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
7467 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

Show previous replies

A

Aliz_

Participant

Mac user here.
I've just updated, and unfortunately the Assisted Culling is not working at all. I have the folder selected with 200 images, side panel is open with criteria for selection and rejection ticked. It analyses the images, then nothing. Auto stacking does the same, I select to 'stack by virtual similarity', and it does absolutely nothing. Any suggestions, what could be wrong?

Julie k

Participating Frequently

Aliz_, that's puzzling. I will reach out to you privately to try and figure out what's going wrong for you.

V

vonQueeger

Participant

Well I think it is a brilliant first step filter to reassure yourself that your people shots were good enough for final choice by your brain and eyes!

Thank you!

C

crusted

Known Participant

Absolutely agree.

A great first step, and a great tool for double checking your own review and efforts.

Christopher Rusted

T

ThomasBradley

Participant

Fun idea, but it doesn't work. I think it ignored my selections when I told it just to look for misfires and decided to look for all the possible checkboxes (focus issues maybe). Anyway none of the shots it chose were misfires. They were straight down drone shots for a real estate propery asisgnment I did a couple years ago. And I'm pretty sure there ARE some misfires in my library, since I backup all of my originals to Lightroom. So make it do as it's told and we will all get along just fine?

N

nilkes

Participant

Wow, another button in the left column 🤦‍♂

Please give us an option to manage which buttons (Add Photos, Assisted Culling, Learn, Community, All Photos and suboptions) are shown in the left column and in which order, because -honestly- I never use anything but my own albums/folders and sometimes some 'All Photos' and two of its suboptions, and I hate having to scroll down for my own stuff, while some (to me) useless buttons take up space at the top.

T

TStrothjohann

Participant

I really like this new feature! I hope you continue to improve it and add more AI tools that help me manage my Lightroom library more efficiently.

My experience and suggestions:

“Eyes Open” Filter:

I tested the feature on an album with around 600 photos, including portraits, architecture, landscapes, and more. The “eyes open” filter is useful for portraits, but it doesn’t make sense for most other types of photos. I couldn’t find an easy way to apply the filter only to selected images. It would be great to have more targeted control over when and where the filter is used.

Stacking Functionality:
I expected the stacking feature to work similarly to Google Photos. In its current version, I found it less useful: it grouped photos together that I wouldn’t consider similar, including one stack with over 200 images that didn’t seem to have much in common.
Ideally, I’d like Lightroom’s AI to automatically stack photos taken of the same scene or situation, suggest the best one, and give me the option to manually adjust the favorite and delete all but the winner.

Julie k

Participating Frequently

Stacking Functionality:
... I found it less useful: it grouped photos together that I wouldn’t consider similar, including one stack with over 200 images that didn’t seem to have much in common.
Ideally, I’d like Lightroom’s AI to automatically stack photos taken of the same scene or situation, suggest the best one, and give me the option to manually adjust the favorite and delete all but the winner.

Did you try adjusting the slider under the Visual Similarity checkbox? Moving it to the left will make smaller, more similar stacks. And we do attempt to put the best photo on the top. If you prefer a different one, open the stack by clicking on its count in the upper right, select your best photo from the filmstrip, and from the Edit menu, choose Stacks > Set as Stack Cover. You can also delete the ones you don't want from this view.

M

Matt4179

Participant

This feature has been fantastic so far and has really helped me free up space. My feedback is about the "Subject Focus." I do a lot of landscape photography with slow shutter speeds. While it does a good job selecting the subject, it often places waterfalls and rapids in the rejects category. As the product evolves, could there be an "Overall Focus" option or a way to exclude waterfalls and intentional slow shutter effects from the search? Once again, great feature—looking forward to future updates!

S

StevenGDevaney

Participant

Hi
A very nice feature - thank you.
I would like an option in the batch actions to be able to move the rejected files to another location on another drive. This will allow me to quickly perform an initial sort of the images and, when I have the time later, go through the rejected images one more time before deciding to delete them.
It will also mean only the good images get automatically sent to my chosen cloud location - saving me a lot of upload time.

I

isabella_0105

Participant

Such an amazing and time saving tool! I love this feature, but I’m having a little trouble and I'm not sure if it’s user error. I have about 1,000 photos, so I’m not sure if that’s too many at once. The first time I culled them, it completed about one-third and then force-closed the whole app. When I reopened it, I had to re-enter my criteria. This time it finished culling, and at first I could view the selected photos in Develop. But after closing my laptop and coming back, all the photos appear to have been “unculled.”

C

cmecatchu2

Participant

There needs to be a way to filter action in the culling where you would want the blur at times... even at a lower sharp setting its rejecting ones that are sharp in face but have the motion blur. I can see this being helpful in certain situations not all culling. but it is a nice start.

F

farahstop

Participating Frequently

I use LRcc and I don't want to import the images if I haven't culled them first. That is why I use other non adobe software. Can I cull without saving the images first? I don't want to upload 1k photos if I don't have to. I would like to select prior to importing to LR. Am I missing how it's done?

Victoria Bampton LR Queen

Community Expert

@farahstop you can use Assisted Culling in Local mode, and then just copy your selects to the cloud.

Victoria - The Lightroom Queen

F

farahstop

Participating Frequently

I understand the Local part, however, must we be obligated to save the images from the SD card to your drive in order to use assisted culling? So far per the vid by LR by Brian Matiash and Adobe, you put the sd card in, select, save on the computer... I don't want to do that. I would like for it to operate like other third party software where you can cull on the SD card directly, select and then dump in Lr CC. Are there any other steps we can take to avoid this data dumping all over?

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