[digiKam-users] Can I replicate my Lightroom culling process in digikam?

[2895qgvg6v at liamekaens.com]

I'm at the very beginning of my journey to replace Lightroom with digiKam as my image management tool, and I haven't figured out how to replicate my culling process in digiKam.

The first thing I do, after importing my photos, assigning high-level keywords and renaming them, is to make a pass over all the photos to reject all the hopelessly bad ones.  In Lightroom I do this by setting the filter to "No Rejects" (i.e. Unflagged or Flagged, but not Rejected), then examining each photo to check that the subject(s) are in the frame, check critical focus, etc., and typing X to reject the photo if it fails any of the checks.  If Lightroom is in grid view when I reject a photo, the photo immediately disappears from view and the next photo is selected.  If Lighroom is in loupe view when I reject a photo, again the photo immediately disappears from view and is replaced by the next photo.  At a much later point in my image processing workflow (after selecting the "best" photos, processing them and exporting them for publishing), I delete all the rejected photos.

I have attempted to do the same thing in digiKam.  I can replicate "No Rejects" by selecting None, Pending, and Accepted (but not Rejected) either in the Picture Properties section of the Advanced Search dialog from the Search View in Left Sidebar, or in the Filters tab in the Right Sidebar.  In both cases however, when I type Alt+1 to reject a photo, the photo doesn't disappear from either the Icon area (the thumbnails) or the Preview area.  Instead I see the reject flag on the Thumbnail (unless I'm in full screen where the Icon area is hidden), and no indication in the Preview area that the image was rejected.  This means I have to manually type Right-arrow to move to the next image, doubling the number of key-strokes needed in this very time-consuming part of my workflow.  The rejected photos do disappear if I switch to a different saved search and then switch back to the "No Rejects" saved search, or if I make some change to the Filter settings (e.g. selecting then unselecting the "None" color label.

I also found that while I can save my "No Rejects" search, there doesn't appear to be a way to save my "No Rejects" filter.

I thought I remembered some discussion of this, but my searches failed to find it.

Is there some way to instantly hide photos from view when they are rejected?
Is there a way to save a Filter similar to saving a Search?

I'm guessing (and hoping) that both are possible and I just haven't found the place in the digiKam handbook that describes how to do it.