P: AI Culling

[Dhamu_09]

Being a wedding photographer our utmost need is AI Culling ( selection of content with a given criteria ) after storage & proper correction Because it will take most of the time of us to share best images to cliant So Just for culling we have to move towards other application rest all can be manage by lightroom so i thing they should add this feature as soon as possible to help wedding photographers need thanks

[dmitryg75012865]

Photo Mechanic is a good tool for selection, but it is stuck in 2010 in every sense, starting from its old design to the fact that AI can do this job just as well as a human with large volumes of photos.

[Jao vdL]

Re Photo Mechanic, there is no difference in culling in LrC (with previews built) and Photo Mechanic nowadays

It's even faster if you just use embedded previews on import and disable the automatic replacement of embedded previews during idle time. No need for other culling programs anymore. Previews are immediately there and stepping through images is immediate in Library.

[jubi398]

@Jao vdL exactly!

[cs39562891]

Glad to see this being kept alive.

Whilst I have nohing against Photo Machenic (never used it). It still is a third party software. I like many others would like to keep it all in Adobe, whether it's light room or Photoshop.

Someone mention on the previous page, that Adobe most likely will not implement new features into Lightroom classic. This may be the case, and I can except that. But, I do think that Adobe could implement it to stay current.

Ask yourself this, if Capture One implements Ai culling into there software and Adobe doesn't would you switch?

Again. I, as a wedding photographer, would like everything to be in one place, no switching back and forth between programs.

Adobe, if you're reading this. Com'n, make it happen!

[KR Seals]

One advantage for me is that on a wildlife shoot with 3000-4000 images culled down to just a few hundred in Photo Mechanic means those images never get into LrC and thus preview do not have to be created. And, those images culled in Photo Mechanic will never have to be deleted in LrC. All in all a great time saving.

My experience is that clicking through images in the LrC Library Module is far slower than Photo Mechanic. 

[Jill_C]

I do not believe the statement that "Adobe most likely not implement new features". Anyone who has used LRC for years has seen a steady incorporation of minor and major new features and improvements. And they come here and listen to users to help them decide what changes are needed and would be popular among users. Any improvement in the culling process would be a win as far as I'm concerned.

Anyone who,agrees should go to the OP and UPVOTE!

[kasiapudlo]

I am a photographer with mountains of photographs which I will never have enough time to sort through myself, categorising the images, getting rid of duplicates, deleting badly composed photos etc. I think we need an AI based Adobe product that will sort through files, pick the best composed photos, reject blurry ones etc. There are a few online tools that can already do that, I would like this to be integrated into Lightroom so I don't have to upload my whole library to an entirely new program. I am really looking forward to this being built into Lightroom, it will save people countless hours of really, really boring work. I reckon it would be an awesome feature.

[ANUPAM.MAURYA]

Yes, adobe needs to bring in this feature fast. And also AI profile based editing to match a photographers style. 

There are many companies like Imagen AI, Aftershoot etc which are offering automatic culling and editing features. This ideally is not that difficult given the level of machine learning today. It is beyond me, why Adobe is not offering this feature in-built. Adobe should take not of this and do this asap. With its vast resources this should be a no brainer. Why should we need to pay separately for additional products for this basic AI automation. Adobe needs to start innovating faster. Here is how the feature needs to be built. 

- Photographers should share catalogues of 5000 to 10000 images to create a editing profile. 
- A photographer should be allowed to create multiple profiles for eg. Day Christian Wedding, Night Christian wedding, Outdoor North indian Hindu wedding, Indoor Noth Indian Hindu wedding, etc. 
- This feature can be called AI presets. 
- Allow AI presets for local adjustments too and not just global adjustments.

[Hook38673811ka2x]

AI-powered culling and selection tools can indeed be incredibly useful for wedding photographers to streamline their workflow. These tools can help in quickly identifying the best images based on criteria such as sharpness, composition, facial expressions, etc., thereby saving a significant amount of time during the editing and selection process.

