Posted by Kshitija What Is Culling in Photography? Photo Culling Process, Software & More
It may not seem complicated at first glance, but photo culling is a skill that often comes through months and years of professional photography experience. Photographers spend hours in front of their screens, sifting through countless images to select the few that truly stand out, edit them, and deliver them to clients — quickly and efficiently.
Picture a sculptor chipping away at a block of marble to reveal a hidden masterpiece. Similarly, a photographer must patiently and skillfully sort through their work, eliminating the mediocre and the repetitive photos to uncover the true gems. That is what we call the art of culling in photography.
In this article, we'll give you a comprehensive understanding of what is photo culling, why it’s necessary, what the photo culling process of the best photographers looks like, and what’s the best way to cull photos and speed up your culling process with the right software.
Let’s get started.
What does culling even mean in photography?
Culling is an important part of the post-processing workflow for photographers, which is the process of editing an image captured by a camera to enhance the photograph before delivering them. It is basically the process of enhancing your images further, either through editing or culling them out.
As photographers ranging from amateurs to experts prepare to deliver exceptional photos to clients, the process of culling plays a far larger role than you’d think.
Some photographers get confused by the term “culling”, but it’s simple. The definition of culling is "to select from a group" and to "reduce or control the size."
So, what does culling photos mean?
Photo culling is the process of selecting the best images from their photo session by:
- going through all your images from a shoot;
- identifying the winners of the lot;
- discarding duplicate, blurry, and over- or under-exposed photos;
- and then marking them for the next step in the post-processing workflow — editing.
Those images will then be edited and delivered to the client. No matter the type of photography, culling will always be a part of the process.
Culling images manually can take a very long time, especially if you capture thousands of images on a shoot. Selecting the best photo culling software to suit your style and needs as a photographer is essential for a faster workflow. But we'll get to that later on in this article.
Why is culling photos necessary?
A professional wedding session can mean over 2,000-3,000 photos that the photographer has to sort through. Before you start editing and upload those images for delivery, you begin the painstaking process of scrolling through photos to bring these 2000+ images down to, say, 700-800.
Why is culling so important? Because it helps streamline your process by:
- Producing faster results and turnaround for your clients
- Getting rid of poor images right at the start of your workflow
- Choosing only the best images to optimize your editing time, instead of doing things the other way around
How long does photo culling take?
Research suggests that wedding photographers spend as much as 6.5% of their time culling images, while 45% of their time is spent on editing, 32% is spent on actually taking the photos, and the remaining on business/admin work.
This means that the post-processing workflow makes up more than half of a professional photographer’s working life. If you take 2,000 as the baseline number of photos taken during an event, that means you spend roughly 3 to 4 seconds to say yes or no on each picture, without any breaks or reprieve.
Given the time spent on this boring, mundane task instead of actually honing their craft, it stands to reason that photographers want to plan and optimize their culling process as much as possible.
Before we dive deeper into the culling process, let's briefly talk about the importance of clarity in images.
What is the purpose of clarity in photos?
Image clarity is an important consideration in the culling and editing workflow.
You want your photos to be as sharp as possible. Of course, there is no substitute for good technique in the capture phase, but you would like to add something in the post-processing to make the pictures clearer and sharper.
You may already be sharpening your images, but how can you add that extra crispness to make your pictures pop? The answer is clarity.
Clarity Slider is also an excellent spot tool and can be the perfect way to enhance your images in Lightroom. In addition, it can be used to adjust specific parts of the image accordingly, which is very significant in the photography business.
Pro tip: If you have noise in the photograph, you can do the post-image processing using Lightroom's Denoise AI.
What does the culling process look like for photographers?
Every photographer has their own workflow and their own style of handling each step, from shooting to culling and editing to photo delivery. As you gain business experience in the industry, you will start developing a workflow that suits your style and also aligns with the industry standard.
However, we’re here to give you a starting point and best practices on what to do after the shoot to deliver the final product to your clients using an efficient culling and editing workflow.
What are some best practices for culling photos?
No matter HOW you prefer culling through your photos, there are 3 best practices you should keep in mind to save yourself as much time and energy as possible.
1. First cull, then edit
You might need to cull a large group of images between 2 to 3 times, which is completely fine – just be sure to finish culling before you start editing. You don't need to edit photos that might be tossed away later.
2. Input metadata
Embedding metadata or brief information such as name, place, and time to the set of images will help save you time later down the line when you’re editing or delivering the final set of photos and need to revisit them.
