Culling in Lightroom Classic: the full tutorial

Lightroom Classic can run a complete culling pass with no plugin and no second app, but only if you know which screen you are on and which key does what. This is the whole workflow in order: import settings, the flag pass, the filter bar, Compare view, stars and labels, and Adobe's own Assisted Culling panel. Every path and shortcut below is checked against Adobe's documentation.

What this tutorial covers, and what it assumes

This is Lightroom Classic, the desktop catalog app, not the cloud version called Lightroom. The two have different panels and menus, so a tutorial for one sends you hunting for buttons that are not there. Everything here happens in the Library module, reached with Ctrl + Alt + 1 on Windows or Command + Option + 1 on Mac.

The assumption is a normal job: one card, a few hundred to a few thousand frames, and a shortlist at the end that you will actually edit. At wedding scale the same steps apply, with timings in our wedding culling workflow.

Seven steps follow, in order, and each one has a job. Before you touch a key, though, decide your criteria. Nothing slows a session down like inventing your standard halfway through it.

Step 1: import with previews that will not slow you down

Most complaints about Lightroom being slow to cull start here. In the Import window, open the File Handling panel. The Build Previews menu has four options, described plainly on Adobe's import options page: Minimal uses the smallest previews embedded in the photos, Embedded & Sidecar uses the largest preview the camera made, Standard uses previews as Lightroom Classic renders them, and 1:1 shows a 100 percent view of actual pixels.

Minimal and Embedded & Sidecar get you into the grid fastest, but Lightroom builds a real preview the moment you zoom, so every close look costs a wait. 1:1 makes you wait once, at import, and then zooming is instant. Start the import, go make coffee, choose 1:1.

The same panel has a Build Smart Previews checkbox. Smart Previews are, in Adobe's words, a lightweight smaller file format based on the lossy DNG format, and they let you keep working when the drive holding the originals is not attached. You can also build them later with Library > Previews > Build Smart Previews. They are a real convenience on a laptop, with one catch we cover in our piece on smart previews: they are not the original file, so they are the wrong thing to judge critical sharpness on.

Two settings here pay for themselves all season. In Catalog Settings under File Handling, set Standard Preview Size to the long edge of your display and set Automatically Discard 1:1 Previews to a long interval, so Lightroom is not rebuilding work it already did. Adobe's performance guidance covers both, and we go further in the Lightroom speed setup.

Step 2: one fast flag pass in Loupe view

Press E for Loupe view, which shows one photo at a time. T hides the toolbar, Tab hides the side panels and F cycles the screen modes. Now you are looking at one photograph and nothing else, which is the point.

Flags suit a first pass because they are binary. A photo is in, out or undecided, and nothing has to be scored. The keys, from Adobe's flag, label and rate documentation, are P for pick, X for reject and U for unflagged. Hold Shift with any of the three and Lightroom sets the flag and advances in one keystroke, which is the version you actually want. The menu is Photo > Set Flag. Rejected photos appear dimmed in Grid view rather than vanishing.

Run this pass at speed and do not zoom. Spacebar or Z toggles between the fitted Loupe view and a 1:1 zoom, and the temptation is to check every frame at 100 percent. Resist it. A frame that is obviously soft or obviously blinked is obvious at fit size. Save zooming for step 4, when twenty frames are left instead of two thousand.

Do not fix anything, do not open Develop, do not rename. If you hesitate for more than two seconds, press Shift + U and let the frame stay undecided. Hesitation is information: it means the answer needs a comparison, and comparisons come later.

Step 3: filter down to what survived

Press G for Grid view, then backslash to show the Library Filter bar. It has three modes: Text, Attribute and Metadata. Click Attribute. That row filters by flag status, star rating, color label, edit status and export status, and Adobe notes on its finding photos page that the same controls sit in the Filmstrip, behind the word Filter.

Click the white pick flag. The grid now shows only your picks, and the job stops feeling infinite: two thousand frames become a few hundred you can hold in your head.

One more command is worth knowing. Library > Refine Photos, on Ctrl + Alt + R or Command + Option + R, does what Adobe describes exactly: unflagged photos become rejected, picked photos become unflagged. It is built for a second round, so your picks go back to neutral and you pick again from a smaller pool.

