Nothing deleted, no reject flag: what a safe cull looks like on disk

Ask any culling tool whether it deletes photos and it will say no. Ask what it writes instead, and the answer gets interesting. Most write a reject flag, which in Lightroom Classic is one keystroke from deleting the file from disk. This article is about what a safe cull actually leaves behind: what is on the card, what is on the drives, and what you can verify in Finder before you trust the tool with a client's day.

Delete, and almost delete

A delete removes the file. Everyone agrees that a culler should not do that, and Kepla never does. The subtler risk is the reject flag. Lightroom's flag is designed for one purpose: select the rejected photos, press one key, and they are removed from the catalog and, if you say yes, from disk. A tool that writes reject flags is handing you a loaded shortcut and asking you to trust every flag blind.

Kepla writes neither. Frames it sets aside get a keyword naming the reason. You can filter on a keyword exactly as easily as on a flag, but nothing about a keyword is one step from gone.

The folder, file by file

The sidecar is a small text file with the same name as the RAW. It holds the decision: clean, set aside with a reason, uncertain, or favourite. It is the only thing the cull adds, and it is readable by Lightroom Classic, Capture One and Bridge without Kepla installed.

Bias toward keeping

Every decision in a cull is asymmetric. A frame kept wrongly costs you a second during review. A frame lost wrongly costs you a photograph, and you never find out. A tool built around that asymmetry keeps everything, marks what it thinks, and makes the marks easy to check. That is why the 2,836 frames Kepla set aside on the reference wedding are all still on the card and both drives, each with one of five plain reasons attached, and why one key press puts any of them back with the clean ones.

Three things to verify in Finder

1. Count the files before and after. The RAW count in the folder should not change. If a tool offers to tidy the rejects into a subfolder, that is a move, and a move is how frames go missing from a catalog.
2. Look at what was written. Sidecars beside the files are fine. Writes into the RAW itself, or a database only the vendor can read, are not.
3. Check the card. Eject it and put it back. Nothing on it should have changed. A culler should be strictly read only on the card.

Not a file, not a flag

Kepla never deletes, never moves, never renames, never writes to the card, and never writes a reject flag. It writes sidecars and reads your cards, and that is all it touches. If a tool that keeps everything and shows its reasons is the kind you want, Kepla for Mac is free through the private preview and the first hundred photographers keep it at $99 a year. Request Founding Access.

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