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Rikk Flohr_Photography
Community Manager
Rikk Flohr_PhotographyCommunity Manager
September 24, 2025
Question

(Early Access) Assisted Culling (Lightroom Ecosystem - Desktop)

  • September 24, 2025
  • 71 replies
  • 7463 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 

    71 replies

    Show previous replies
    W
    wonderful_Odyssey6C1B
    Participant
    November 19, 2025

    Summary: RAW versions of RAW - JPG-cover pairs are rejected, but the JPG covers are accepted

     

    I typically upload RAW images and their cover JPGs into the same album in LR. Running Assisted Culling for sharpness, often rejects the RAW images of the RAW - JPG-cover pairs, while the JPG image is accepted. Unless I'm missing something with respect to organizing and culling RAW images, the expected behavior should be to treat those pairs as the same.

    Rikk Flohr_Photography
    Community Manager
    Rikk Flohr_PhotographyCommunity ManagerAuthor
    November 19, 2025

    @wonderful_Odyssey6C1B   JPEG files are typically sharpened by the camera's built-in processor and will always be sharper in appearance than the raw file. It would diffcult to treat them as the same - as they are not!

    You have multiple options. Here are a few:

    1. Adjust your slider value downward so sharper raws are included
    2. Presharpen your raws on import with a Raw Default prior to running the culling models
    3. Separate raws and JPEGs into collections prior to running the culling models
    Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org
      gerardov
      gerardov
      Participant
      January 28, 2026

      I think a better pattern for future versions should be a "Prefer Format" setting. Where in Culling settings you can decide which format to prefer: RAW or non-RAW. In general terms and for professionals, you know you can improve the exposure and sharpness, yet you may want to still download and cull through all photos no matter what type.

       

      M
      Maldon Seasalt
      Participating Frequently
      November 16, 2025

      MacBook Pro OS 26.1 and Adobe Lightoom 9.0:

       

      I attempted my first cull last night and learned the hard way that you need to begin the Assisted Culling process in a specific album instead of going to "All Photos" and either 1) selecting the new photos you want it to analyze or, better yet, 2) having it analyze images from one of the "Recently Added" buckets. 

       

      Despite my selecting specific images in "All Photos," the Assisted Culling tool analyzed my entire library. Worse yet, there's no Cancel button to abort — or at least I couldn't find one.  

       

      Beginning in "All Photos" was my error, even though the Assisted Culling option is listed in the "All Photos" view.  (The tutorial set me straight on this, but it seems this tool shouldn't be actionable in the "All Photos" mode without a pop-up window asking if you really want to analyze your whole library.)

       

      Perhaps from a programming standpoint, I can understand the need to begin the culling process in a specific album.  But practically speaking, why make an album of photos you haven't yet reviewed?  Being able to select new images from "All Photos" or one of the "Recently Added" folders would be a huge help.  I have since used the Assisted Culling and Auto-Stacking tools on established albums and they worked well overall.  The tools certainly help to take the anxiety out of photo reviews by grouping the similar images into manageable stacks.

       

      One other area for improvement: Once you've reviewed the culls and put them in stacks, you can't review the stacked images in a traditional "Square Grid."  You need to look at them in the "Detail" view, which provides one large image plus thumbnails of the other images in the sliding grid below, and even then it takes two clicks to get there.  (See screen shots.)  Using the "Detail" view is not a big deal if the stack contains a few photos, but it's deinitely a challenge if the stack contains anything more the five or six images.

       

      One other limitation: You can't see the stacks in Lightroom Mobile. That's been an ongoing issue with merged HDR images, too, so it would be great if Adobe could find a way to address that.

       

      Conceptually, I love these new tools — thank you, Adobe! — and look forward to making them part of my workflow once developers move past the Early Access phase.

      M
      Michael28936469pgil
      Participant
      November 16, 2025

      You need to have the ability to move rejected shots to the keep folder, that way I can just delete all rejected shots rather than having to manually do it if there are a few rejected ones I want to keep.

      J
      jonahlevine
      Participant
      April 9, 2026

      that exists

      M
      Maldon Seasalt
      Participating Frequently
      November 15, 2025

      Thanks for the new Assisted Culling feature in Lightroom 9.0. Very helpful.  For Stacking, it would be helpful to be able to see the images from a specific stack in an isolated and much larger Square Grid rather than in Detail view, where the images are smaller and less manageable. It would also be helpful to be able to create Substacks from Stacks with many images. (MacBook Pro OS 26.1, Lightroom 9.0).

      S
      SenkethyaSarPhotography
      Participant
      November 13, 2025

      This feature is greate, but there are room to improve. 
      The tried to compare the reject vs accept with just subject focuse set to 80 here is the result. 

      By eye, I clearly see that the reject one is look sharper that meant it is better focus. 

       

      A
      aloy_teoh
      Participant
      November 12, 2025

      The feature is great but Lightroom can be quite slow when it is culling.

      E
      Emma K Alex
      Participant
      November 11, 2025

      Very cool feature. Would love to ability to exclude photos I already have added a title or keywords to.

        H
        Heidi Delacroix
        Participant
        November 11, 2025

        As someone just learning photoshop with a learning disability, may I say you just saved me so much time and energy with this feature. I beg you, never take it away!

          G
          Gian36596128ihzv
          Participant
          November 11, 2025

          I've been using the new Assisted Culling feature for real estate photography, and I can confidently say it's one of the best additions to my workflow. It's incredibly helpful for managing groups of photos efficiently.

          One feature that would make it even better for me is the ability to automatically create HDR stacks. This would streamline my process even further and ensure the highest quality results.

          M
          Maldon Seasalt
          Participating Frequently
          November 15, 2025

          Agree! That would be a huge time-saver.

          B
          biemmezeta
          Participating Frequently
          November 10, 2025

          Thank you very much for this feature.

           

          I'd like to be able to easily navigate groupedstack made by AI culling and decide whether or not to keep that stack. As of now it seems that culling stack is separated by normal stacks.

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