Grouping and Similar Scenes
Group By divides the photos currently visible in the browser into temporary sections. Use it to compare related photos without creating stacks or changing photo metadata.
Available groups include capture time, camera, lens, ISO, and location. The Mac app can also group by existing stacks.
Similar Scenes
Similar Scenes analyzes image appearance and places visually related photos together. It is useful for bursts, repeated compositions, portrait variations, and other sets that may not share a useful capture-time boundary.
- Open a filesystem folder or mounted filesystem source.
- Open Group By and choose Similar Scenes.
- Wait for analysis to finish, or use Cancel to stop it.
- Apply or change filters as needed. Only photos that match your filters appear in each group.
Browsing is temporarily unavailable during analysis. Follow progress in the processing panel; cancelling returns Group By to Off.
PhotoCuller can reuse previous results, so changing ratings or filters usually does not require another analysis. Photos may need to be analyzed again after changes to the source or when saved results are no longer available.
Every visible photo receives a scene, including one-photo scenes for photos without a visible match. Scenes use a fixed chronological order, while photos within each scene continue to follow the browser’s current sort settings.
Similar Scenes runs locally on your device. Its groups are temporary: it does not create stacks, write metadata, sync analysis data, or otherwise modify your photos.
Supported Sources
Similar Scenes is available for filesystem-backed sources, including local folders and mounted drives or network shares that appear as filesystem locations.
It is not available when browsing Apple Photos, FTP servers, or connected cameras directly.
Working in a Grouped Browser
Every active Group By mode shows photos as individual items within sections. Switch Group By back to Off to return to the normal flat browser and its usual collapsed-stack presentation.
macOS only
In a grouped browser, dragging arranges photos within their current group. Photos cannot be dragged from one group into another, and drag-to-stack is disabled until you return Group By to Off.
Grouped Full View
On Mac and iPad, Full View can follow the browser’s active grouping with two filmstrips:
- The group filmstrip moves between sets. Each thumbnail represents one group, with its photo count in the upper-right corner and its group number in the lower-left corner.
- The photo filmstrip moves between individual photos in the active group.
The group strip may also show a green culling-progress marker:
- A hollow green circle means some photos in the group have a rating, color label, flag, favorite, or rejection state.
- A solid green circle means every photo in the group has at least one of those culling states.
Use the Grouped navigation button in the Full View toolbar to switch between grouped and flat navigation. This changes Full View navigation only; it does not change the browser’s Group By setting.
Click either filmstrip to choose the active group or exact photo. Hover over either group-thumbnail badge to identify it. Keyboard navigation is configurable in Settings > Full View > Grouped navigation:
Focus Driven — arrow keys follow the currently focused filmstrip and its on-screen direction.
↑↓ Groups, ←→ Photos — fixed arrow assignments independent of filmstrip placement.
←→ Groups, ↑↓ Photos — the opposite fixed-axis assignment.
Continue between groups lets photo navigation move from the last member of one group to the first member of the next. It is off by default and follows the normal wrap-navigation preference.
The Full View status bar shows both the current image position and the current group position while grouped navigation is active.
Grouped filmstrips are available on iPad. Tap a group thumbnail to open its first photo, then tap the photo filmstrip to choose another photo in that group.
iPhone uses one filmstrip without group navigation.
Group By vs. Stacks
Grouping is a viewing and navigation tool. Stacks are persistent organization that can collapse several photos under a chosen top item and can affect workflow output.
Use Similar Scenes when you want PhotoCuller to temporarily surface related photos for comparison. Create a stack only when you want that relationship saved.