library manager, and it is not a general-purpose photo grader — the scoring is tuned for wildlife and birds, and frames where no animal is detected are pushed to the bottom so they don't surface as picks. Pair it with Lightroom or Capture One for cataloging and editing; BurstPick hands your picks back via flags and XMP sidecars.

Getting started

1. Open a folder — drag it onto the window, or use File → Open Folder… (Ctrl+O).
2. BurstPick scans the folder, reads each photo's capture time and camera settings, generates thumbnails, groups frames shot close together into bursts, and scores every frame.
3. Progress shows at the top while this runs. You can start reviewing as soon as photos appear — scoring fills in behind you.

When you reopen BurstPick it resumes your last folder automatically (turn this off in Settings → General if you prefer to start empty). All your picks, rejects, score overrides, and view settings are saved per folder, so you can quit and pick up exactly where you left off.

Supported formats include common RAW files (.nef, .cr2, .cr3, .arw, .raf, .dng, .rw2, .orf) plus .jpg, .heic, and .tif. If you shoot RAW+JPEG, BurstPick stacks each pair and treats the RAW as the master.

The grid

The grid is built around your bursts. Each burst shows as a single cover — its suggested best frame, with a compact info bar (frame count, capture span, and the gap that triggered the split, e.g. "1.4 s gap → new burst") — so you can skim a whole shoot one keeper at a time. Covers and single (non-burst) photos pack together into rows.

Expand a burst to see all its frames in place: click the cover's info bar (the chevron), or click the stacked-card edge. The burst breaks out into its own labeled section showing every frame; click the ▾ on that section's header to collapse it again. Single photos are never grouped — they're just cards.

Collapse all / Expand all (toolbar, or the View → Bursts menu) sets the default for the whole grid: everything collapsed (the fast skim) or everything open (every frame visible). After you hand-expand or collapse individual bursts, the control reads Mixed. Your default posture is remembered between sessions; per-burst choices reset when you open a new folder.

• Status filters the working set to Active (your unflagged + flagged working set), Picked, Rejected, or Exported. Switch from the toolbar dropdown, or just click the matching count in the header: the ✓ picked, ✗ rejected, and (once you've exported anything) → exported chips jump straight to that view, and clicking the photo total returns you to Active.

Sorting & grouping — open the Sort & group popover in the toolbar (it summarizes the current state, e.g. "Bursts Score · Frames Time"). It holds two controls:

• Grouping — Bursts keeps the burst-grouped grid (the default). Flat drops all grouping and lays every frame out in one globally ranked list — handy for picking the strongest shots across a whole shoot at once. There are no burst covers, separators, or collapse controls in Flat. Your choice is remembered between sessions.
• Sort — bursts and frames sort independently. Bursts orders the bursts relative to each other by Score (best burst first — the default) or Time (the order you shot them). Frames (labeled Order in Flat) sets the order within each burst, again by Score (default) or Time — this is also the order you step through when you open a burst for review.

So you can keep your bursts in shooting order while each one still shows its best frame first. Press O to flip the frame sort from anywhere (Shift+O flips the burst order).

Filters (in the Filters popover):

• Minimum score — hide low-scoring frames with the slider.
• ISO and Focal length — narrow to a range from your EXIF.
• Camera Body — in a multi-camera shoot, narrow the grid to one or more bodies. Check the cameras you want; leave them all unchecked to show everything.
• Text search — match on filename, or switch to EXIF mode to search camera model, lens, and body.

Badges on cards:

• A collapsed burst cover shows its info bar — a chevron, the frame count, the capture span, and the split gap — and a gray stacked-card edge meaning "this is a burst." Click the bar (or the edge) to expand the burst in place. A small ✓ / ✗ in the bar means a frame inside the burst is already picked or rejected, so a flagged frame never feels lost when the burst is closed.
• When a burst is expanded, its best frame is marked with a focal-cyan ★ star — BurstPick's suggestion for that burst, not a flag you've set. Click the star, or press B, to open Burst Review and step through every frame full-screen.
• An amber "nearly tied" badge on a burst cover means the top frames scored within a hair of each other — the suggested pick is a close call, so it's worth opening the burst and deciding yourself.
• In a multi-camera shoot, the cover shows the camera body next to the frame count, so two bodies fired at once stay easy to tell apart.
• A 🔒 badge means you've edited that burst by hand. Locked bursts are frozen against re-detection — see Organizing bursts.

