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
116202 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

R

remov_b4_flight

Known Participant

Want to aim for: Learn what users have manually rejected.

And use it for assistive culling.

JuAn

Participant

The new feature in v15 is Auto culling. I would like that when I import photo's. However when I'm now in the Catalog menu it starts analyzing ALL my existing files in the background (all 65000!!!). I do not want that, only when I import new files. How to switch this off? A simple enable/disable button would be nice...

A

Aleke

Community Manager

Hi @1650245, welcome to the community!
When you get a chance, try going to Edit > Catalog Settings > Metadata and unchecking the options under the Assisted Culling section. That should help resolve the issue.
Let me know how it goes!
Alek

*(If you mention me with an @, like @Aleke, I’ll get a notification and can respond faster.)*

R

remov_b4_flight

Known Participant

I want to add for assisted culling 'Reject' panel ...

"Half opened eyes"

R

remov_b4_flight

Known Participant

Assisted Culling -> Reject -> Exposure Issues checkbox is on that selects not only missed overexposure but also intentional saturated exposure.

It seems thresholds need to be reconsidered.

E

Eckoephoto

Participant

Agree with this. Sliders like the Focus maybe?

E

Eckoephoto

Participant

I've been working my process with Aftershoot, and recently with Evoto for culling, and I'm happy with Aftershoots results, I can't see how it got there to make other decisions later. I absolutely can here.. Thank you for letting us into the decision making process. This will likely take over my culling process here. Less exporting files, less disk space, and therefore, better long term efficiency.

For the Organize results section, I would LOVE to have granularity here, and a workflow rather than JUST select/reject.

For every score, allow an action, not just select/don't select. Run it through a progression. Start everything at 3 stars, If it's a missfire, -2, if it's got an exposure issue, -1 star, subject in focus +1 Star, Eyes in Focus, +1 Star. This would give us granulartiy. I can do this manually in stages, and the system is fast enough that it would still be a net positive in time, but it would be amazing to automate it.

Again thanks, this is going to be process altering in a very positive way.

john beardsworth

Community Expert

It's interesting to hear from someone who has tried alternatives. Don't the Batch Actions give the "progression" you suggest?

kx2

Known Participant

So after trying this the folder shows 39 photo's but only 1 is visible how do you get back to seeing the complete folder. No return button, no cancel button do I need to reimport the photo's ?

V

VishalJ

Adobe Employee

Can you check in Assisted Culling Panel if you have selected Selects/Rejects in the View Tab

kx2

Known Participant

Tried that and then pressed all and nothing happens, still only showing 1 photo

McToddy

Participating Frequently

where can we submit bug reports / performance issues?

- culling tips (highlight boundary exceed window)

- culling tips (unable to play this video)

- Assisted Culling -> View Rejects showed rejects briefly, then all rejects disappeared. I had to select View -> All, then back to View -> Reject for the culling rejects (red X, not the green checked images) to reappear.

(I didnt grab a screenshot of the rejected images not viewable)
LrC v15.0 Build 202510171722-44F87028 on Win 11 25H2

C.Cella

Legend

An issue for all users:
Your scores will NOT update if in Library you did any of the following:

1. Used "Quick Develop"
2. Past/Sync Settings,

3. Apply a Develop Preset,

4. Apply settings vis SDK (Plug-ins)

To make score update you must go in Develop OR change source and come back to it.

So be careful about scores as they might be false and either stack photos that are not similar anymore due to edits you did or reject photos that are not to be rejected.

.

C

ChrisOgden

Participating Frequently

Disappointing User Interface violence to long time/pro users: Our muscle memory typing (which is critical when one spends 12+hours a day in LrC, has been broken by putting the "Assisted Culling" and "Culling Scores" (btw, labelled inconsistently in the Windows-> Panels menu, where it's labelled "Photo Quality") at the TOP!?!

What used to be ctrl/cmd 1 -> Quick Develop, cmd/ctrl 4 Metadata, etc. now creates completely new results. YUCK!

How about you respect us users and 1. allow US to set the Keyboard Shortcuts (which would be helpful throughout the program)

or PLEASE allow we the users to change the order of the Library, right side Panels, changing the cmd/ctrl keys

or Put the new modules at THE BOTTOM of the panel.

To add insult to injury these new panels really only apply to Portrait oriented folks. Right now at least, they are mostly irrelevant to Fine Art, Landscape, etc. photographers. So to put them, immovably at the top and break our navigation is really crappy indeed.

There doesn't seem to be any workarounds(?) Can't use a keyboard re-mapping program (like Keyboard Maestro on the Mac), because the shortcuts are Module-dependent (cmd/ctrl 1 does 1 thing in Library, another in Develop, etc.).

UGH!

C

ChrisOgden

Participating Frequently

And also, no, hiding the Culling panels doesn't change the keyboard shortcuts. And reflexive typing the OLD shortcuts unhides the damn culling panels.

C

ChrisOgden

Participating Frequently

And saying the new "auto-stacking" feature will benefit non-portrait folks is only partially true. MANY of us hate Stacks, and wish we had a preference where we could completely turn it off. We've had to learn to frequently go back to Library, select thumbnails, and press cmd-shift-G to unstack/unhide. Yuck again!

besler

Known Participant

Just upgraded to try this, in Classic. Pretty impressed so far. Would love to see the ability to have LR Classic automatically choose the "best" image in a grouping / stack, similar to how other tools work. Base this on smiles, sharpness, etc., but also what might do best when shared via social media, for instance.

Would also love to see LR Classic limit to the best X amount of images.

besler

Known Participant

Also, PLEASE give the ability to manually select/reject via keyboard shortcut.

P

Piotr Gardecki

Inspiring

I’ve started testing Assisted Culling, and so far my impressions are very positive. The tool handles large catalogs smoothly, import works flawlessly, and the file selection feels accurate and fast. It’s shaping up to be a solid addition to the everyday workflow.

I still need to process more images across different formats to fully evaluate the algorithm’s performance, but the Batch Actions feature also shows promising potential for streamlining the workflow.

D

defaultzdb1tde3wl8e

Participating Frequently

AI assisted subject focus etc for people is already available via 3rd party tools already aimed at weddings, events etc, Adobe should be focusing on what 3rd party tools don't already offer e.g. subject focus for animals, birds, sharpness of landscapes and photos in general. Should also be able to see the scoring from the focus analysis and be able to sort images by the score e.g. when shooting a high-speed burst of a something like a bird in flight, being able to sort the burst by sharpness scoring helps pick out the sharpest image in a burst, take a look at when OM Workspace (it's one decent feature) does in this area. Auto-stack also ought to be able to stack on the basis of things like drive mode, if you are using exposure, focus bracketing etc, this can be done via EXIF data, although likely camera system dependent as different systems record this data differently in the EXIF.

McToddy

Participating Frequently

I upvote because I've been wanting to have an automated way for stacking images that are part of bracketed set (i.e, For Sony A7iii, there's EXIF attribuytes ReleaseMode, SequenceImageNumber and SequemceLength), but I am not sure what EXIF attribs that Canon/Nikon/other use to map for an automation algorithm)

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