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"Aftershoot" use

  
 
phil hawkins
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p.1 #1"Aftershoot" use
Are folks using the new software called "Aftershoot" as a replacement for PhotoMechanic? I'm seeing a lot of hype about AI-based culling, which is useless for me... How much use is this software getting?
Sep 21, 2026 at 04:04 PM
jkaper1977
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p.1 #2"Aftershoot" use
I have tried out Aftershoot as one of the options to assist culling, expecting most of these AI-cullers more or less do the same. I do my culling in FastRaw for a simple cull as an alternative for Photomechanic. PM is more powerfull, but I do not need/ use the features it has over FastRaw for my workflow.

The culling in Aftershoot (and similar) sounds nice and might work for certain type of shoots (group shots, selecting the one with most eyes opened). Stacking similar images can be useful for certain shoots as well.

For my sports photos (rugby and soccer mostly) I shoot a lot of photos during a match and I do not find the AI culling a time saver. Depending on player/ action I might want to use multiple shots from a burst. In the culling within Aftershoot I would have to open the group and then see which the software had selected and which others I might want. To me that just takes extra time in comparison with my workflow with FastRaw.

In FastRaw (similar to Photomechanic) I just hit a 1-star for a shot I want to keep and after going through the set I move the non-starred ones to a rejected folder. Sometimes when I already know I want to do something specific with a photo (for example for a post on Instagram) I give it 2 or 3 stars to easily filter for those.
I have it set up that it jumps to the next photo when I star it. So I either hit "1" or "0" and then automatically jump to the next image. If I want to revisit in a burst, I jast use the left/ right arrow keys to go back a bit. Going through my photos this way, is relatively quick for me and far more easy than opening stacks that AI software prepared for me. If my initial cull resulted in too many photos I just have another run over the reduced set.

Also from what I've seen I select different images than the AI. That is mainly because I might select images that are a bit flawed like slightly out-of-focus, but a player who hardly carries a ball or did score a first try or returned from injury. The AI simply does not know the context of the game that I use for my culling. Also I tend to crop each photo (like most sports photographers) and cropping can have great impact on the end-photo. The AI cull is not (yet) aimed at the impact full crop from an otherwise not so interesting non-cropped frame.

What I do use actively in Aftershoot is the editing. Once I have don my cull, I send my image trhrough DXO Pure Raw and then send them through Aftershoot to edit them. I apply my own style which was created based on Aftershoot learning my style from photos from the past I let it use to learn my style.
When lighting conditions vary I feel the Aftershoot edits get close to what I would do to my photos myself in Lightroom Classic. A preset/ copy paste of settings in Lightroom works when lighting is very consistent over the match, but with varying light the Aftershoot editing works a bit better for me.
After the edit in Aftershoot I import in Lightroom and do the rest of my editing there. I do my cropping and on some photos I slightky change the sliders a bit (exposure, contrast, color).

I feel the editing feature saves me time during my editing in Lightroom and therefore I still use Aftershoot.

The only time I use the culling in Aftershoot is when I have finished my regular set of photos through my normal workflow and want a random subset. I then feed a folder with finished jpg's and let AI do the culling on them to make a selection from it. (For example if I want 50 out of 500 photos and I have no clear preferences on which (type of) photos will be selected.

P.S. With the advancements in AI I would not be surprised if AI software will cull and crop the photos like I would, somewhere in the not too distand future (lets say within 5 years).
Sep 22, 2026 at 02:35 AM
PureMichigan
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p.1 #3"Aftershoot" use
That's a great summary. Thanks for the insights.

I tried AfterShoot last year, and I suspect it gets better monthly given the forward march of AI, so my comments should be taken as "dated."

I tag while I shoot. It's deeply ingrained muscle memory at this point and essential if I am transmitting between quarters/innings/halves. So I typically come out of any shoot with a pretty good idea that I "pre-culled" my key images. Second, I found that AI culling "missed" photos where a really artful crop could turn a marginal image into a solid keeper. That's something we all learn with time. I'm sure AI will get there -- but it's subtle and highlly subjective.

