(Early Access) Assisted Culling (LrClassic)

First attempt for studio style portraits, it rejected closed eyes and flash misfires (underexposed). Good. This was a project that I had already completed so all my manual rejections were picked up by Assisted Culling. 

Algorithm rejected all the full body shots and it is saying subject and eye focus have lower score compared with the Selects. Possibly needs a ratio of body percentage present in the shot to normalise what in focus actually means. Fewer pixels per face area - definitely, but the full body shots are sharp.

Different type of shots with low light and high contrast. Rejected them all. But disable exposure issues and they become Selects. So it seems that blocks of images might need to be taken into consideration.  One third of the shoot was deliberately low light background, overall under exposed if we are thinking histogram. So it’s almost like I need stack-based settings eg. this block of images I don’t care about exposure, but for the others in the folder, I do want under exposure detection. So folder only settings might not take into consideration the variations of shooting style that happen in a session.

Where is the key to turn it off?

where in Preset menu to set or deselect it?

how much resources are kept by the function ?

Well lit headshot, 130 images. The feature missed most of the closed eyes, and all of the partially closed eyes. Doesn’t seem ready.

MacOS Sequoia, LrC 15.2

Have run this on thousands of photos, but it never finds the subject much less the eyes.  This needs alot of work.  It’s basically useless for my purposes.

Just updated to Lightroom Classic 15.2 and tried the "improved" AI-assisted culling. After running an entire studio photoshoot through it, my opinion hasn't changed since the last version - this feature is a total joke.

I shot a session on a Sony A1 at f/5.6, where 95% of the frames are tack sharp. Looking at the results, it feels like the AI is just generating random numbers instead of actually scanning the images for sharpness or detail. For example, in a series of nearly identical shots, the one where I clearly missed focus got a 95% score, while the perfectly sharp ones were rated under 90%.

I don't understand why Adobe is wasting time and resources on a "feature" that performs like a toy. It's completely unreliable for professional work. They should focus on improving actual AI editing models or performance instead of this.

Is anyone actually finding this useful for real-world sessions, or is it just a useless gimmick?

It’s working out fairly well but one thing that is happening is if I go into loupe on a photo and then go back into grid mode, that photo will disappear from the filter of possible rejects and it takes resetting the Assisted Culling filter to get it back on the list.

I would like a culling that removes duplicates.

In my scenario it doesn’t work as expected:
The lightroom imported all the rejected photos and didn’t mark them as Rejected!

So all the work that I did, adjusting the settings - was just a waste…

The idea is good, and some competitors already doing it properly.

• App version/platform 

Lightroom Classic version: 15.1
Operating system: Windows 11

• System details 

Intel Core i9-14900KF

48.0 GB RAM

nVidia 3080

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.

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.