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Question

(Early Access) Assisted Culling (LrClassic)

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
September 24, 2025
45 replies
63081 views

Introducing Assisted Culling (Early Access) in Lightroom Classic.

For providing feedback for Lightroom Desktop, click here.

We’re bringing Assisted Culling to Lightroom Classic as part of the MAX 2025 release! This AI-powered workflow helps you quickly narrow large photo sets to the best shots using objective signals.

What is Assisted Culling?
Assisted Culling is one of the most requested features from advanced photographers, consistently topping feedback at customer events. It streamlines the process of identifying top photo selects from large sets—hundreds or even thousands—based on attributes like eye openness, sharpness, and more.

Assisted Culling saves photographers countless hours of manual review, letting them focus on creativity instead of sorting.

Eyes Open – Detects whether subjects’ eyes are open.

Eye Focus – Measures the sharpness of the eyes.

Subject Focus – Evaluates overall clarity.

Clean Up – Identifies likely rejects (e.g., blurs, misfires, exposure issues).

Stacks – Groups images either by visual similarity or time for easier selection.

Why Early Access?
Assisted Culling launches as Early Access at MAX 2025 with a narrow, high-confidence scope prioritizing portraits and headshots. This focused approach ensures reliability for these scenarios while we gather feedback and iterate. From here, we’ll expand to broader use cases like weddings and events before GA.

How to Try It

In Lightroom Classic, Assisted Culling is available in the Library module and Import dialog.

Select your criteria, adjust the settings, and apply batch actions, such as flagging selects or deleting rejects.

FAQs

Q: Where is Assisted Culling available?
A: Lightroom Desktop and Lightroom Classic as part of the MAX 2025 release.
Q: How fast is it?
A: Our testing shows an average of 0.18 seconds per photo on modern devices (≈2000 photos in 8 minutes).
Q: What kinds of photos work best today?
A: Individual portraits and headshots.
Q: Do I need to pay extra?
A: No. Assisted Culling is included in your existing Lightroom subscription.

Feedback

Please share your experience in this thread. Include:

App version/platform

System details

Example images (optional)

Lisa Ngo / Kwamina Arthur – Product Managers, Lightroom

Posted by:

Feedback

Wise.Otter

Participant

I have had a horrible time trying to get Assisted Culling to work. No matter what the photos, or catalog, the photos are analyzed, and assisted culling reads no results. “0 selects”, “0 rejects”, and no Culling Scores.

-Tried in LrC 15.1.1, AND in 15.0; with same result…….

-MacBook Pro Sequoia 15.7.3, 16GB 2133MHz

-In the ‘Catalog Settings’, both ‘Assisted Culling’ boxes are checked.

-Yes, the Assisted Culling boxes for subject & eye focus are checked. I have moved the sliders all the way and still no culling happens.

-I spent 3 full mornings trying to rectify it and then had Adobe Chat Help takeover the computer to try things for over an hour and they couldn’t figure it out either. They eventually said to post this here.

Really hope this gets remedied I really only got the Adobe package for a culling feature.

*****Edit: I have installed Lightroom (not classic) and culling seems to be working there.

But I really don’t like this Lightroom option; it is much slower I find and I prefer everything about LrC. Still hoping for a solution on LrC.

E

Enrico Frascati

Participant

I often shoot photo sessions for a finance magazine, and many of them are interviews with industry professionals. To make the shots more dynamic, I try to create different focus planes, for example by using the cinematic “over the shoulder” technique, keeping the journalist in the foreground out of focus and seen from behind.

However, LR’s new culling feature rejects these images as blurry, I guess because it treats the journalist as a subject of the photo as well. I think this is something that should be fixed.

Apart from that, it seems like a good result to me, considering this is the very first release.

R

romantic_observer9608

Participant

Hi,
the Feedback-button isn't available for me.
It works well for me, I'd prefer if it rejected any images where anyone has their eyes closed instead of everyone.

J

Joe U

Participating Frequently

TL;DR

Lightroom’s Subject Detection groups all detected people as one subject regardless of where they are in the focal plane, creating inaccurate focus analysis in Assisted Culling.

---

Hey Rikk & Adobe Team,

First of all, thank you all for the effort in bringing Assited Culling to LrC. Any time a new feature arrives with the potential benefit of spending less time editing and more time living, I am grateful!

That said, I want to provide my insight on this as a full time corporate event photographer. In my testing (albeit limited) the issue I'm facing with Assisted Culling actually stems from the issues I have with the way Subject & Background detection are implemented in Lightroom.

The primary issue is that I think Lightroom does a very poor job of identifying the actual “subject” of a photo, at least given my understanding of what a subject should be, which is the focal point of an image.

