Culling
Culling is choosing which photos to keep from a shoot — rejecting blurry, blinking and duplicate frames and picking the best — before editing or delivery.
A typical event or wedding produces far more frames than a client should see. Culling is the selection step: flag the keepers, reject the misses, pick one from each burst. It's usually done in software built for speed, such as Photo Mechanic or Lightroom, and increasingly with help from AI tools that flag focus and closed eyes.
Fast culling is the difference between a same-day gallery and a week's delay.
How it works
Most photographers make two passes: a quick reject pass for obvious misses, then a selection pass with stars, flags or colour labels. Ratings are stored as metadata — in-camera ratings and editors' ratings use the XMP rating field — so the cull carries into the edit. Some culling starts in camera, rating keepers between moments.
An example: a conference day
A corporate photographer shoots 1,800 frames. The client wants about 150. Rating keepers in camera during breaks and using an AI pass to drop blurred frames leaves a short, manageable final selection.
Culling with CloudTether
CloudTether offers three culling tools. Rated send on Canon and Nikon sends only frames you star in camera. AI-Culling runs on the phone as you shoot and flags blurry, badly exposed, closed-eye and duplicate frames, hiding them from delivery without deleting anything — you can restore any shot. Quality Control holds uploads until you or a Reviewer approves them. See AI-Culling in the help centre. For desktop culling, Photo Mechanic can ingest live from a folder CloudTether fills.
Culling as you go
Culling during the shoot only works if it's quick and reversible. Keep originals on the card and treat in-shoot culling as a first pass.
Tips and common mistakes
- Put rating on a custom camera button for one-press culling.
- Agree a rating convention with your team.
- Never delete in camera during a job — reject in software instead.
See also
Put it into practice
CloudTether tethers your camera to your phone and delivers every shot to the cloud, live as you shoot — no laptop.