3. Establish your process
It might take a few culling sessions, but with each session comes more skills learned. You’ll pick up new tips and tricks to make your culling process quicker, and ultimately, you’ll establish your optimal workflow.
What does the typical manual photo culling workflow look like?
Now, let’s start with the more traditional and manual type of culling. Some photographers feel that the “right way” to cull images is to look at each picture manually, calling it as a necessary evil and part of their jobs. And hey, if that’s what works for you, great!
In such a case, the manual culling process for photographers looks like this:
- Come back from a shoot with your SSDs full of pictures.
- Import it into your choice of manual culling software, whether that’s Lightroom, Photo Mechanic, etc. (BTW, Aftershoot has a manual culling option too.)
- Start culling your photos
- First round of culling: Delete duplicates, failed photos, under- and over-exposed shots, etc.
- Second round of culling: Go through the remaining photos and use a color-coding or star-rating system to decide which photos you want to keep, and which you want to discard.
- Third and final round: Add meta data such as the name, place, time, and any other identifying information to the final photos that survived the gauntlet.
Usually, professional photographers have very specific and detailed processes that they prefer to stick to for the sake of bringing consistency and predictability into their workflow. They refine it over the years and speed it up so that it’s the most optimal process for them, allowing for the amount of creative control they like to have over the final selection.
However, many photographers only choose the manual culling process because they’re working under a misconception: that AI photo culling will take away their creative control. Which is not true at all.
And if you’re harboring the same misconception, let us help you relieve you from its weight.
What is AI photo culling?
To put it simply, AI photo culling or image culling means using artificial intelligence to cull through your photos. This is done through AI photo culling software such as Aftershoot Selects, which helps photographers save hours on culling time by assisting or automating their culling process.
But does AI culling mean that you don’t have control over which photos are selected anymore?
Absolutely not.
All AI culling software does is act as your assistant, and you have complete control over how strict or loose you want this culling to be.
At Aftershoot, for example, we offer two types of AI culling modes:
- AI Assisted Culling: Where you retain full control and Aftershoot simply helps you sort images into duplicates, key faces, etc., before you manually cull them.
- AI Automated Culling: Where you still retain full control of the final decision but Aftershoot does the analyzing and culling for you to suggest the best shots. Then, you can decide if you want to keep the selections it made or choose different shots to edit from the grouping. Don’t worry, it won’t discard anything.
You can even customize the AI culling to set preferences around how you’d like to group photos, how you want the AI to treat blurry and closed eyes pictures, and more.
Why is AI culling better than manual culling?
Think about it this way: You have just returned from a shoot with 900 photos. By looking at so many photos, your mind is split in two: culling and editing.
So, as you start to cull your photos manually, you find a photo you like and spend a few minutes editing, and then the process of culling starts again until you find another photo to edit, and so on.
And let's face it, human beings have limited attention spans and can easily get sidetracked. The constant interruption to edit photos not only slows down the overall culling process but can also lead to inconsistencies in the editing style.
Plus, it's easy to lose track of time and end up spending hours on just a few photos, leaving the bulk of the work unfinished.
You can see how your train of thought gets broken; this way, frustration starts to slowly kick in!
That’s why it’s so important to manage your post-processing effectively and efficiently, even though it requires you to invest in software that’ll help you save time and get more business.
Also, the sooner you deliver results, the happier your clients will be. Happy clients mean more referrals, which means more business. And you know what that means 😉
So, what’s the best way to cull photos quickly and efficiently?
Let's look at how software can speed up your post-processing workflow by easily eliminating duplicates, removing unclear photos, arranging photos in desired folders, and ultimately saving you time.
Suppose you want to start your wedding photography business. In that case, you have to come to peace with the fact that post-processing is an industry standard of the entire process, and you would surely need a way out for processing those 2000-3000 images!
Aftershoot is the best culling solution to ease your post-processing workflow by culling out all the undesirable and duplicate photos, then marking the ones you want to edit, which would take you countless hours to do manually. You can then go on to even edit the photos with AI in Aftershoot — edits that are consistent and reflect YOUR style as a photographer.
Watch this video to see how easy it is to cull with Aftershoot.
How to ingest and cull images with AI
The best way to ingest your images into the computer is to copy the RAW files from the memory card to your computer.
You could use your operating system to copy the RAW files of similar images from your memory card to a particular folder on your machine, or you could use software like Adobe Bridge, Lightroom, or Capture One to handle this process.
Remember that time is money when you’re working on your projects.
Apart from your feature images, you might not want to spend too much time working on each and every image that you have selected.