Organizing bursts

BurstPick groups your frames into bursts automatically, but you're always in charge — you can reshape any burst by hand, and your edits stick across rescans and gap changes.

Selecting bursts vs frames. The grid keeps whole-burst selection separate from single-frame selection. Click a collapsed cover to select the burst; click a frame (inside an expanded burst, or anywhere in Flat grouping) to select that frame. Shift-click or Ctrl-click (Cmd on macOS) extends the selection — bursts with bursts, frames with frames. A small action bar appears showing "2 bursts selected" (or "3 selected" for frames) with the actions available.

Merge. Select two or more bursts and press M, or click Merge, to combine them into one. With a single burst selected, the action bar also offers Merge ← and Merge → to fold in the burst just before or after it in time. If a merge is large (more than 40 frames) or spans two camera bodies, BurstPick asks you to confirm first. Every merge can be undone from the toast that follows — or with Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on macOS) afterwards, which reverses your most recent edit (merge, split, move, detach, or a pick/reject).

Split. Select one burst and press S, or click Split, to open the split strip, then choose the frame where the burst should break in two. Split burst… is also on the burst's right-click menu.

Move, detach, and build bursts. Right-click a frame for Move to previous burst, Move to next burst, or Detach into new burst. Select several frames first and you get Create new burst from N frames. Right-click a burst's header for the merge and split actions plus Select all frames in burst, flag-the-whole-burst shortcuts, and Move burst to Trash….

Edited bursts stay locked. Any burst you change by hand is locked and shows a 🔒 badge. Re-detecting bursts (below) leaves locked bursts untouched, so adjusting the gap never silently undoes your work.

Re-detect at a different gap. A new burst starts whenever the gap between two shots exceeds a threshold. To re-group the shoot you're looking at, open Sort & group → Burst detection and pick Tighter (more, smaller bursts), Default, or Looser (fewer, larger bursts) — or click Adjust… for a fine slider with a live "Preview: N bursts" count and an Undo. To change the starting gap for new folders instead, use Settings → General.

Reviewing & flagging

Flagging is built for speed, with the mouse or the keyboard.

Hover or select any card and click ✓ Keep to mark it a pick, or ✕ Reject to reject it — click the same button again to unmark. The keyboard does the same and auto-advances to the next frame:

• P — Pick (the same as Keep). BurstPick auto-advances to the next unflagged frame.
• X — Reject it. Also auto-advances.
• U — Unmark (clear the flag).
• Delete — move to Trash. The file (plus its .xmp sidecar and any stacked JPEG) goes to your system Recycle Bin / Trash, so it's recoverable; BurstPick re-picks the burst's best frame if you delete the current pick. A confirmation appears every time, and an Undo appears right after — click it within a few seconds and the frame drops straight back into the grid (after that, recover it from your Recycle Bin / Trash). You can also right-click → Move to Trash.

Move around with the arrow keys: ← → step through frames, ↑ ↓ move by a full row in the grid. Shift+← / Shift+→ jump to the next or previous burst.

Representatives. Each burst has one suggested best frame (its "representative"). If you disagree, select a better frame and press R to pin it as the representative (Shift+R to unpin).

Batch flagging. From the toolbar overflow (⋯) menu, set a score threshold and flag everything above it as Pick in one click — optionally limited to representatives only.

The lightbox

Press Enter to open the lightbox — a full-resolution view for judging a single frame. By default, double-clicking a frame jumps straight into its burst review (change this in Settings → Viewing).

