Trails RG

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Trails RG Studio

The manual. Photographs stay on your device. A file moves only when you confirm.

Effective date: 22 October 2026

Trails RG Studio is a local photography app for Android and macOS. Home, Library, Editor, Panorama, and Collage are the five parts. On a Mac they sit on the left. On a phone they sit along the bottom. Settings and Help are at the end of that bar.

Android installs from Google Play. macOS downloads from this site, and later builds arrive from Help → Check for updates. There is no public iPad build.

← Studio · Privacy · What's new

Contents

Home

Home is the first screen. The tiles are Library, Editor, Panorama, Collage, Follow us, and Help. Follow us opens Instagram @trails_rg. Help opens feedback, the tour, privacy, and About.

Library

Library lists the folder you open. It does not build a catalog of every drive. Places remembers folders you have used. A check on a folder includes it the next time you cull. An hourglass means that folder has not been culled yet.

JPEG, RAW, HEIC, TIFF, PNG, WebP, and video can be filtered from the type menu. Supported RAW includes Nikon NEF, Canon CR2 and CR3, Sony ARW, OM System ORF, and DNG. A large RAW opens from the camera preview, then a screen-sized picture. Those previews are cached on the internal disk, not beside the photos, and the cache stays within 2 GB.

Sort is Newest, Oldest, Name, Name Z–A, Place, Sharpest, or Blurriest. Sharpest and Blurriest use a finished cull. Show is the same list as the filters in Scenes: All, Picks, Rejects, each star rating, Fully blurry, No content, Cross-check, Bird, Mammal, Animal, No animal, Can sharpen, Won't sharpen, and, after a Thorough cull, Shake and Clipped. The view can be Grid, List, or Gallery. In Gallery, the large photo can be accepted or rejected, compared with another frame from the same scene, and opened in the Editor, Collage, or Panorama. Select two or three photos and choose Compare to see those photos side by side.

Click a photo to select it. Command-click (Control-click on other computers) adds or removes one photo. Shift-click selects the range. Command+A selects every photo currently shown. Arrow keys move the selection. Shift plus an arrow extends it. Enter or Space opens the photo. P marks Pick, X marks Reject, U clears the flag, and 1 through 5 set your stars. 0 clears the stars. Command+I opens Get Info. Command+Delete asks before moving the selection to the Trash. Enter confirms. Escape leaves the photo where it is. Enter also confirms Move to Archive and Move. In full screen the next photo stays open, and the other thumbnails stay on screen.

Right-click a photo for Rate, album, Pick, Reject, Unflag, Edit, Panorama, Get Info, Copy, Duplicate, Cut, Paste, Rename, Move, Move to Archive, Restore, Rotate, Edit with another app, and Move to Trash. Right-click a folder for Open, Get Info, Find duplicates, Find unusable, and Restore when the folder is an archive.

The sidebar holds Places, Favorites, and Archive. Favorites are a bookmark, separate from stars. Albums are lists you name. Add to album does not move the file.

Cull

A cull compares the photos in the checked folders and suggests which frames to keep. It saves that judgment with the folder. It does not move, archive, or delete a file.

Photos taken close together become one scene. A later frame that still looks like the same shot can stay in that scene for up to a minute. Turning the camera from horizontal to vertical starts a new scene. Each frame is compared with the sharpest frame in that same scene. A photo on its own is never called soft.

  • Sharpest. The best frame, or one with at least 92% of that best detail.
  • Soft. A spare under Accept at, compared with the sharpest frame in the scene.
  • Fully blurry. The whole frame is below the blur floor. Can sharpen means Clarity can still lift the edges. Won't sharpen means the detail is gone.
  • No content. No subject, and the sharpest patch is nearly empty.
  • Subject. A bird, mammal, or other animal, when one is named. The focus box sits on it. A small bird on wires or sky can still be missed.

Two small models ship inside the app and run on the phone or Mac. One finds the subject shape. The other names a bird, a mammal, or another animal. They do not identify a person, a face, or an age. A photograph is not sent to Trails RG or to a cloud AI. Sharpness, shake, and exposure are measurements, not a third model. See the Privacy Policy.

Settings has three pages.