Working on 1000s of images individually in software like Photo Mechanic can take an eternity and is an eye-bleeding job! That’s what leads photographers to quickly start searching for alternatives to Photo Mechanic. And maybe that’s what landed you here?
The more selective you are with the photos you take, the faster your post-wedding workflow will be.
The primary reason why investing in software like Aftershoot is way better than just using any other photo culling and editing software is that it runs locally on the user’s system and lets the user retain full control of the selections. It makes it extremely easy to review and edit the selections made by Aftershoot.
With the help of Aftershoot, you can save hours and take back control of your time to focus on things that matter the most to you: your craft and your business.
How do you organize thousands of images before culling?
Once you have your RAW files on your computer, you must decide how you want to organize and sort them so that they do not end up scattered across your hard drive.
Photographers organize their photos in a variety of ways, including assigning stars to favorite images, categorizing images with color combinations, creating personalized image groups, and much more.
If you’re dealing with years of images, you might want to start with the main folder for each year, then create subfolders for events, clients, specific locations, and so on.
Getting organized can be difficult, but once you have a system in place, the task of downloading and editing images becomes far less stressful.
While you are choosing your best images to send to your client to let them select their favorites, make sure to include your feature images.
Feature images are the best of the best of your images; like the reaction of the bride’s mom when she sees her daughter in the wedding dress for the first time. These are the kinds of images that will make your clients go “Aw…” and maybe shed a tear or two. These photos are your money-makers!
Editing your photos
This is where the magic happens! You have your final number of culled images and can now begin your basic Lightroom edits.
Or, you could speed up your editing process tenfold by using AI software like Aftershoot Edits.
This is where the cropping, straightening, and adjustments for exposure, contrast, shadow, highlights, etc., come into play. Again, this part is very personal to each photographer, and this is where your style begins to emerge.
Two of the most popular manual photo editing software are Adobe Lightroom and Capture One. Capture One is a standalone piece of software, while Lightroom is included as part of the Adobe Creative Suite.
Now you might be wondering, what about Photoshop?
Most professional photographers post-process 95% of the images within Lightroom and only use Photoshop when they cannot fix something in Lightroom. Therefore, their workflow depends on what the client requirements are and whether an image needs further work in Photoshop or not.
Pro tip: If you have a series of photos in the same lighting situation taken with the same camera, edit the first photo in the set, select the rest of the photos that match, then hit the “Sync” button to apply your edit to all of the photos in that set at once.
Why backups are important during photo culling & editing
As photographers, we have many images and other digital content that we need to protect. Therefore, you must back-up your client’s images in several places as soon as possible.
No matter what solution you choose to store and back up your files — whether it’s cloud storage, external hard drives, or both — the most important thing is that you fully understand the system you have in place and stay consistent.
When you finally get your photos backed up in a few different places, it gives you peace of mind. You no longer have to worry if your client’s photos will get accidentally deleted. In addition, you have multiple copies, so if one fails you, there is always a backup.
If you have a small number of RAW images to store, cloud services like Google Drive & Dropbox will be feasible for you.
However, suppose you have many photographs and are looking for a good backup storage solution. In that case, there are many great photography software options that are created specifically for professional photographers and videographers.
What are the best culling software for photographers?
There are a few options you have when you start looking for a tool or program to streamline your culling process as a photographer. Below are some of the best photo culling software today.
- Aftershoot: The best AI image culling software (Don’t take our word for it; see what our users say!)
- Photo Mechanic: The old but gold standard of manual photo culling
- Narrative Select: An AI-assisted culling tool that sort of falls in the middle of Aftershoot and Photo Mechanic.
- Adobe Lightroom: While not exactly a culling software, many photographers do still cull manually in Lightroom.
- FastRAWViewer: Does what it says on the tin; helps you view and filter through RAW files fast but manually.
Check out our full round-up of the best photo culling software here. Or…
Best culling workflows: How pro photographers tackle the culling process
We realize that while following a guide for photo culling is helpful, getting insights into the workflow of an actual photographer is often more practical.
That’s why we reached out to some of Aftershoot’s power users featured below to take a peek into their workflows and help you optimize your own!
Justin Benson, Wedding Photographer & Co-founder of Aftershoot
🌐 J.Benson Photography | Follow on Instagram
After completing a shoot, my first step is always backing up my images!
Download those memory cards to multiple hard drives and keep them safe. There are no shortcuts here. Get those photos downloaded, saved, backed up, and protected. From there, we can work on ways to keep our workflow fast.
The first step for me is culling the images to select the ones I’ll be editing and delivering to my clients.