See Attached Example

Instead, the “Select Subject” feature seems to select anything that it can also identify as “People”, and then merges them into a single mask and calls it the subject.

This presents a big hurdle when it comes to masking and attempting to make the actual subject pop because it includes all of these other people that aren’t the subject.

Where this screws up Assisted Culling is that when it analyzes the “subjects”, it appears to be taking the average focus of that entire selection and giving it a score based on that. (I’m working off assumptions here, but this seems like what is happening).

As you can see in my example, the gentleman in the front is very obviously the subject in the traditional sense and is completely in focus, yet Assisted Culling gave this photo a subject score of 43. Harsh!

There’s honestly not much else to say about it. This kind of implementation makes it pretty useless for anything except portrait photography. Maybe that was the idea, or maybe it’s just early version blues, but I wanted to at least offer my perspective!

I’m very invested in something like this working because I really hate culling! Happy to discuss additional thoughts and details if that would be beneficial at all.

Thanks for reading!

J

Joe U

Participating Frequently

I am not able to edit my previous comment, but I admittedly didn't read the entire thread and just noticed that @Rikk Flohr: Photography addressed this feature being geared toward portrait photography in a previous reply. I still think my perspective on Subject Detection applies.

Also my attachment didn't work and I've added it here.

Feel free to merge my posts, I don't know why you can't edit them.

E

Emes Production

Participant

So to be honest, i got super excited that this feature came out which would save my team a nice work load - However, im now noticing as its written: its more focusing on wildlife and landscapes vs Events.

Imagine trying to cull down 1500 images into 500 or less, it should have the ability to cull 2-3 shots per image, detect the extras and dump them, and if for what ever reason there was bad lighting, a missfire or not super sharp image and its the only 1 of that type, should we add it to your gallery:) cant wait for "that" update

D

defaultzdb1tde3wl8e

Participating Frequently

You are sadly mistaken, read what it says in the article, it specifically states its for events and weddings, it doesn't work on landscapre & wildlife photos whatsoever, which is a lot of peoples complaints.

D

defaultzdb1tde3wl8e

Participating Frequently

What I don't understand with this feature is why Adobe hasn't used the subject AI model as the basis for picking out subjects to test for sharpness. This model already does a pretty decent job in masking, so why not use this as it would be a lot more generic and work on a lot more than just people, and then have refining options to test for eye sharpness etc

T

Tijazap

Participating Frequently

This sounds like a terrific idea. Take a concept that's working and use it as your basis for culling.

D

donald32069913so38

Participant

The majority of my photos are of drag race cars on the track. Therefore most of my shots are panning. What I look for when culling is just one spot anywhere on the vehicle that is sharp. AI Assisted Culling is of no use to me. The miss rate at each level when I see the selects and rejects is ridiculous. I am better off to continue with my old way of doing things. I know I am not the average user Adobe is targeting but it doesnt seem hard to at least find 10% of the photograph in focus and select it. It is raw data converted by Lightroom so the information is there. Plenty of pixels to examine in some way. If it makes sense in my old brain it has to be possible.

J

jmaarten

Participant

I don't like this feature but I don't know how to unmark all the photos that were selected by LR and bring them back to normal status. I wish there was an 'undo' feature for this batch process.

Ian Lyons

Community Expert

@jmaarten

If you close the 'Assisted Culling' and 'Culling Scores' panels, then the badges will be hidden. You can also hide the two culling panels. To do so, just right click on any of the panel header bars, then untick the panel names that you want to hide (screenshot below). Should you wish to disable completely, then open the Metadata tab of Catalog Settings and uncheck the two preferences relating to culling (screenshot below).

louisd79464044

Inspiring

Hi Rikk,

The first impression shows this is an opportunity. It is so far focussed on peoples pictures, and my focus is nature, so we do not have the same goals. However, I did experience something missing. When I apply the filters it results in red crosses, green confimation checkboxes or nothing.

3 remarks:

1. I do mis the way to influence the filter results. E.g. sometimes it states overexposed for picures with much white (in e.g. Greece most pictures get that), or you get unsharp when plants are on although the flowers are sharp. However, I do not see a way to ignore/remove that opinion of the tool. I want to decide myself in the end. It should be a help, not leading.

2. When a picture has a mist on it (like happens in fog or other normal situations) we do have the option to correct for it in LR, but AS disapproves the picture anyway

3. The tools menu has a part named 'select scores' but its just a list of filters applied. Select is no the appropriate name.

Cheers,

Louis

pmill77

Participant

Absoluty useless. Not everyone shoots people. Excire does a 100% better job all day. You can pick your subject so the score its accurate I mainly shoot action and motorsport photography. It rejected every panning shot i did even if the subject was tack sharp. I will continue to use exire. Also put a STOP button somewhere in the dialog box so I dont have to waste my time.

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