Culling your photos – What the heck does that mean
“Culling your photos” means going through and choosing the images you want to keep. There are a trillion ways of doing this!
As a wedding photographer, having a good editing and culling workflow is essential to running a solid business, keeping on a timeline, and keeping things organized. I have a relatively strict workflow as I’ve perfected it over the years. You may find that another workflow works best for you so be sure to test out.
Where to cull your photos
There are a few options for where to cull your photos and what software to use. There are Adobe programs like Lightroom, Bridge or software like photo mechanic or the newer AI tools like Narrative Select or Aftershoot.
After trying a few workflows, I found my favorite software to be Lightroom Classic. That’s where I edit my photos and it made the process easier for me once I got it down.
Why I don’t like culling outside of Lightroom
I liked that all my pictures stay in one place with Lightroom and I had the option to sync my photos to multiple devices (like my phone and computer.) I’m not using multiple softwares to organize my photos.
I love being able to apply my preset on import so when I’m culling my photos, they’re pretty close to how the final image will look.
How to Cull in Lightroom
Once your images are uploaded in Lightroom, you can start your culling process!
You can cull your images by either “Flagging or picking” an image, giving an image a star rating (out of 5), or assigning a color to your images.
It really doesn’t matter how you choose to do it, so feel free to test it out and stick with what feels best.
How I personally cull:
- Pick or flag an image I want to keep/deliver
- Rate my favorite images for the highlight section of the gallery and blog images
- If I don’t want to use an image, I still keep it in the catalog, but don’t rate or pick the image.
On your Desktop:
- “P” on your keyboard to ‘pick’ or ‘flag’ an image
- Press numbers 1-5 to rate your image
- Turn the caps lock on to move to the next image once you flagged an image
- You can also ‘reject’ an image, if it’s out of focus but if I don’t want to use an image, I simply make sure to not rate or pick the image.
On your Phone:
- Under Review/edit
- Swipe up on the right side of your phone to select your pick.
- Swipe left and right to scroll through your images
- You can cull on your desktop, but my favorite is on Lightroom Mobile on my iPad or phone. I like the flexibility of culling on the go and quickly. Once I cull, it syncs to my desktop and ready for me to edit.