Also, while I purposely leaned on the AI cull as part of my experiment, I just could not help myself. I was compelled to check AIs work and go through the photos anyway, thereby obviating any effiency gains. My guess is that it is the nature of all (ok, most) photograhers to do so. Try NOT doing it and falling asleep wondering how many you missed. Good luck!

So is there a case for AfterShoot and similar culling fools? Absolutely. I can see someone using it who does not tag, and needs top pull XX number of images from a take relatively quickly. Photomechanic does so many other things for me it will be a slow and painful transition when that day comes.

100% chance I'll be look back at this post in a few years and just shake my head -- but that was my most recent experience.

Sep 22, 2026 at 06:09 AM
jkaper1977
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p.1 #4"Aftershoot" use
PureMichigan wrote:
That's a great summary. Thanks for the insights.

I tried AfterShoot last year, and I suspect it gets better monthly given the forward march of AI, so my comments should be taken as "dated."

I tag while I shoot. It's deeply ingrained muscle memory at this point and essential if I am transmitting between quarters/innings/halves. So I typically come out of any shoot with a pretty good idea that I "pre-culled" my key images. Second, I found that AI culling "missed" photos where a really artful crop could turn a marginal image into a solid keeper. That's something we all learn with
...Show more →

The AI culling can be useful for anybody who wants to deliver a certain set of images and would not mind if the 'best of the best' is left out, as long as the ones delivered are 'good enough'.

Also I think that there is a big difference per genre. In sports you follow play and want to show the action, key moments or footage of each of the players of the team you are covering. The scenes and compostions you get are dictated by how the match develops and where you can or allowed to position yourself. So that gives quite a variety in potential shots, which makes it harder to cull them.
For a wedding there are sets of poses and multiple photos are taken for the perfect look and posture. AI is smart enough to recognize the group of people or a setting, like the bride and the bridesmaids . So it can group per scene/ setting and then apply certain rules to the persons in the image to determine which might be the best (eyes open for example).
More portrait like genres I think are better suited for AI culling, with weddings and events probably being the genres with the largest number of shots.
Regular portraiture involves lower numbers, so automatic culling is less of an efficiency gain.

High volume genres like sports (and probably wildlife) with different settings, are less easy. The best way to learn the AI how to cull, is to provide it with 'manual' cull, so it learns what you as a photographer most likely would select. But that would require the AI to also learn from what you rejected, so it needs to be fed with all shots from multiple shoots and knowing which ones were picked by the photographer. That would mean keeping rejects for a certain amount of time to have multiple complete shoots available for AI training. With large numbers of shots, and rejects, that can be a burden for archving and storage.

But the idea that you could train AI to your culling and thereafter to let it learn how you cropped it (for that it needs your original frame and the cropped frame) is attractive. It could save lots of time. Maybe it is possible to move the 'in camera selects' to a specific folder, so those are left out of the AI culling of the rest.
Sep 22, 2026 at 12:16 PM
phil hawkins
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p.1 #5"Aftershoot" use
Everyone has their own post-procedures. Me? I shoot basketball mostly, in RAW, dump into a directory on my SSD, then open DxO Photolab and cull. After that, I do a second cull, and proceed with batch adjustments such as white balance, noise reduction, slight color boost and a bit of dynamic range balancing. (The modules in Photolab do sharpening, pin cushion and barrel distortion and vignette correction) Then, batch output as a 16-bit TIFF in Prophoto, reload into Photoshop, and then run an action converting everything into JPG. Then, load into PhotoMechanic for IPTC functions. (I populate the fields that can be written prior to the game, with player info as my last entry.) During the game, I chimp-and-delete continuously, increasing my keeper rate somewhat. Admittedly, I am usually the last guy out of the media room, but my quality is superb. Never had any of my clients complain about late uploads.
Sep 22, 2026 at 12:23 PM


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