  • Cull. Fast scores the subject edges. Thorough also checks shake and clipped exposure, and looks again in four parts of the frame when no animal was named. Accept at defaults to 0.60 and runs from 0.30 to 0.90. At 0.60, a frame with less than 60% of the best detail in its scene starts under Reject. Moving the slider updates the cull you already have.
  • Performance. CPU or GPU chooses where the two models run. GPU uses Core ML on a Mac and NNAPI on Android, then falls back to the processor. Memory is how many photos are read at once: Light is one, and Balanced and High follow the computer. The models still look at one frame at a time.
  • Archive. The folder used by Move to Archive. The default is Pictures/TrailsRG/Archive. A folder you choose is remembered.

While a cull runs you see the frame just finished, a ring, and a bar. Stop ends that run. Cull again starts from the beginning. The Mac or phone stays awake until the cull finishes or you stop it. On a Mac the Dock icon shows the percent while the window is in the background.

A suggested rating appears as Cull 5 down to Cull 2 only when an animal was named and the sharpness checks agree. Anything else says Cull held. That suggestion is not written onto the file. Stars you set are written beside the photo, and a cull never changes them. After a cull, a gold box marks the sharp patch. View options → Focus points hides that box on the grid, in the large photo, in full screen, and in scene review. Full screen has the same switch beside the zoom controls, and a grid menu for thirds, a grid, diagonals, or the golden ratio. G cycles those lines. They are a guide and are not saved. The choice stays. The words Sharp, Can sharpen, and Cannot sharpen stay on the photo.

Under the open photo, full screen shows the neighboring frames, your stars, Pick, and Reject. Compare places the next frame from the same scene beside it. Turn left or turn right works on a JPEG. Collage and Panorama open from that photo. Histogram and clipped tones read the preview on screen. 1:1 matches one preview pixel to one screen pixel.

Scenes

Review scenes opens from the Cull sheet. On a wide window, Accept is the left column and Reject is the right. The line at the top counts accept, reject, and scenes.

  • Scenes groups by burst. All photos lists every frame in the order they were taken.
  • Accept and Reject mark the open frame. Accept all and Reject all mark the scene you are looking at. Shift-click a thumbnail to move that one frame.
  • Keep Auto uses Accept at. Keep 1, 2, or 3 keeps only that many sharpest frames in each scene.
  • Why explains the mark. The note stays with the cull.
  • Split scene starts a new scene at this frame. Join next joins this scene with the following one.

Accept and Reject are marks. The file stays in the folder. Reject on this page is not Trash.

Cross-check is the review list: soft spares, fully blurry frames, and empty frames. It leaves out favorites, photos you rated 4 or 5 stars, and the only frame in a scene that still contains the subject. On the Cull sheet, Reject cross-check frames writes that mark and leaves the files in place. Move cross-check frames to Archive moves them into the archive folder.

Find unusable and Find duplicates

These are separate from a cull. They do not change Accept and Reject.

  • Find unusable lists blank frames and frames that cannot be sharpened, with a thumbnail and a reason. You look at them, then archive or trash the ones you choose. It uses the same Memory and Processor settings as a cull.
  • Find duplicates matches the file name, the date and time, and the contents, including subfolders. The oldest copy that opens stays. You confirm before anything moves to Archive. A copy that does not open is left where it is. Stop ends the scan. This scan does not use the animal model.

Archive, Trash, and restore

Move to Archive asks first, then moves the selected files into the archive folder. Move asks the same way before a file leaves the folder. Enter confirms either one. Escape cancels. Move to Trash asks first, then moves them to the system Trash. Photos that leave the folder you are looking at drop off the screen. The other thumbnails stay. Neither Archive nor Trash runs by itself at the end of a cull.

Archive remembers where a file came from. Restore puts it back, when the original place is still there. The Archive folder in the sidebar is locked so a cull does not treat it as another shoot.

Editor

Open a photo from the Library, or use Open photos and Open folder in the Editor. On a Mac you can drop files onto the window. A Photoshop file opens as the flattened picture already stored in it. Studio does not write a layered PSD back. The original stays untouched. Export writes a new file, by default into Pictures / Trails RG Studio. Quick export uses the current look. Undo and Redo cover a whole slider drag as one step.

Each open photo keeps its own colour grade, crop, style, effects, frame, caption, logo, text, shape, paint, and liquify. Moving to the next photo, opening another file, or dropping a new photo starts that photo plain. None of that comes along from the previous photo. Quitting the app drops an edit you did not save. Save edit stores the grade, logo, frame, crop, and caption under a name. The bookmark menu applies that saved edit when you ask. It does not apply itself to the next photo.

