Folder Browser

The folder browser is the left panel in Library view. It’s split into two sections — FAVORITES at the top and FOLDERS below — separated by a draggable handle so you can resize them to taste.

FOLDERS — your roots

The FOLDERS section lists the root folders you’ve added to the browser. Each root is a folder somewhere on your disk (typically a year, a shoot location, or your top-level macro directory) that you’ve told Macro Studio to keep an eye on.

Add a folder

Click + Add a folder at the top of the FOLDERS section. A standard system folder picker opens; choose the parent directory that holds your macro shoots. Common choices:

~/Pictures/macro/
An external SSD with this year’s shoots
A network volume where your raw files live

You can add as many roots as you want; they persist across launches.

Expand and load

Click the disclosure triangle next to a root to expand it. Subfolders load lazily on first expansion, so adding a folder with thousands of subdirectories is fast.

Click any folder to load its images as one stack in the filmstrip. Double-click does the same and also expands the disclosure triangle — useful when you want to drill into a sub-shoot.

Clicking a folder that holds no supported images — a container folder, or one you’ve just emptied — loads it too: the filmstrip clears and the preview pane reads There are no image files in this folder. rather than leaving the previous folder’s frame on screen. The folder stays watched while you’re in it, so an image copied in afterwards appears without a manual refresh.

Right-clicking a folder offers:

Load N images — same as a single click; loads every supported image in the folder.
Add to Favorites / Remove from Favorites — star the folder for quick access from the top section.
Reveal in Finder (macOS) / Reveal in File Explorer (Windows) / Reveal in File Manager (Linux) — opens the folder in your OS file manager.
Copy to folder… — pick a destination and Macro Studio copies the folder and everything inside it there, leaving the original alone. A progress bar with a Cancel button appears if the copy takes more than a moment; cancelling stops at the end of the file being copied and removes the part-written copy.
Move to folder… — the same picker, but the folder moves. Your roots, favorites and expanded folders follow it, exactly as they do when you drag a folder onto another row. Within one drive a move is instant; onto another drive it copies every byte, so it gets the same progress bar and Cancel button.
Rename… — renames the folder on disk; your favorites and browser state follow the new name automatically.
Delete… — moves the folder and everything inside it to the system Trash (recoverable from there). A confirmation appears first.
Remove from Browser — only shown on root-level items. Removes the root from the browser without touching the files on disk.

Refreshing

Macro Studio watches the folders you’re working with — your roots, their parent folders, and any expanded folders — and refreshes the tree on its own when files or folders change on disk, so you don’t normally have to think about it. If a root folder is moved or deleted outside the app, its row is marked (missing) rather than vanishing silently, so a folder that went away is easy to tell apart from an empty one.

You can also refresh by hand: click the Refresh button at the top of the panel (⌘R / Ctrl+R) to re-scan the visible tree. Expanded folders stay expanded; favorites stay favorited.

FAVORITES — quick access

The FAVORITES section is for folders you come back to often: a current-project shoot, a tutorial set, a benchmark stack you keep iterating on.

Star a folder

Right-click any folder in the FOLDERS tree and choose Add to Favorites, or click the star icon at the right edge of the row when it’s hovered (gold filled = favorited, grey outline = not).

Favorites appear at the top of the panel under the FAVORITES heading. They’re independent of the FOLDERS tree — adding a favorite doesn’t change anything about the source folder’s position, and the favorite remains valid even if you remove the parent root.

Right-click context (Favorites tree)

Load — loads images from the folder.
Reveal in Finder / File Explorer / File Manager — opens in the OS file manager.
Rename… — renames the folder on disk, same as in the FOLDERS tree.
Delete… — moves the folder and its contents to the system Trash, with a confirmation first.
Remove from Favorites — top-level favorites only.

When the FAVORITES section is empty, you’ll see the placeholder text (none yet — click any star).

Drag and drop

Drag a folder in from Finder (or File Explorer, or your Linux file manager) and drop it on the folder browser. Where you let go decides what happens, and the panel tells you which one you’re about to get before you do:

On empty space — below the last row, on a heading, or on the empty-state card — the folder is added to the FOLDERS tree as a new root, the same as clicking +. The whole panel picks up a green frame while you hover there. Nothing on disk moves; Macro Studio just starts showing that folder. Drop several at once and they’re all added, and dropping a folder that’s already there simply expands it again.
On a folder row the folder is moved inside that folder on disk, exactly as dragging one folder onto another inside the app does. The row under the cursor gets a green border — and only when the move makes sense. Drop a folder on itself, or back into the folder it already lives in, and no row lights up: it’s added as a root instead.

When you let go, the tree scrolls to the folder, so one added to the bottom of a long list doesn’t land out of sight.

A folder with subfolders comes in whole, either way — there’s no need to add each subfolder separately, and that holds even when the parent itself holds no photos and all the frames live in the subfolders. A folder added as a root arrives expanded, so its subfolders are listed straight away; a folder moved into a row is revealed where it landed, and you open it with its own disclosure triangle.