As of my last update in January 2022, Adobe Lightroom, while powerful for editing and organizing photos, doesn't natively offer AI-driven culling features. However, there are some third-party tools and plugins that integrate with Lightroom or operate independently to provide AI culling capabilities. These tools typically analyze photos using AI algorithms to suggest or automatically select the best images based on predefined criteria.

Here are a few options to consider:

1. Photolemur: Photolemur is an AI-powered photo enhancer that can also assist in culling by analyzing and suggesting the best photos based on quality and composition.

2. Excire: Excire offers plugins for Lightroom that use AI to analyze and tag photos based on content, making it easier to search and sort through large photo libraries. While it focuses more on tagging and searching, it can aid in the initial selection process.

3. Photonic AI: This is another AI-powered tool that integrates with Lightroom to assist in culling and selecting images based on quality and criteria set by the user.

4. Adobe Sensei (Auto Curate): Although not specifically for Lightroom, Adobe Sensei, the AI platform behind many Adobe products, might eventually integrate more advanced culling features into Lightroom in the future.

If AI culling directly within Lightroom is crucial for your workflow, providing feedback to Adobe through their official channels (such as Adobe UserVoice or forums) can help prioritize features for future updates. Many photographers have voiced similar needs, and Adobe often considers user feedback when planning new features.

In the meantime, exploring third-party solutions that integrate with Lightroom or developing a workflow using standalone AI tools for culling can help optimize your efficiency as a wedding photographer. These tools can significantly reduce the time spent on initial photo selection, allowing you to focus more on the creative aspects of your work and delivering high-quality images to your clients.

[dmitryg75012865]

I completely agree with this. The demand for AI-driven, personalized editing features in Lightroom is growing rapidly, and it's surprising that Adobe hasn't yet integrated this capability directly into the software. Companies like Imagen AI and Aftershoot are leading the way with automatic culling and editing features, proving that this kind of technology is not only possible but essential for modern photographers.

With Adobe's resources and expertise in machine learning, developing AI presets that learn and replicate a photographer's unique style should be a priority. The idea of creating multiple profiles for different types of shoots is spot on—imagine the time saved by having Lightroom automatically apply the perfect adjustments based on your established preferences.

This is a huge opportunity for Adobe to stay ahead of the curve and offer a truly innovative solution that meets the real needs of photographers today. We need this feature to streamline our workflows, maintain consistency across large projects, and ultimately keep Lightroom at the forefront of professional editing software.

Adobe, it's time to step up and make this happen. The photography community is waiting for it!

[Erik36868890an4t]

Indeed, it would be great to have photo's automatically be grouped with similar pictures and than to hightlight the sharpest ones and sieve out blurry ones. When shooting birds, it can be quite a bit of work to cull through 1000s of images to pick those that have the best sharpness.

[Mathias Pfuetzner]

Tools like Imagen AI and Impossible Things offer advanced AI capabilities for automatic editing and culling, which save time and improve efficiency. While Lightroom Classic offers automatic edits, they don’t yet match the precision of these third-party tools. 

If Lightroom Classic could integrate advanced AI for personalized editing and automated culling, it would provide a more comprehensive solution, saving time and improving the overall editing experience.

[Lumigraphics]

I'm voting against this. I have no interest in more AI and don't want the development team time wasted on features that are not useful to many of us. Adobe needs to concentrate its time and effort on core functionality and fixing the UI instead. This is a great third-party opportunity.

[AlexJz]

@Jill_CI'm sorry; given the number of threads open here, dating back to 2018, asking for simple features, like Denoise on iPad, I really cannot agree.

There's quite a few of them, and I'm seeing posts almost every week on them, of people asking for the same thing.

LrC is a pretty well rounded app, so there's less to add; but we didn't get much that a few AI features over the last years.

