Introducing Assisted Culling (Early Access) in Lightroom Classic. For providing feedback for Lightroom Desktop, click here. TL;DR – Assisted Culling is getting faster, more powerful, and more accurate as we head to GA. If you tried in October 2025, we urge you to try the new version and give us feedback – especially for wedding & portrait photographers. We’re eager to hear your feedback! Assisted Culling has received several updates since Early Access launched in October 2025. If you tried it then, here's what's new: April 2026 Significantly improved handling of shallow depth-of-field for photos – a major customer ask. Images with intentional background blur are now more reliably recognized and kept rather than rejected as out-of-focus. We’ve retrained the “Reject model” so it has more accurate identification of reject-worthy images. Additionally, an image can now be flagged under multiple reject reasons simultaneously: Exposure Issues: includes a sensitivity slider so you can control the threshold Documents Misfires: ground shots and severe blur February 2026 Expanded support from individual portraits to multi-person scenes, including weddings, events, and group photos. Improved eye detection accuracy in dense group and wedding scenes Cleaner subject separation when multiple people are close together Fewer false "eyes closed" results on groups and portraits FAQs: Q: Where is Assisted Culling available? A: Lightroom Desktop and Lightroom Classic. Q: What kinds of photos work best today? A: Individual portraits and multi-person scenes, including weddings, events, and group photos. Q: Can I adjust how strict the culling is? A: Yes. Each criterion can be toggled on or off, and Subject Focus, Eye Focus, and Exposure Issues include sensitivity sliders for finer control. 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) Kwamina Arthur, Product Manager, Lightroom

Rikk Flohr_Photography

Question

(Early Access) Assisted Culling (LrClassic)

Forum|Forum|7 months ago
September 24, 2025
60 replies
116159 views

Introducing Assisted Culling (Early Access) in Lightroom Classic.

For providing feedback for Lightroom Desktop, click here.

TL;DR – Assisted Culling is getting faster, more powerful, and more accurate as we head to GA. If you tried in October 2025, we urge you to try the new version and give us feedback – especially for wedding & portrait photographers. We’re eager to hear your feedback!

Assisted Culling has received several updates since Early Access launched in October 2025. If you tried it then, here's what's new:

April 2026

Significantly improved handling of shallow depth-of-field for photos – a major customer ask. Images with intentional background blur are now more reliably recognized and kept rather than rejected as out-of-focus.

We’ve retrained the “Reject model” so it has more accurate identification of reject-worthy images. Additionally, an image can now be flagged under multiple reject reasons simultaneously:

Exposure Issues: includes a sensitivity slider so you can control the threshold

Documents

Misfires: ground shots and severe blur

February 2026

Expanded support from individual portraits to multi-person scenes, including weddings, events, and group photos.

Improved eye detection accuracy in dense group and wedding scenes

Cleaner subject separation when multiple people are close together

Fewer false "eyes closed" results on groups and portraits

FAQs:

Q: Where is Assisted Culling available?
A: Lightroom Desktop and Lightroom Classic.

Q: What kinds of photos work best today?
A: Individual portraits and multi-person scenes, including weddings, events, and group photos.

Q: Can I adjust how strict the culling is?
A: Yes. Each criterion can be toggled on or off, and Subject Focus, Eye Focus, and Exposure Issues include sensitivity sliders for finer control.

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)

Kwamina Arthur, Product Manager, Lightroom

Feedback

Show previous replies

D

dennisp61922662

Participant

How do I get rid of assisted culling. It's just wasting space on my screen as I don't do people and I wouldn't trust a machine to do my culling anyhow.

D

dennisp61922662

Participant

Never mind. I discovered how to hide it.

E

EIMO34043688pfdi

Participating Frequently

Even though it will be difficult to implement technically, auto-stacking should be possible across multiple folders. To illustrate the purpose, I use the following scheme: The parent folder contains one subfolder for each camera.

mrdavie99

Inspiring

New Lightroom Classic version. Ok, load and go on with my business. But do not give me a heads-up about CULLING; just fail to close LR while all the images in my library are CULLED! I never felt better than I did after permanently turning off CULLING.

AI, I've got your number!

A

Andrew_Hill6878

Participant

I am finding an inconsitancy in the subject focus tab. if I set the sharpen to 50 I recieve 24 selects out of 42 photos with one photo that is clearly out of focus. if I then set it to 80 I get 3 photos which is great but the out of focus photo is still there for some reason so its not there yet but I will use it for fast sorting its most defenatly woth using.

thank you...

G

Gregorio_Hernandez4560

Participant

I just tried the assisted selection and I've run into something I'm not sure is a problem with the application or if I'm just missing something. I chose a folder with approximately 840 JPG files, and Lightroom selected half of them. I have it set to only show the selected photos, and I've also told Lightroom to create a collection with those selected photos. When the photos load, I switch to the Develop module, check, and it shows all the photos from the original folder. So, it made the selection, but it still loaded all the photos. I also checked the collection, and it's there too, with all the photos from the folder. What happened? I don't know. I've tried the process twice, and it's always the same result.

G

Gregorio_Hernandez4560

Participant

The problem was solved. After reading some comments from other users, I understood that with the Library module enabled, I should select "selected photos" in the right-hand column, instead of "all photos" as it was by default when all the photos were loaded.

A

ArcherA4

Known Participant

I think this is going to be very useful

Trying on some non portrait subjects it was still selecting sharpness well. I was happy to start drilling down on some big bursts by moving the subject focus slider on the assisted culling panel and having the Selects/Rejects displayed change in real time. I suppose it is the same as upvoting the "rank by focus score" but I found myself trying to select the "sharpest" so some granularity would help - the sharpness changes in tens and I couldn't type a number into the slider or scrub the number, or slow scrub with the shift key, all of which would be nice to pick the sharpest, or the top three or four out of thirty etc

Nice function!

Mike

Lightroom Classic version: 15.0 [ 202510171722-44f87028 ]

License: Creative Cloud

Operating system: Windows 11 - Home Premium Edition

Version: 11.0.26200

Application architecture: x64

System architecture: x64

Processor speed: 2.9GHz

J

Jabbermack69

Participant

Hi,

How do I unselect the selected "rejects" that I want to put back into the "selected "images section

McToddy

Participating Frequently

right-click the image -> Assisted Culling -> Mark as Select....

A

Arnhem Shore

Participant

What am I doing wrong here? Imported 900 photos, it analysed all of them but didn't select or reject any and didn't give an culling scores...

McToddy

Participating Frequently

This took me a bit to figure out the behavior to get the culling grading (i.e., displaying the green checkmarks or red x's -- see the blue higlights below) to work. You need to have both ...
1) the Assisted Culling panel display (see dropdown arrow in orange highlight)
2) have some criteria (pink highlight) selected.... this can be either criteria from Select or Reject -- you just need to have some criteria specified.

If you have no criteria specified (pink highlight), no green/red indicators (blue highlight) will be shown...

Similarily, if criteria is specified, but the culling panel not visible (orange highlight), the green/red culling indicators are not display (blue) but other library indicators are shown

M

Mladenovic12

Participant

So far i have positive feedback for assistive culling, however for that option there is only one thing missing...you need to add "duplicate" selection and not stacking. Stacking is not working correctly but instead add duplicate selection.

A

Andriesv

Participant

I have tried everything Out of 2224 pictures nothing rejected. It does nothing except stacking. Ag siestog ags shame

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