Introducing Assisted Culling (Early Access) in Lightroom Desktop For providing feedback for Lightroom Classic, 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 Culling scores no longer recalculate when you switch preview sizes (e.g., grid view to detail view). 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 (Lightroom Ecosystem - Desktop)

Forum|Forum|7 months ago
September 24, 2025
71 replies
7452 views

Introducing Assisted Culling (Early Access) in Lightroom Desktop

For providing feedback for Lightroom Classic, 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

Culling scores no longer recalculate when you switch preview sizes (e.g., grid view to detail view).

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

Sudders

Participant

the program crash after 70 photograph culled

Agisbopp

Participant

Lightroom 9.3 ver - Mac platform

I had the same experience as @Nick Vee - also motorsport photos.

The speed and recognition of photos is neat, I placed a 75% of focused subject and out of 1600 photos I got 160 approved automatically. After manually checking the rejects, 315 more were appropriate.

(RAW) Rejected photo example:

(RAW) Approved example:

Also tested with people, and the difference is abismal. Makes sense since faces are more recognisable s subjects. Looking forward to improvements! I already like this tool

N

nilkes

Participant

New Lightroom update, but still can’t remove the culling feature from the sidebar. I don’t need it. I don’t want it. Stop cluttering up my UI.

N

Nick Vee

Participant

OK - I’m late to this. I heard about Assisted Culling a few months ago, but only had the opportunity to test it on a personal project photo session at a racetrack yesterday.

In the day, I took around 3.8k RAW photos of mainly auto racing tracking shots, but also some stationery vehicle photos. As is always the case, due to intentional slow shutter speeds (typically 1/60th to 1/100th) for maximum drama, there’s a high failure rate where the cars are not in focus.

I used Assisted Culling in Lightroom v9.2 (I don’t use Classic) on macOS. All images are locally stored, not synced to the cloud. On an M1 Ultra Mac Studio with 64GB, it took around 20 mins, which is fine. The photos are 8192 x 5464px, taken with a Canon R5.

Assisted Culling “approved” of around 450 photos where the focus target was set to a maximum of 90%. It was generally successful, with only a few blurred images slipping through.

Here’s an example of a photo (unedited) which was successfully selected:

Percentage-wise, the motion blurred background is much greater than the sharp subject. All good.

But then I checked the rejected images manually. Thankfully. I found that around 1,171 photos were all good (and I was being fussy), such as:

Worryingly, the photos which didn’t exhibit motion blur, but had a shallow depth of field were also rejected by Assisted Culling, such as:

Unfortunately, it’s not currently something I can rely on.

Are there any avenues for improvement? I don’t mind if it takes a little longer or requires the user to perhaps confirm approved selection from a sample it deems need questioning.

J

jonahlevine

Participant

I would love the ability to set the point to look for focus accuracy. I am trying to get certain shots and it is detecting lack of focus on the wrong point

baqir4

Participant

It would be great if the model could understand different photos/frames and sort them into categories. For example, I do photos of aircraft and would love it if it could sort the interior from the exterior.

B

Birgit2464950518oo

Participant

Hi!

Would like to have eye (or head) focus selection also on animals. Being a nature photography the current culling is not very useful.

Train the AI more on animal and landscape photos.

ADRIANO_SILVA

Participant

The idea is excellent, but I believe that what's more important in the selection process is removing duplicate photos, photos that are similar. That would help much more than checking whether or not it was taken properly. That's my opinion.