They absolutely do not listen one bit to us in this forum, except for bugs to be fair (where they are getting resolved quicker lately).

[Jill_C]

They DO listen to issues and ideas posted in the forum; but just because you want something doesn't mean they're going to give it high priority.

[AlexJz]

Sure.

Dozens of people, asking for just feature parity between devices/versions for 6 to 7 years, and still not having it, is "listening" but "not giving a high priority".

But hey, we have so many new features in v14, that are the result of their "listening" to the community, I should not complain. Sorry.

[ashleycarucci]

Any update on this for automated AI culling of event photos? I shoot musicians and have a lot to cull. Thank you.

[dmitryg75012865]

Lets hope Adobe will hear us

[ANUPAM.MAURYA]

Adobe is an elephant, it moves at such slow pace. Adobe if you can't develop this, hire me as a product manager and I will get this done!  Fire exising laggards in the company !

[KR Seals]

The more I consider the concept of AI culling, the less I like it. Say I let it cull a big music show of several thousand images. I am a perfectionist on how I like the expressions of the musicians, their position relative to the mic as well as the positions of the rest of the players and instruments when I show a group. I can't imagine that I wouldn't have to go through all the images again myself to be sure AI didn't miss anything that I consider excellent.

[KR Seals]

I would love to see an actual example of the AI you are talking about.

[KR Seals]

I realize this thread has been active for a long time and many would like AI culling.

The are times that in my own work, music shows, airshows and wildlife that I come home from a shoot with thousands of images.

I know we are talking about culling, which I think for many means reviewing and selecting the bad shots (bad for whatever reason). I find it's much more efficient and effective to review all the images in Photo Mechanic and only select for further consideration the good images. If one culls based on getting rid of the bad shots, there is still the process of picking the best ones. By picking the best ones in the first pass, that cut out a time consuming job of culling/rejecting. 

After picking the best shots. I delete the ones I did not pick so the LrC importing and creating previews process is much faster on a smaller but already vetted set of images.

I'm posting this in case it can make high volume shooters process more efficient until/when AI comes along in LrC.

[Tommi Lightspot]

Since the rise of AI assisted tools on photo editing, I´ve been looking for a AI solution to automatically process a large amount of portrait photos by certain rules and preferences. Typical photography gig for me is a school student or some similiar studio style photoevent, which results a hundreds or thousands photos to pick the best shots and edit them with often very similar style. Some of the new Adobe´s AI tools are impressive, but as l understand (and correct me if I´m wrong), Adobe does not offer built in solution for my needs. Best applications I´ve found is Imagen AI Lightroom plug-in, which you can "teach" to edit your photos with certain style analyzing your editing data from your past catalogue.

I´m not an AI expert, but process doesn´t seem too complicated to implement as a built in feature in Lightroom. For an example, a set of action preferences could look like this after import:

1. Flag 5 to 10 images of every different person in picture set by rules: eyes open, smile, 2 to 3 different poses. Option to autoflag certain customer tags: e use qr-code shot before every customer to connect customer information to photos in post-process.

2. Crop flagged photos to certain aspect ratio, 2 to 3 full body shots, 2 to 3 headshots by certain composition reference (an reference image or automatic composition considering proportion of face of body in image aspect ratio?)

3. Implement a certain develop preset to every image, adjust exposure if lighting on face is too bright or too dark.

4. Export images with certain pixel size and resolution to a certain folder.

Something like this could revolutionize post image processing in mass photoevents, and would save thousands of work hours in a year.

Any thoughts or tips? Any on going beta-features Adobe side which I could partisipate, or will to start one?

[Tommi Lightspot]

I´d say even a studio portrait photographer would benefit greatly from this kind automated image process feature, for example to speed up editing of digital test prints. This is also a sales pitch for Imagen AI. Why I don´t just use Imagen AI? I think it´s a little bit questionable to base your professional workflow on a third party app, which could lead to challenges with compatibility in future.