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Import your first shoot

Selekt is the organizing layer between your camera and Lightroom. Importing is the first step: you point it at a folder of photos and it does the tedious work of scanning, pairing, reading metadata, and building fast previews.

Import a folder

Section titled “Import a folder”
  1. Click Import in the library header to open the import wizard.
  2. Select the folder of photos you just offloaded from your cards. Selekt scans it and shows every photo it found, all selected by default. Untick anything you want to leave out, or use Select all / Deselect all.
  3. Choose Continue, then configure the import (see the options below).
  4. Choose Start import and watch the progress bar. You can keep working while it runs, or choose Run in background to shrink it to a small progress pill.

Selekt copies your originals into an enforced folder structure so every shoot is laid out the same way:

/Photos/{YYYY}/{YYYY-MM-DD_ShootName}/
  RAW/         Original camera files
  Developed/   Lightroom exports
  Social/      Platform exports
  Selects/     Picks headed for Lightroom
  .selekt/     Metadata (hidden)

Photos land under your Photos library location, which you set in Settings (it defaults to ~/Pictures/Selekt). You do not pick a destination on every import.

Import options

Section titled “Import options”

Before you start, you can:

  • Add to a shoot. Leave it out, create a New shoot (with a name, or auto-named from the date), or add to an Existing shoot and optionally a scene.
  • Skip duplicate photos. Uses perceptual hashing to detect photos you have already imported so they are not copied twice.
  • Rename files on import using tokens like date, shoot name, and sequence, with a live preview of the result.
  • Backup to a second drive. Mirror every imported file to another folder as you go, with an optional byte-for-byte verify.
  • Correct date/time by an offset or to a specific date, useful when a camera clock was wrong.

You can cancel a running import with Cancel import. Cancelling keeps the photos already copied; it just stops copying the rest.

JPG and RAW pairing

Section titled “JPG and RAW pairing”

If you shoot JPG + RAW, Selekt detects pairs automatically by matching base filenames (for example IMG_0042.jpg and IMG_0042.raf). The pair shows as a single frame in the grid, so your library is not cluttered with duplicates, and you can switch between the camera JPG and the true RAW sensor data in the preview. See JPG and RAW for how that works.

Selekt reads a wide range of RAW formats across 400+ camera models, decoded with LibRaw. The full list is in Supported formats and cameras.

What Selekt reads and builds

Section titled “What Selekt reads and builds”

During import, Selekt:

  • Extracts EXIF: capture date, camera, lens, and exposure settings.
  • Corrects orientation so portrait frames show upright.
  • Generates a sharp thumbnail and a larger preview for each frame.
  • Computes a perceptual hash so it can flag likely duplicates.

Once import finishes, your shoot appears in the library grid, ready to cull.

Next

Section titled “Next”