In an ideal world, every photograph we take is perfectly in focus, and our subjects never have to blink. It’s safe to say, though, that this level of perfection is almost never achievable. After every shoot, there will be files that are not up to you or your client’s standards. This is where photo culling comes in.
Photo culling is simply the process of choosing the best images from a shoot that will be edited and eventually delivered to your client.
Summary
What is photo culling and why is photo culling important?
We do this for several reasons, with the primary goal being to sort out any photos that are undesirable. Maybe they’re under or overexposed, or perhaps there are duplicates of the same scene. Photo culling helps you eliminate these unwanted shots, setting the stage for a more efficient post-processing workflow.
Starting your post-processing with photo culling is always a good idea before beginning any other corrections. Getting rid of these unusable shots first will help keep your workflow organized. This way, you won’t have to sift through the good and bad shots in the middle of editing. Knowing that any photo remaining in your gallery is one that needs to be edited will save you tons of time, and you’ll be able to easily batch-edit your gallery, making corrections a breeze.
Features for efficient photo culling
Flagging
By using the tagging method, you can assign a flag to the images you want to keep for future editing. You can simply tag the photos you want to keep with a flag and assign a crossed-out flag to those you want to reject. Consider using keyboard shortcuts to make this annotation process easier.
Color Coding
In most photo management software, you can apply color tags to your images to designate which ones you want to keep or reject. Unlike flags (either crossed-out or not), it is often possible to choose from 5 to 6 colors to annotate the photos. This allows you to create a code where you indicate which photos to delete, which ones to edit, which ones are already perfect, etc.
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Tools for efficient photo culling
Peakto
Adobe Lightroom
Photo Mechanic
