I hate culling photos. Can AI make the process easier? Adobe thinks so as AI culling arrives in Lightroom

An AI filters pop-up with a slider eliminates photos that are not in focus
(Image credit: Adobe)

Out of all the pieces that come with photo editing, culling photos – the process of selecting which ones to edit – ranks among my least favorite. But Adobe could be about to make that process easier. Assisted Culling is coming to Lightroom in public beta, the software giant announced during Adobe Max.

Adobe previously teased that it was working on an AI-assisted culling tool, but now Assisted Culling is rolling out in the public beta version of Lightroom. Adobe describes it as “a highly customizable tool that helps creative professionals quickly identify the best images in large photo collections.”

Adobe says that the tool will allow photographers to filter out images based on focus, sharpness, and angles. The idea is to give creatives fewer images to manually cull through by using the AI to identify factors like which photo in a series is the sharpest.

A number of AI culling tools already exist, like Aftershoot and Imagen. But if Lightroom’s tool works well, that could help creatives speed up the cull without a second subscription or purchase.

I have high hopes that the tool could help speed up the process of culling – as a wedding photographer, it’s not unusual for me to have thousands of images to look through.

I’m on site at Adobe Max in Los Angeles, where I’m hoping to get a hands-on test of the new beta culling tool inside Lightroom.

Adobe announced a long list of updates to Lightroom, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Firefly, and more at the start of the brand’s annual creativity conference.

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Hillary K. Grigonis
US Editor

With more than a decade of experience writing about cameras and technology, Hillary K. Grigonis leads the US coverage for Digital Camera World. Her work has appeared in Business Insider, Digital Trends, Pocket-lint, Rangefinder, The Phoblographer, and more. Her wedding and portrait photography favors a journalistic style. She’s a former Nikon shooter and a current Fujifilm user, but has tested a wide range of cameras and lenses across multiple brands. Hillary is also a licensed drone pilot.

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