• B — switch into burst review: the filmstrip narrows to just this burst's frames so you can flip between siblings.
• Z — toggle between fit and 100% (double-clicking the photo does the same). From there, scroll or pinch to zoom further, and drag to pan. The on-image "100% (Z)" button does the same toggle.
• Shift+Z — return to last zoom: after you've zoomed in to a spot (say, 100% on an eye) and dropped back to fit, this jumps straight back to that exact level and position. Press it again to return to fit. The remembered framing is per-frame — it clears when you move to another photo.
• L — lock the current zoom and pan so it holds as you move between frames. Ideal for checking the same eye across a burst at 100%.
• F — cycle focus peaking, which highlights the sharpest edges so you can confirm focus landed where you want: Off → Contrast edges → Fine details → Both.
• I — cycle the info overlay: off, a minimal capture strip (camera, lens, ISO, shutter, aperture), or the full curation panel with the score breakdown.
• T — peek the candidate strip, a ranked row of the burst's top frames (shown automatically for close-call bursts).
• E — open the photo in an external editor (configure editors in Settings → Export).
• , / . — rotate the view a quarter turn left / right for review (the ↺ ↻ buttons on the toolbar do the same). This is display-only — it never changes the file or its orientation tag — and it resets to upright when you move to a different burst. Handy for inspecting portrait frames, or any body that didn't record its orientation. Zoom and pan work normally while rotated.
• ` (backtick) — stage-only mode, hiding all chrome for a clean full-screen look. Press it again to bring the chrome back.
• Esc — step back out: dismiss the candidate strip, then leave burst review, then close the lightbox.

Comparing frames

Press C on a burst to open a two-pane comparison — two frames side by side, perfect for choosing between near-identical shots.

• Compare two specific frames. Ctrl/Cmd-click (or Shift-click) to select exactly two frames from the same burst, then press C or click Compare in the selection bar. Those two open side by side, with the earlier frame on the left and the later one on the right — regardless of the order you clicked them.
• Comparing across bursts? Compare works within one burst. To weigh a frame from one burst against a frame from another (e.g. two near-identical bird sequences), first merge the two bursts: select both bursts and press M, then compare across the combined set. Merge only re-groups the frames — it never re-scores them — and it's undoable.
• Tab (or click a pane) switches which pane is active; the arrow keys navigate within it.
• Keep your running favorite on the left and scan candidates on the right with →. When the right pane shows a better frame, press M (Make select, or the toolbar button) to promote it to the left and auto-advance the right pane to the next frame — so you keep comparing without losing your place. S (Swap sides) simply exchanges the two panes.
• Z toggles the active pane between fit and 100% (double-click does the same). By default the panes pan and zoom independently, so you can frame each side on its own subject (e.g. each bird's eye). Press L to switch to Sync pan/zoom, where moving one pane mirrors onto the other — useful for comparing the same detail. Your choice is remembered for the session.
• , / . (or the ↺ ↻ toolbar buttons) rotate both panes a quarter turn for review — display-only, and reset when you compare a different burst.
• Flag straight from either pane, then press Esc to return.

Understanding the score

What the number means. The score is a quality estimate, not a grade. Its most important job is ranking frames within a burst so the top frame is the one BurstPick suggests as the burst's best frame — comparisons are most meaningful between siblings of the same burst, less so between unrelated photos across a shoot. That suggested best frame (the ★) is simply the highest composite in the burst; marking a frame a Pick is your own decision, separate from the suggestion. Use the number to break ties and skim quickly; trust your own eye when you disagree (that's what the override is for).

Every frame gets a composite score from 0–100, blended from six criteria:

Presets (in Settings → Scoring) re-weight the criteria for different goals:

• Default — balanced across all six.
• Sharpness Priority — leans hard on focus and eye visibility.

You can also build and save your own custom presets with the weight calibration tool.

Scoring modifiers. Beyond the six weights, each preset carries a set of modifiers — penalties and preferences layered on top of the weighting. The easiest way to adjust them is the Tune scoring button in the toolbar: it opens a panel beside your grid and the grid re-ranks live as you drag — no rescan, nothing saved until you click Keep (which saves the result as a preset; tuning a built-in makes a custom copy so the originals stay intact). Discard reverts. You can also open the same panel from Settings → Scoring → Tune live on grid….

Start from a goal. The Tune panel offers one-click starter recipes that set sensible modifiers for a situation — Birds in profile, Habitat / small-in-frame, High-ISO / low light, Strict keepers, or Balanced — then fine-tune from there.

