The Files tab in Disk Sort: thumbnails, details and one picture
Disk Sort by Zaweba's Files tab shows a folder as thumbnails, a detailed list or one picture at a time, with photo columns like camera and date taken.
The FILES tab is the right hand half of Disk Sort by Zaweba, where the contents of the open folder are shown and where sorting, culling and file work happen. It has three views, and switching between them with the keyboard soon becomes second nature: thumbnails with Ctrl+1, a detailed list with Ctrl+2, and one picture at a time with Ctrl+3 or Enter.
Thumbnails for looking
Thumbnails are the natural view for photos. You see a grid of pictures and can spot the blurred ones, the duplicates and the shots of the inside of a pocket. Make them bigger or smaller with Ctrl and the mouse wheel, or Ctrl+plus and Ctrl+minus. Small thumbnails show more at once for a quick scan of a big folder; large ones let you compare similar shots.
Photos are shown the right way up from the camera's own orientation note, so you don't have to rotate anything just to look.
Details for deciding
The detailed list is where facts live. Columns include name, size, size on disk, modified and created dates, type, camera, date taken, keywords and stars. For archives there's a Files inside column, showing how many files each one holds.
Sort by name, date, size, type or date taken, and reverse the order when you need to. Sorting a download folder by size, biggest first, finds the space hogs. Sorting a photo folder by date taken lines up shots from two cameras in the order they really happened.
One picture for judging
The single picture view fills the space with one photo. It's the view for culling. Mark a keeper with P or the star, rate with 1 to 5, and move on. In this large view you can zoom to check sharpness, with the zoom kept as you move from shot to shot, and press E to open the editor to crop, straighten and adjust.
The five modes
What the Files tab lists depends on its mode. Folder shows the open folder. Branch shows the open folder and everything below it as one flat list. Showall lists every file in the scan, or on the drive, flat. Tagged shows the files you've tagged wherever they are, and Results shows the matches from a search of the scan.
These modes are what make the tab more than a folder window. A photo shoot split across ten subfolders becomes one list in Branch. Every tagged file from all over the drive becomes one list in Tagged, ready to copy, move, zip or delete together.
The info panel
On the right sits an info panel with details about the selected file, including camera and date details for photos. Show it when you want to check what a picture is and where it came from; hide it to give the thumbnails more room.
Making it work for you
Pick the view to fit the job rather than sticking with one. A common rhythm is thumbnails to get the feel of a folder, details to sort and find the big or old files, then one picture to make the close calls.
Use filters to narrow the list. You can show only one kind of file, filter by name with wildcards, or limit photos to keepers, stars, a date range, a camera or a keyword.
Remember that every view shows the same files, so tags, stars and selections carry across. Star a picture in the single view and it shows its star in the grid and in the list's stars column too.
Disk Sort by Zaweba keeps all of this in one window beside the folder tree, so finding space and sorting what's in it happen in the same place.
