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|9 months ago
September 24, 2025
72 replies
154174 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

This topic has been closed for replies.

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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

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...

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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!

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