The modifiers you can set:

• Frames with no animal — how hard to demote shots where no subject was detected: Off, Soft, or Strong (the default).
• Hidden / turned-away heads — demote a subject when its eye and head aren't clearly visible (sharpness may be reading the wrong part of the frame); toggle it off or set its strength.
• Off-center subject (Rule of Thirds) — how much rewarding rule-of-thirds placement lifts the composition score.
• Closed / blinking eyes — how far a partially open or fully closed eye pulls the score down.
• Not facing the camera — how much to demote subjects seen in profile or facing away. By default a sharp side-on (profile) shot is not penalized — it's a classic wildlife framing — while a subject facing fully away (no visible eye) still is. Turn the profile penalty back up if you prefer head-on shots.
• High-ISO noise — how forgiving to be of noise from high ISO.
• Preferred framing — favor Environmental (subject smaller in frame), Balanced, or tight Portrait crops.

Modifier changes apply live on any folder scanned with this version (older sessions need a rescan for the per-frame modifiers). Reset to default restores the original behavior, and your modifiers travel with the preset when you export it.

Overriding a score. If you disagree with BurstPick, set your own rating: select a photo and press 1–5 (mapping to 20, 40, 60, 80, 100) — in the grid, the lightbox, or compare — or click the rating stamps in the curation panel. Alt+1–Alt+5 does the same thing if you prefer an unambiguous chord. Your override wins everywhere the score is shown.

Why this score? Open the curation panel — the inspector rail beside the photo — to see the per-criterion breakdown for the selected frame.

Exporting

Quick export moves or copies your flagged photos into subfolders next to your originals:

• Ctrl+S — export your picks to a Picks folder.
• Ctrl+R — export your rejects to a Rejects folder.
• Hold Shift with either to invert copy/move for that one action.

By default quick export moves files and flags the current photo as it goes (Ctrl+S picks, Ctrl+R rejects). Change these in Settings → Export.

Full export (the toolbar Export button) lets you choose a destination and options:

• Size — Full resolution, 2048px (sharing), or 1200px (web).
• Prefix filenames with score — e.g. 087_DSC1234.jpg (zero-padded to three digits), so files sort by quality.
• Write XMP sidecars — Lightroom-compatible .xmp files carrying your rating and flag (Pick → 5 stars + green label, Reject → red label). Great for handing curation back to Lightroom.

Copy vs Move. Copy leaves your originals untouched (the default for full export). Move relocates them instead, which changes your source folder, so use it deliberately.

Settings reference

Open settings with the ⚙ toolbar button or the ? key (which jumps straight to the Shortcuts tab). The toolbar's ? Help button is a one-stop entry point too — it opens the User Manual, the keyboard shortcuts, or a quick refresher on what the scores mean. The tabs:

• General — resume last session, show flag progress, and the default Burst detection gap for new folders (how close in time two shots must be to count as one burst; default 500 ms, adjustable 250–3000 ms). Tightening it splits loose sequences into more, smaller bursts; loosening it folds nearby shots together. To re-group the folder you're already in, use Sort & group → Burst detection instead (see Organizing bursts).
• Scoring — active preset, your custom presets, Tune live on grid… (opens the scoring-modifier panel — see Understanding the score), weight calibration, and (for RAW+JPEG) whether to score from the RAW preview or the camera JPEG.
• Viewing — default grid view for new folders, double-click behavior, and focus-peaking mode, opacity, and dimming.
• Export — quick-export mode and auto-flag, what happens to a burst after you export its best frame, full-export size and score-prefix, XMP options, and your external editors.
• Storage — thumbnail cache usage and size limit (default 10 GB), with buttons to clear cached high-res decodes or the whole cache.
• Shortcuts — a complete read-only list of every keyboard shortcut.
• Advanced — anonymous crash reporting and the scoring-diagnostics overlay toolbar in the Lightbox (bbox, saliency, eye, focus, and noise — generated on demand, no scan-time cost).

Keyboard shortcuts

Reviewing (grid and lightbox):

Managing bursts (grid):

Lightbox & burst review:

Export:

Sessions & data

Everything you do — picks, rejects, overrides, representatives, and view settings — saves automatically per folder, so quitting and reopening loses nothing. If photos were moved or deleted outside BurstPick since your last visit, it quietly drops the missing ones and tells you how many.

Thumbnails and decoded previews are cached to keep browsing fast. Manage that cache, including a size limit and clear buttons, in Settings → Storage.

Right-click any photo for more: reveal it in your file manager, open it in an editor, copy its path, re-score it, compare its burst, write an XMP sidecar, or move it to Trash.