Note the difference between the two halves of the window: dropping a folder on the folder browser adds or moves it, while dropping it anywhere else in the window loads its images straight into the filmstrip without adding anything. The green frame or row highlight is how you tell.

Moving a folder in from another drive

Inside one drive, moving a folder is a rename: instant, however big the folder is. From another drive — a memory card, an external SSD — every file has to be copied across and the original then removed, which can take minutes. Macro Studio does that in the background and shows a progress window with a Cancel button:

Cancel and nothing in progress is lost: the part-written copy is removed and that folder stays exactly where it was. If you dropped several folders at once, the ones already finished have already moved — cancelling stops the rest, it doesn’t put them back.
If the copy lands but the original can’t be fully removed — a locked file, a read-only card — Macro Studio says so, and tells you which one to keep: the copy is the complete one. Don’t assume the leftovers in the old place are a spare copy; deleting part-way through is how that message happens.

If the destination already holds a folder with the same name, the drop is refused with a message and nothing is moved on either side. Rename one of them first. Macro Studio never merges two folders together, because that’s the one outcome that could overwrite your files.

There’s no confirmation step on a row drop and no undo inside Macro Studio — the folder moves as soon as you let go, the same as dragging it between folders in Finder. If you land one somewhere you didn’t mean to, drag it back.

Dragging inside the app

You can drag image files out of the filmstrip and drop them on a folder in either tree to move them — useful when you decide a frame belongs in a different shoot. A confirmation appears if the destination already has same-named files.

Photos that a stack is using come with you. Drag frames a stack was made from onto another folder and Macro Studio quietly follows them, so that stack keeps its Retouch and its Raw DNG export instead of asking you to find the frames again. A stack you’ve queued but that hasn’t started yet picks up the new locations too, and still runs.

Photos a stack is reading right now can’t be moved. They’re being opened one by one as the stack works through them, so the move is held and a message says to try again once the stack finishes. This is all-or-nothing: if any photo in your selection is in use, none of them move.

Whole folders work the same way. Move a folder into another folder, or rename one, and any stack built from photos inside it follows along — everything underneath moves at once, so there’s nothing to miss. If a stack is reading anything in that folder right now, you’re told which folder and nothing moves — all-or-nothing, the same as for individual photos.

You can also drag a folder onto another folder in the tree to move the whole folder — contents and all — inside it.

If the folder you’re aiming at has scrolled out of sight, hold the drag against the top or bottom edge of the tree and it scrolls while you hold it there, so a target below the fold is still reachable without letting go.

Putting the lists in your own order

Both lists start out in the order you added things to them, and both can be rearranged by dragging. Drag a root up or down the FOLDERS list, or a favorite up or down the FAVORITES list, and drop it where you want it. The new order is remembered and comes back the next time you open Macro Studio.

Aim between two rows, not at one. A green line appears where the row will land:

Where you let go	What happens
Near the top or bottom edge of a top-level row	A green line marks the gap — the row you’re dragging moves there
In the middle of a row (FOLDERS)	The row picks up a green border and the folder moves inside it on disk, as before
In the empty space below the last row	The row goes to the end of the list

The two cues never appear together, so you can always tell which one you’re about to get before you let go — and it’s worth looking, because a green border means a folder is about to move on disk. If a root is expanded, the “goes after this one” line is drawn below its last visible subfolder — where the gap actually is on screen — rather than tucked under the root’s own row.

Only top-level rows can be reordered: roots in FOLDERS, favorites in FAVORITES. Subfolders are listed in name order for you, so there’s nothing there to set, and the green line only ever marks a gap between two top-level rows. Inside an expanded root, watch the cue rather than the row you’re over — it’s the line or the border that tells you what you’re about to get.

Neither list can shuffle the other. Dragging a favorite over the FOLDERS list does nothing at all. The other direction is not nothing, though: a root dragged over the FAVORITES list still carries its ordinary meaning, so letting go on a favorite row moves that folder inside it on disk, exactly as it would in the FOLDERS tree.

Nothing on disk moves when you reorder — you’re changing the order of a list, not the folders themselves. A root marked (missing) can be moved up and down like any other. And if the spot you want has scrolled out of sight, hold the drag against the top or bottom edge and the list scrolls while you hold it there, the same as any other drag here.

When the browser is empty

Right after install, the FOLDERS tree shows:

📁  No folders yet
Add a folder of focus-bracketed photos to get started.

Click + Add a folder to add your first root. From then on, the browser stays populated across launches.

Tips

One root per drive is usually enough. Macro Studio’s tree handles thousands of subfolders without slowing down.
Favorites for in-progress work. If you’re iterating on a shoot, star it so it stays at the top regardless of where the parent root falls in your tree.
Put the current job first. Drag whatever you’re working on to the top of FAVORITES (or FOLDERS) and it’s one click away every time you open the app, however many folders you’ve collected.
Reveal is your bridge to Lightroom, Photoshop, and the rest of your workflow — fastest way to jump from Macro Studio’s view of a folder to your file manager’s view of the same folder.