Each culling method has its own settings. This guide covers the settings for each culling method. You need to create a new culling project before you set it up.

If you need help from support, include screen captures and examples in your ticket.

Set up to keep the best photos of a group

This culling method groups similar photos and selects the best one from each group. It also finds unique photos that aren’t part of a group for you to review. It preserves variety throughout your shoot while filtering out duplicates and low-quality shots. 

This method works best for wedding, portrait, or event photography where flexibility is key. You can choose how strictly to define groups of similar photos and whether or not to exclude low-quality ones.

Rating method when keeping the best photos of a group

Enable Rate photos as Sneak peeks to rate photos that tell the story of your shoot. After culling, you can filter for sneak peeks to only see these photos.

• Keepers: The best photo in a group of similar photos.
• Standalones: Rated the same as keepers. There are no alternatives to this photo. These photos don't have duplicates and aren't part of a group.
• Duplicates: Similar photos in the group that weren't selected as the Keeper.
• Low-rated: Low-rated photos are blurry, accidentally captured, or improperly exposed. When photos are low-rated, the final pick will have fewer photos:
  • There might be fewer groups of similar photos since low-rated photos aren’t included in the groups.
  • If all the photos in a group are blurry, entire scenes might be filtered out.

If you want to include low-rated photos in your picks, disable Add Low-rated to the culling results.

Grouping criteria

Culling Studio groups photos according to their similarity.  Adjusting the grouping criteria in the preferences affects the number of photos it selects as Keepers and Standalones.

These are the grouping criteria:

• Less Similar groups photos with a lower level of similarity.
  Choosing this setting will result in fewer photos being selected as Keepers and Standalone.
• Similar is the recommended similarity level and set as the default setting. This setting will group photos that share similarities but are not identical.
• Very similar only groups photos that are almost identical, resulting in more groups and more photos selected. Choose this option if you wish to receive more photos from Culling Studio.

Rating methods

These are the rating methods that Culling Studio supports:

• Star rating: When using star ratings, keep the same star rating for both Keepers and Standalones. They are both equally important and are reviewed together.
• Color Labels: When using color labels, you use different colors for Keepers and Standalones. Colors do not indicate that one photo is better than the other as stars tend to indicate.
• Flags: The flagging method uses a simpler Yes/No approach. The Keepers and Standalones will be flagged, and the Duplicates will be left unflagged. You can review the flagged photos and then remove the flag if they don’t make the final cut.

We recommend that you review Keepers and Standalones together since they both require a photographer’s professional eye. For example, we give both Keepers and Standalones the same rating since they are equally important, and you need to review them together.

You can choose the rating method for each type and customize the color labels and star ratings to fit your workflow.

Here are the Culling Studio’s defaults for the different rating methods:

Changing culling results by adjusting preferences

When you create a new culling project or cull again, you can adjust the culling preferences to change how Culling Studio rates photos and groups them.

Set up to cull to an exact number

This culling method automatically reduces your project to an exact number or percentage of photos. It is designed for photographers who shoot thousands of photos but need to deliver a specific count to clients. 

Number of photos to keep

This method works best with projects when you want to keep 15-30% of your total photos. It’s not meant for sneak peeks or highlights. You can choose to define the number of photos to keep by percentage or by an exact number. 

Rating criteria when culling to an exact number

• Keepers: Top-rated photos within the number of photos you set. Sometimes, if you want to keep a relatively high number of photos, the number of Keepers might be lower than what you set. This happens if there aren't enough top-rated photos.
• Extras: High-rated photos that we recommend reviewing.
• Unrated: Duplicates and lower quality shots.

Rating methods

• Color labels: This is the default rating method. Green is for Keepers, yellow is for Extras, and grey is for Unrated.
• Stars: 5 stars are Keepers, 4 stars are Extras, and 1 star is Unrated.
• Flags: Flags are not yet supported when culling to an exact number.