Sort Tool
The Sort Tool helps you organise a dataset by moving loose images into the concept folders where they belong. It works from the global Unsorted folder, pooling every image you have set aside there and giving you a focused place to categorise, tag, and caption each one.
Whenever you send an image to the Unsorted folder — for example, through the Unsorted action in Gallery View's Detailed View — it waits there until you are ready to file it. The Sort Tool is where that filing happens.
The tool pools images from every Unsorted folder found beneath the current folder, so multiple Unsorted bins scattered across a dataset are gathered into a single session. When you open the tool, you can choose one of three modes:
- Images: Review unsorted images one at a time and send each to a folder.
- Fast Sort: Bulk-fill concept folders using caption and tag matching.
- Folders: Reorganise, consolidate, and rename the dataset's folders, safely re-pathing the database as you go.
The Images mode presents each unsorted image on its own so you can decide where it goes.
For every image you can:
- Send to a folder. Start typing a destination and Studio suggests matching folders. Press Tab to accept the highlighted suggestion, use the arrow keys to change it, and press Enter to move. If you type a name that does not yet exist, Studio offers to create it for you.
- Add or replace tags. Enter tags to attach to the image. With Replace all tags on entry switched on, a new tag wipes the existing tags and replaces them, which is useful when correcting a mistagged image.
- Edit the caption. The caption editor works the same way as elsewhere in Studio, including per-line approval and pending caption lines. See the Captioning page for more about caption types.
- Skip the image to move on without filing it.
- Delete the image.
A running counter shows your progress through the session, and every move, delete, or tag change can be reversed with Undo.
Before starting an Images session, you can enter an optional caption filter. Studio then pools only unsorted images whose caption contains that text, letting you work through one theme at a time rather than the whole Unsorted pool at once.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| D or Delete | Delete the current image |
| S or → | Skip to the next image |
| Ctrl + Z | Undo the last action |
| Enter | Move to the selected folder |
Fast Sort is a bulk pass designed to fill underfilled concept folders quickly. Instead of reviewing images one at a time, you pick a folder, review the unsorted images whose captions and tags match that folder's keywords, and move the approved ones in a single action.
Each concept folder is matched against the Unsorted pool using a set of keywords. Studio builds these keywords automatically:
-
From the folder name. A folder such as
Poses & Actions/Spread Legsseeds the keywordspread legs. Umbrella prefixes are ignored, conjunctions are split into separate keywords, and anything in parentheses is dropped. - From the folder's existing members. Studio inspects the tags already present on the images in the folder and mines the ones that are distinctive to it — tags that are common inside the folder but rare across the wider pool. Generic tags that appear on a large share of the dataset carry no folder-specific signal and are excluded.
Note: Exemplar mining only runs on folders that already hold a reasonable number of tagged images. A folder needs enough members carrying a tag before that tag is suggested, so a folder with only one or two images keeps just its folder-name keywords. This prevents an image's incidental tags from being mistaken for the folder's meaning.
Matching happens in two tiers, and matches are ranked accordingly:
- Tag matches come first. An image matches when a keyword appears as one of its tags, either exactly or as a whole word within a longer compound tag.
- Caption matches come second. If a keyword does not match a tag, Studio looks for it in the caption text as a whole phrase. Mentions that follow a negation, such as "no visible tattoos", are rejected so the image is not filed by mistake.
Within each tier, images that match more of the folder's keywords rank higher, and images with a higher AI quality score rank above those with a lower score. This surfaces the strongest, most relevant exemplars first. Each result is labelled with the tier it matched on and the reason for the match.
The folder rail on the left lists the concept folders in the current scope. You can filter the list by name and sort it by:
- Most potential matches: Folders with the most matching unsorted images first. On an equal count, the more specific (deeper) folder wins, then the more underfilled folder, then name.
- Underfilled first: Folders holding the fewest images first.
- Name: Alphabetical order.
The count beside each folder shows how many images in the Unsorted pool could potentially match its keywords. This is a lower bound based on tag matches, so a folder may gain a few more once caption matches are considered.
When you select a folder, its keywords appear above the candidate grid as removable chips. You can add your own keyword or remove any that are pulling in the wrong images, then use Refresh matches to re-run the search.
If you want the folder to keep your changes, choose Save keywords. Saved keywords are remembered for that folder and take precedence over the automatic seed and mined suggestions the next time you sort.
The Only show exact matches option, set on the Sort Tool start screen before you enter Fast Sort, keeps only images that carry a keyword as a literal tag. Loose caption matches are hidden, and mined co-occurrence keywords are suppressed so only folder-name keywords (and any you have saved) remain. Use it when you want strict, tag-driven results with no prose guesswork.
No images are selected for you — you opt images in rather than weeding a full selection out. Click an image to select it, or use Select all. A right-click opens the image in the detail view so you can inspect its captions and scores before deciding.
When you are happy with the selection, choose Move to send every selected image into the folder in one action. The grid, pool count, and folder totals update immediately, and Undo last move reverses the most recent batch, returning the images to where they came from.
The Bulk Actions menu offers further operations on the selected images, including moving them to a different folder, adding or removing tags, and the shared caption operations used elsewhere in Studio.
Every move the Sort Tool performs acts on the real files on disk. When an image is sent to a folder, Studio:
- Moves the image file into the destination folder, creating the folder if it does not already exist.
- Carries the image's sidecar files — such as its caption and mask files — along with it.
- Moves any cached thumbnail so it continues to follow the image.
- Updates the database so the image's captions, tags, and scores remain associated with it at its new location.
Because the database is re-pathed as part of the move, the information Studio holds about an image is never lost when it changes folders. Undo reverses the same steps, restoring the files, sidecars, thumbnails, and database paths together.
Note: The Sort Tool never offers an
Unsortedfolder as a move destination — the pool of images you are sorting is itself theUnsortedcontent, so moving images back into it would defeat the purpose.