Hold for original hides the grade, logo, frame, and caption while the button or the \ key is held. Compare shows the untouched photo on the left and the edit on the right. The crop stays in both so the framing does not jump. On a phone those controls sit under the photo. Adjust opens as a menu on the laptop and the phone. Looks is one screen. Light, Color, Curve, HSL, FX, and Mask are separate screens. Color then opens its own list.Clips, while Adjust is open, paints blown highlights red and crushed shadows blue.

The tools, in order, are:

  • Crop. Free, the original shape, or a locked ratio. Grid lines, aspect, and size are menus. A size also sets the export: pixels, inches, or centimetres, including 8×10 in, A4, and the common screen sizes. Grid lines can be Thirds, Grid, Diagonal, Golden, or none. The lines are a guide and are not saved into the photo. Drag the frame. Zoom fills it.
  • Adjust. Light (exposure, brightness, contrast, highlights, shadows, fade), Color (saturation, vibrance, temperature, tint, colour balance, split tone, a black-and-white mixer, colorize, and a channel mixer), Curve, HSL, and FX (texture, clarity, dehaze, sharpness, vignette). A click on a neutral feather, rock, or cloud sets temperature and tint. Mask limits those sliders to one area. Linear fades across the frame, Radial is an oval, and Subject follows the animal or plant with the on-device model, or says when this device cannot run it. Feather softens the edge. Invert swaps which side changes. Each mask is named, such as Linear 1. Auto grades the light on the device.
  • Style. The same looks as Adjust, in one menu: Vivid, Warm, Cool, Fade, B&W, Vintage, Punch, Soft, and the film looks. A look replaces the light and colour already on this photo. Black and white opens a treatment menu. A look stays a preview until you keep it.
  • Effects. Not a look, and not the FX sliders in Adjust. One effect is on at a time: grain, bloom, halation, aberration, motion, glow, or a second photo. It stays a preview until you keep it.
  • Frame. A border around the photo: line, matte, polaroid, film, wood tones, and others. This is not an EXIF field.
  • Caption. Stamps the fields you choose onto the export. Field names, a plate, size, and notes are optional.
  • Fields. Reads the EXIF already in the file. It does not upload it.
  • Mark. A watermark on this photo. None, or the Studio mark, with size, opacity, and position. It stays on this photo until you clear it or move to another photo.
  • Text and Shape. A title you type, or a rectangle or ellipse, on the export. Each one can be hidden from the Paint panel. Hidden layers stay in the stack and are left out of the export.
  • Paint. Draw on this photo. Size and colour are in the panel. Clear paint removes the marks. The paint layer can be hidden on its own.
  • Liquify. Drag to push the photo. The brush sets how wide the push is. Reset liquify puts the pixels back. Text, shapes, and paint stay where you placed them.
  • Export. Chooses the folder, the watermark, and the file type: JPEG, PNG, TIFF, WebP, BMP, or GIF. JPEG has a quality slider. The original file is left alone. HEIC can be opened, and it is not written.

Panorama

Panorama splits one wide photo. It does not stitch several photos into a panorama. Choose a photo, pick an aspect (1:1, 3:4, 4:5, 9:16, 16:9, or 1.91:1), drag the frame, and set how many slices, from 1 to 8. Previous and Next step through the folder. Turn left, Turn right, and Flip rewrite a JPEG orientation tag without recompressing the file. Next asks for Slices or a Panoramic reel.

Slices save as separate pictures. A reel pans across the frame, left to right or right to left, at the length you set, in 1080p or 4K. Reels export as MP4. Panorama does not apply Editor captions. Open a saved slice in the Editor if you want those.

Collage

Collage puts several photos on one page. Layouts are grouped as Grids, Splits, Magazine, Story, Soft, and Polaroid. Soft layouts use rounded or circular frames. Polaroid layouts add a white matte with a blank band; the caption for that band is typed in the cell tools.

Add photos, tap a cell to replace one, or press and hold a cell and drop it on another to swap them. Use accepted fills the layout from photos already marked accept. Drag inside a cell to pan, use the zoom slider, Rotate, or Reset frame. Gap, border, corners, and background sit with the page. Circles stay circles. Layouts returns to the gallery. Photos stay in their cells when the new layout has enough cells. Export saves one JPEG. Clear empties a cell. Clear all empties the page.

Help

Help, from the rail or from Home, holds the tour, Report a problem, Request a feature, Contact, Buy us a coffee, the website, Instagram, the privacy policy, Check for updates on a Mac, and About. A report goes to [email protected] only when you send it. About shows the version and the build number.

The tour is a short walk through Library, duplicates, cull, stars, settings, cross-check, and the other tools. This page is the full manual.