Variants
Some pictures do not have one right answer. A variant is a second version of the same photo: its own edits, its own rating, its own crop — and no second file on disk. The original is read; nothing is duplicated.
Making one
Section titled “Making one”Right-click a photo in the grid or the filmstrip and choose Create variant. It starts where the photo currently stands, so you can carry on from the look you already have instead of beginning again, and it opens straight away.
The keywords and album memberships come along. The rating, the flag and the colour label do not: the variant has not been judged yet, and a copied five stars would put the same picture into every filter twice.
Seeing them
Section titled “Seeing them”
In the grid and in albums a photo with variants stays one tile, drawn as a small stack, with a label saying how many versions there are. Click the photo — or its label — and they open below it. This matters most in an album: you put one picture in, and the album keeps showing one picture.
Inside that flyout the versions behave like tiles: rate them, flag them as picks or rejects, and judge them against each other without leaving the panel. Click one to select it, ⌘/Ctrl-click to add more to the selection — so exporting two of three versions is a selection, not a detour — double-click to open one, and right-click for the usual menu. Clicking a different photo closes the panel and moves to it in one click.
To add a version to a selection you have already started, ⌘/Ctrl-click the stack: the panel opens without disturbing what you picked so far, and whichever version you choose joins it. Which version is precisely the question there, and the main image would only be a guess at the answer.
In the filmstrip, where everything sits in a single row, the group folds open sideways instead: the versions appear next to each other, a little smaller than the main image and with a line beneath tying them together. It opens by itself when you open one of them — the other versions are what you reach for next — and closes again when you move on to a different photo. The label folds it by hand at any time.
One version is the main image — the one that stands for the group and acts for it. Rating, exporting or deleting a stack applies to the main image alone, never quietly to all of them; the context menu offers apply to all variants when you do mean the whole set.
To hand that role to another version, right-click it and choose Set as main image.
Working with them
Section titled “Working with them”A variant behaves like any other photo. It is rated and flagged on its own, goes into albums on its own, can be opened next to another photo for comparison, and exports on its own. Comparing two variants side by side is what they are for: right-click one and choose Open for comparison, as described under Comparing photos.
On export the main image keeps the file’s name and the others carry their number, so
DSC04961.jpg and DSC04961-1.jpg land side by side instead of overwriting each other.
Removing one
Section titled “Removing one”Right-click a variant and choose Remove variant. If it carries edits of its own, PxlMonk asks first — undo does not reach back to a removed variant. The photo and its other versions stay.
The last remaining version of a photo cannot be removed this way; that would be deleting the photo, which the Delete action asks about properly.
Where they live
Section titled “Where they live”Variants are kept in your library, and also written into the photo’s .xmp sidecar
alongside its edits — one file, not one per variant. So they survive a rebuilt catalog and
travel with the photos to another machine, provided the sidecar travels too.
If your licence lapses back to Free, the variants you already made are not deleted — PxlMonk keeps them in the sidecar and shows the main image. They come back when Pro does.