Frequently asked questions.

A macOS app to organize and describe images, enrich their metadata, and find them again, up to the catalogue raisonné of a body of work. It comes from Obscura Flow and is part of its ecosystem.

The documented, as-complete-as-possible record of an artist's body of work. Obscura Catalog structures it into works, agents, attributions, prints, exhibitions, publications, and provenance.

LIDO and CIDOC-CRM, two cultural heritage standards, and CSV. The “Exports” page presents them.

EXIF and XMP metadata, which Obscura Catalog lets you enrich.

An archival PDF (PDF/A-2b) that attests, signed and dated, the authenticity of a work or a print. It carries a signed manifest (Ed25519): any change is detected, offline in the app or online at the address printed on the certificate. The “Certificate” page details its content.

Downloading is done from the Obscura member area: it requires an account and an Obscura Catalog license, the free plan included, granted once your request is approved. Once installed, the free tier lets you browse, search, describe up to 50 works, import files and a CSV, export CSV, issue up to 10 certificates of authenticity and verify certificates. A paid license opens the LIDO and CIDOC-CRM exports, the Lightroom import, a catalogue of more than 50 works and issuing more than 10 certificates. License prices have not been published yet.

What the work is, at work level: Technique says how the image is made (“Digital photograph, pigment inkjet print”), Support what it is on (“Matte cotton paper”). Both filled in earn 10 completeness points. Each print also has its own Process and Paper (Prints tab), those of that very object; the catalogue raisonné does not print a process that repeats the technique.

In the guide: Identification →

What the catalogued object is: “Photograph” in most cases. The LIDO export writes it in objectWorkType (“photograph” when the field is empty). It is not the Genre, which puts the image in a category (portrait, landscape…), nor the Technique and Support, which say how and on what it is made.

In the guide: Identification →

The image's category: portrait, landscape, still life, reportage… It is a free field, not drawn from the thesaurus: to Catalog, “Landscape” and “Landscapes” are two genres. Yet the genre is searched, goes out in the LIDO export and is passed on by the series defaults. Settle on a short list and stick to it; the Thesaurus, the library's controlled vocabulary, can record it with its synonyms.

In the guide: The thesaurus →

The Date as published is what prints, written as you see fit (“circa 1974, perhaps 1975”). The Sort date (from / to), in ISO format, is only used for sorting and facets, and the Precision says what is known (day, month, year, circa, decade, range, unknown). For “2018”, Year precision: from 2018-01-01 to 2018-12-31 (or 2018 alone in “from”). For a known day, that day, Day precision. The end date cannot precede the start date.

In the guide: Identification →

Fill in one work of the series and save it, then, at the foot of the Identification tab, Series defaults › Save as series defaults (work type, technique, support, genre, rights statement, author, first line of rights). In Works, filter on the series (Series facet), select all its works (Select all matching, or ⌘A in the table), then Apply series defaults. Only empty fields are filled; each series has its own values. They are copied: changing them later does not rewrite works already filled in. Settings › Catalogue › Series defaults lists them, series by series.

In the guide: Series values →

The catalogue no. (SB-2026-000154) designates the work in the catalogue raisonné: Catalog assigns it, it no longer changes once the work is published and is never reissued. The inventory no. designates a physical object (a print, a plate, a negative) in a fonds or a collection, with its own logic; it is optional, editable and unique in the fonds, case and spaces ignored. Each print can have its own, and so can a work. Neither is ever derived from the other.

In the guide: Catalogue no. and inventory no. →

In Works, the third button next to New work switches to Gallery: one thumbnail per work, its whole reference image, with its number, title and date; search, facets, sort and selection are the list's. In a record, the Files and Relations tabs also have a Gallery view. “No image”: the work has no reference image yet. “Reproduction excluded”: a reproduction exclusion reason is set (Identification tab), and the image is never shown. “Missing”: the file cannot be found (disk disconnected, file moved) and Catalog has no thumbnail of it yet.

In the guide: The works gallery →

A record's Checks box lists what it leaves out or contradicts. A click on a finding opens the tab concerned, scrolls the record to the field to correct, puts the cursor in it and surrounds it with an orange border, which goes as soon as you type or leave the field. Nothing is changed. The completeness “Next” link does the same.

In the guide: Data checks →

Imports › CSV, then Exhibitions or Publications at the top of the screen. The file has one row per exhibition (or publication), or one row per work: catalogue_number is then the catalogue no. of the work hung or cited, never an identifier of the exhibition or publication; an unknown number rejects the row. The type must be an accepted one, by its code (solo, group, monograph…) or its label; otherwise the row is rejected. Free text goes in the note column. A venue, curator or publisher missing from the directory is never created without your decision, and re-importing the same file creates no duplicates.

In the guide: Importing exhibitions →

Photos of the hang, attached to the exhibition, that say which works are visible on them; the photo stays a file of the library, never copied. On an exhibition's record, Installation views › Add views…, then tick the Works visible under each view. From the Library, select the photos, then Add to an exhibition's views…. The work's record shows them in its Exhibitions tab. On export, a view showing a confidential work leaves only with the justified confidential records, in CSV, and a view showing a work whose reproduction is excluded never leaves.

In the guide: Installation views →

In Settings › Catalogue › Catalogue introduction, the Rules of inclusion say what the catalogue includes and leaves out: “Included are the photographs the artist printed, published or exhibited in their lifetime. Contact sheets and work prints are left out.” The Conventions say how to read it (numbering, dimensions, dates, abbreviations): “Dimensions in millimetres, of the image. c. = circa; n.d. = no date; AP = artist's proof.” They print on the catalogue raisonné's “About this catalogue” page and are written to introduction.txt of the full export.

In the guide: The catalogue raisonné →

Tick Confidential record in the record's Identification tab (Settings › Catalogue › Default confidentiality sets it for new works). The work stays in Catalog, marked with a padlock, but it is excluded from every export by default; LIDO and CIDOC never include it. Only the CSV, the full export and the package for Vault can include it, by ticking Include confidential records: a justification is required, the choice applies to that export only, and it is recorded in the Confidential exports log (Settings › Privacy).

In the guide: The confidentiality rule →

From the Obscura member area, profil.obscuraflow.app (see the Download page). An Obscura account and an Obscura Catalog license are required, even the free plan: sign in, or request access at https://profil.obscuraflow.app/en/register?app=obscura-catalog. Obscura Catalog has been available since version 0.9.0, released on October 14, 2026, as a disk image (DMG) signed and notarized by Apple. The app then checks for new versions by itself (Updates setting).

A Mac running macOS 12 (Monterey) or later, with an Apple silicon or Intel processor: the app is universal.

A newer version of Obscura Catalog updated the library's database (its schema), for instance before an older version was reinstalled. To keep it safe, the installed version does not open it and writes nothing to it: the library is intact. Install the latest version from the member area, then open it again. Before each migration, Catalog also keeps a pre-migration copy of the database in the library folder: it is only for going back, as a last resort.

In the guide: Troubleshooting →