Talk to me about culling in Lightroom

IrishDino
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Talk to me about culling in Lightroom

I've never culled in LR, apart from the odd project under 100 images.

My current culling process:

- Import all photos onto NAS
- Cull in Faststone (basically free version of PM)
- Put selected photos into new folder ("best of")
- Import "best of" folder into LR
- After several years, I delete my unpicked photos (personal preference, I don't feel like I need to hold onto rejected wedding photos). And because I have these unpicked photos in their own folder, deleting them is quick and easy.

I've recently switched to a Mac. Faststone is Windows only and the thought of spending another $150 on Photo Mechanic isn't ideal.

Is there a way to ingest the entire wedding shoot (4000+ photos) and split them into two folders (keeper and rejects)? I realize I could filter within Lightroom then delete, but I don't want to depend on LR to do this kind of action, especially when it might not be years before I delete the rejected files.

Dec 21, 2023 at 02:33 PM

LeeSimms
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Talk to me about culling in Lightroom

As you know there's many ways to skin any cat in Lightroom. What I do ...

- import job to local drive (speed)
- make both smart previews and 1:1
- cull by rejecting photos with an X and flagging any top-tier (best of) photos with a P
- to 'get rid of' the rejected photos hit command-x and when asked, remove from catalog (don't delete)

After completing you'll have your set of approved images. If you reorder in LR then rename they will stand apart in your ingest folder (because you renamed them with a job reference, rather than camera gobledeegook).

Dec 22, 2023 at 10:50 AM

johnld
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Talk to me about culling in Lightroom

I was also looking for a way to cull our weddings and found Photo Mechanic the absolute fastest, best way to cull photos. You can cull 1000's of photos in 20 min. or less. Cull entire weddings or better yet, cull sets such as getting ready, ceremony, reception, etc. A 3000 photo wedding loads in seconds and full size images take nano seconds to scroll through using the numeric and arrow keys. We use the (1) key to mark in red for the ones we don't like and the right arrow to scroll. Mark "hide red", "then select "color class none" and all your culled images are ready to ingest and export. Once you find your groove it's liberating! If you frequently edit high volumes of photos then PM is essential. They have a 30 day demo (no watermarks either). I can't imagine culling photos any other way. It's really that good!

Dec 24, 2023 at 08:20 AM

rattymouse
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Talk to me about culling in Lightroom

IrishDino wrote:
I've never culled in LR, apart from the odd project under 100 images.

My current culling process:

- Import all photos onto NAS
- Cull in Faststone (basically free version of PM)
- Put selected photos into new folder ("best of")
- Import "best of" folder into LR
- After several years, I delete my unpicked photos (personal preference, I don't feel like I need to hold onto rejected wedding photos). And because I have these unpicked photos in their own folder, deleting them is quick and easy.

I've recently switched to a Mac. Faststone is Windows only and the thought of spending...Show more →

My goodness, this is so simple. Look at your most recent import. Go throught them and hit X on the ones you don't like. Now you can filter them out as needed and move them to a folder if you really want to keep your trash.

Dec 24, 2023 at 10:11 AM

mb126
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Talk to me about culling in Lightroom

As a sports photojournalist for a long time that then turned to weddings... the answer is don't cull in LR.

Photo mechanic all the way, and it's not even close.

Dec 24, 2023 at 04:17 PM

DannyBostwick
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Talk to me about culling in Lightroom

I'm a LR culler - Tried PM and while it is faster, I hate the image previews. Sometimes I shoot in camera BW or with different preview profiles because it looks good to me in the moment and I can sort of shoot "for editing" if that makes any sense. But when I cull, I like to see the raw file because I can see the file quality a bit better. Noise, focus, sharpness, etc. PM I find that I can't get a good feel on the quality of the file always.

So, I build standards previews. 1:1 or smart is definitely. faster, but standard works just fine for me.

I cull it 2 passes. 1 star is a keeper. The first pass is pretty fast. I move through it to get the junk out of the it and only keep possible good ones. Then I make a second pass where it X out the trash that got through the first filter.

Then I run it through an AI edit and usually delete another 10-15% while I am doing the final edit when I am being picky.

Dec 28, 2023 at 01:17 PM

Llewtwo
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Talk to me about culling in Lightroom

Depending on the subject and how many you need or want to keep a person can cull and crop 2000-5000 images in an hour in PM. The crop survives the import into Lightroom and the crop tool in PM is quite a bit faster than the similar tool in Lightroom. The cost of PM, still a one time software purchase for now, is about the cost of an inexpensive f1.8 50 mm lens. While they keep upgrading PM a years old version still does what most need from it. The only way it's not worth the expense is if you do not really value your time because it wouldn't take long to recoup the economic value of the time saved. If you walk into any environment where culling and cropping is necessary you will find PM on the notebook of nearly everyone in the room. It does a small number of things but does them better than their competition. It's a wonder someone hasn't come up with a more competitive alternative.

Jan 23, 2024 at 12:51 PM

tonyhart
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Talk to me about culling in Lightroom

I'm a Narrative Select guy. What you're describing can be achieved in LR, but I am strongly in favour of a separate culling program. Narrative Select has a bunch of helpful AI built in. I don't want it to cull for me, but it does the things I need - like focus assessments and rating which image in a series is likely to be the best. It speeds up my culling dramatically.

Jan 29, 2024 at 11:43 AM


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