To do so, one of the greatest tools I utilize is Aftershoot. It does the heavy lifting for me with the AI Automated culling process. It will select the best images, categorize duplicates left, pick the images without blur and closed eyes, and reduce the number of images you have to look at in your editing software.
Coming from Photo Mechanic, this is a huge speed boost for my workflow!
Once culling is completed in Aftershoot, I take a few minutes to review my results. This is not required, but it can be helpful in verifying what you have and get rid of some images that are inherently selected due to their uniqueness.
While they may be unique to your image set, they may be photos that you just didn’t mean to take or don’t need (think testing light, etc.). Once my final images are selected in Aftershoot, I import the images into Lightroom.
Upon importing to Lightroom, I view all of my 5-star images (selected images from Aftershoot) in the library mode.
From here, I break the images up into sections using Collections. I like to have my weddings broken up into Prep images, First Look, Ceremony, Formals, and Reception. Breaking up the images makes it easier to take on small chunks of editing at a time.
I run Aftershoot typically in the morning while I answer emails so that by the time I am ready to get to editing, I have a completed cull ready to edit – using Aftershoot Edits, too, of course!
Michael Fayehun, Wedding Photographer
🌐 F10 Studio | Follow on Instagram
As a Wedding Photographer, I normally come back home with thousands of photos after each wedding shoot, and this usually takes me a couple of hours to cull down to the number of photos that I will deliver to my client.
Earlier, my approach was to go through 2-4 culling rounds — the first to eliminate bad exposures and out-of-focus shots, the second to eliminate duplicate images, and the 3rd and 4th usually to get my final number of photos to be edited down to the ideal number that I then deliver to my clients.
How Aftershoot has changed my workflow
I’ll be honest with you, I outsource some parts of my business, and this has been something that I’ve always thought would be impossible to outsource because I did not want to exclude creative shots where I knew why I took them. No one else would understand and maybe not select them.
But over time, I’ve run so many of my shoots through Aftershoot with the AI Automated Culling function, and its ability to select the best shots that I need to see and edit gets better every time.
The team at Aftershoot has worked incredibly hard, getting constant feedback from the early users to improve the algorithm and selections, and I am now fully convinced that this is the software for me!
My culling process has been cut down from multiple hours to under an hour to select final edits from thousands of images. This game-changer will be a key part of my workflow moving forward!
Martin Cheung, Wedding Photographer
🌐 Martin Cheung Photography | Follow on Instagram
I suspect my original workflow for culling was like most other wedding photographers. I would put all the RAWs into a single folder and then open up Photo Mechanic.
Then, it was simply a case of powering through the thousands of images I had taken at each wedding, using T to tag and untag photos.
I saw the culling process as a necessary evil. The worst part was simply the monotony of it since I can easily take around 5,000 images at a single wedding.
Including my second shooters, it was not unusual to be over 7,000 images in a single day. With 50 weddings each year, you can quickly see how much time I spent just culling!
I admit to being very skeptical about Aftershoot initially. I was dubious if AI could replace such a fundamental part of my workflow when selections are a judgment call oftentimes. I’m pleased to say that so far, the results have been great!
My workflow now is as follows: Once the RAWs are all copied onto my computer, I open up Aftershoot and create a new album. Next, I drop the folder into Aftershoot, choose my settings (I tend to leave everything on the strictest settings for the AI Automated Culling mode), and simply hit Start Culling.
As the computer processes the images, I can spend this time doing something else more productive! Answering emails, watching Netflix, or spending time with the family! Anything but wading through thousands of images.
Aftershoot is also faster than I am. Way faster!
Once the culling is complete, I have a quick scroll through to exclude any images that have been selected, but I don’t think it quite makes the cut.
The grid view makes it easy for me to remove any images where I still have many duplicates and want to cut down on the final selection further. I’ll then import the lot into Lightroom, where I have pre-created Smart Collections to match the ratings Aftershoot uses. E.g. 5 stars for selected, 1 star blurred.
I am surprised and very pleased that Aftershoot has become an integral part of my workflow.
It has already saved me hours and hours of culling hell. It has made this mundane but necessary part of my workflow fun again. And it has quickly become one of those must-have tools I never knew I needed!
Streamline your culling process with Aftershoot
We've answered, "What is culling?" but now an even more important question arises: What will you do to streamline and speed up this very necessary but tedious process?
Here's the solution: Use Aftershoot to cull faster!
Our AI software is safe, reliable, fast, user-friendly, and, best of all... it works without an internet connection.
Ready to give it a try? Start your free 30-day trial now!