24 MACWORLD AUGUST 2019
MAC USER REVIEW: PICKTORIAL 4.0the application’s documentation, specific
attributes are limited to text contained in
the photo name, keyword, camera name,
camera maker and rating. The available
syntax isn’t spelled out, and my attempts
to search for, say, all images captured at
f/2.8 proved unsuccessful. The search
implementation has the potential to be
powerful, but it’s not at all intuitive.
The Smart Album feature follows the
same pattern. In most applications, a smart
album is a collection of results based on a
set of search queries. You could create a
smart album that shows only the photos
captured within the past 30 days ranked
three stars or higher, for example. But
there’s no actual Smart Album command in
Picktorial; you perform a search, right-click
Last Search in the Library panel, choose
Duplicate, and rename the saved search. If
you want to change the parameters of that
smart album, you need to adjust the terms
in the Search field and re-save it as a new
search. The capability is there, but you
wouldn’t know it unless you’re looking for
it; at the time of this review, there’s no
mention of the feature in the application’s
documentation.
Other aspects of searching can be
frustrating. You can search only one
folder at a time, and the location is
defined separately from the Search field.
For example, I’m not able to find all
three-star photos in my Picktorial Local
and Picktorial NAS test folders. The
alternative in that case is to perform the
search in all of my folders, but that would
include too many sources.
I’d also like the ability to remove the
default Pictures folder in my home
directory (~/Pictures) from the Folders list,
since that’s such a catch-all for other
images that aren’t part of my photo
library≈(especially if you have photo
libraries for several applications, as I do). I
suspect Pictures is there to ensure that
Picktorial has a starting place to build, but
with its flexibility to include other folders,
even on NAS devices, it should be
possible to remove or hide the Pictures
folder contents.
While we’re on the topic of folders, I
desperately want Picktorial to be able to
display the photos from all nested
folders. As it is now, if my photos are
organized in the Finder by a date
hierarchy, I click a 2019 folder and see
only more folders for 2019-01-01, 2019-
01-02, and so on. This isn’t an issue if
you dump all your images into one
folder, but it’s more common to have
some sort of organizing structure in the
Finder. To add extra annoyance, you
can’t simply double-click the subfolders
that appear in the browser; to open one,
you must click the expansion triangle in
the Library panel to expose them, then
select the one—just one—you want.