Unlike a pure catalog program, fotoARRAY contains many ways to exchange pictures with programs that do one task well, above all RAW development. We do not want to lock you into our system. We want you to use the best tool for each job and to have fotoARRAY keep the overview. Most of the ways described here work in both directions: pictures go out, and results come back to the catalog.
With the PRO edition the side car files are copied to a work directorys and you can open that folder with a capable RAW developer to edit them. Since the side car files are copied along the RAW, you do not have to start from scratch.
The tile menu lists the programs that Windows knows for pictures, the same list the Explorer shows under "Open with", including apps from the Store. Pick one and the selected pictures are opened there. A program that is not in the list can be chosen with a file dialog and is remembered. fotoARRAY watches the file and refreshes the preview when the program saved it.
Drag pictures from the grid on any other program or on the desktop. Before you drag, you choose in the menu what is handed over: the thumbnail from the catalog, the best developed JPEG or the original file. If the drive with the originals is not connected, the thumbnail still works, which is enough for an e-mail or a document. Copy and paste offers the same choice.
The other direction selects pictures. Drop the files a RAW program wrote into a project folder on the grid, and the originals with the same names are selected. Give them a colour label, and you know which pictures of the shooting were developed.
fotoARRAY comes with a capable RAW developer and a carefully designed processing pipeline, but it never locks you in.
Prefer another RAW developer? If it has a command-line interface that accepts development settings and returns the results, you can connect it to fotoARRAY. Use the itegration in the context menu of the grid:
The File Browser gives you access to the images in your catalog through the folders on your disks, just as you're used to.
You don't need to search or filter in the catalog. You simply open a folder and see your images in a fast, flat view, from one or more folders at once and with or without subfolders. Unlike Windows Explorer, the File Browser knows your catalog. It shows each file's stars, colour labels, and keywords.
The file browser can hide the directories which are not in the catalog, or only show te ones which are.
One click takes you to the folder or the image in fotoARRAY, and Develop opens it directly in fotoARRAYRAW.
When you rename or move a folder in the File Browser, the catalog is told first and follows. The pictures keep their albums, keywords and history. If you do the same in the Explorer, the catalog loses the folder and finds it again only at the next synchronisation. The same catalog aware renaming is available in the folder tree of fotoARRAY itself.
A folder that is not in the catalog yet can be imported from the File Browser with one click, and the card copy tool is available there too.
The card copy tool copies pictures from a memory card, a phone or any folder into your archive. The destination path and the file names are built from a template with the capture date, the camera and a counter, so every shooting lands in a folder like 2026\2026-09-02 Munich. Sidecar files travel with their pictures, collisions are skipped, renamed or overwritten as you decide, a date filter takes only the new pictures, and the copied pictures can be imported into the catalog in the same run. Profiles remember the settings for each camera. It is included in every edition.
The card copy tool
FREE Edit with, drag and drop and copy and paste with selectable data, drop files on the grid to select, card copy tool.
PRO Album export with sidecars and developed copies, copy results back, watched directories, sharing on the network with QR code, the File Browser, catalog aware rename and move of folders.