Two things about filters catch people out. A filter is a view, not a selection, so Ctrl + Alt + A or Command + Option + A is the command that actually selects the flagged photos. And filters persist. Under File > Library Filters, Enable Filters turns the last used filters back on, Lock Filters applies the current filters to folders you click next, and Remember Each Source's Filters Separately keeps a different setting per folder. Leaving one of these on is the most common reason photos look like they have gone missing, and it heads our roundup of Lightroom culling mistakes.

Step 4: settle the near identical frames in Compare and Survey

Every shoot leaves clusters. Six frames of the same toast, eleven of a kid running at the camera. Judging these one after another in Loupe view does not work, because you end up comparing each frame to your memory of the last one. Lightroom has two views built for exactly this.

Select two photos and press C for Compare view, or use View > Compare. One photo is the select, the other the candidate. Adobe's browse and compare documentation names the controls: Swap reverses the two, Make Select promotes the candidate, and Link Focus zooms both images together so you see the same eye in both frames at the same magnification. That last one is the whole feature.

Select three or more photos and press N for Survey view, or View > Survey. All of them appear at once, sized to fit. Click the Deselect Photo icon in the lower right corner of any frame to drop it out of the group, and keep going until one is left standing. Survey is more honest than Compare when the difference is expression rather than sharpness, because you can see all the faces together.

The rule: Survey gets you from many to two, Compare with Link Focus gets you from two to one. Flag the winner P, set the rest to U rather than X, and move on.

Step 5: stars and color labels, only where they earn their place

Flags answer whether a photo is in. Stars and labels answer what happens to it next, so you only need them when a shoot has more than one destination. A family session delivered as one gallery does not need stars. A wedding producing a gallery, an album shortlist and two portfolio frames does.

Star ratings are the number keys 1 to 5, with 0 clearing a rating. Color labels are 6 for red, 7 for yellow, 8 for green and 9 for blue in Adobe's shortcut list. The menus are Photo > Set Rating and Photo > Set Color Label. To stamp values across a grid by dragging, use the Painter tool in the Grid view toolbar.

Pick one system and keep it for a year. Photographers lose more time to a scheme that changed in March than to any slow preview. We set out the case for each in stars versus flags, and there is a longer key list in our Lightroom shortcut sheet.

Step 6: let Assisted Culling do the technical pass

For most of Lightroom's life this step did not exist, and plenty of tutorials online still say Lightroom cannot check focus or eyes for you. That is out of date. Adobe ships Assisted Culling in Lightroom Classic, and extended it to run during import in the June 2026 release, version 15.4, per Adobe's what's new page.

Turn it on under Catalog Settings > Metadata > Assisted Culling, or start Auto Analysis from the Identity Plate dropdown, and Lightroom analyzes the folder in the background. The Assisted Culling panel then gives you a Select section with controls Adobe names Subject Focus, Eye Focus and Eyes Open, each on a slider so you set how strict it is, and a Reject section offering Exposure issues, Misfires and Documents and receipts. A Review section switches the grid between Selects, Rejects and All.

Then there is Apply Batch Actions, which writes the result as flags, ratings or labels across the whole set at once. Treat that button with respect: it is the one place here where a single click changes the metadata on thousands of files. Adobe's own documentation lists the batch actions as flagging, rating, labeling, and adding the Selects and Rejects to a collection or folder, so nothing here removes a file from your disk. Look at the Rejects view first anyway.

Used well, this turns step 2 into a review rather than a marathon. What it does not change is where the work happens: at your desk, after you get home, on a folder you already imported. That is the part of the evening most photographers want back.

Step 7: gather the picks, then decide about the rest

With the Attribute filter showing picks, press Ctrl + Alt + A or Command + Option + A to select them, then put them somewhere stable. The quick way is the Quick Collection: B adds, Ctrl + B or Command + B views it. The durable way is a real collection, and you can right click one and choose Set As Target Collection so B adds to that instead.

Adobe is explicit that photos are not copied when you add them to a collection, that a photo can belong to more than one, and that taking a photo out of a collection does not take it out of the catalog. A folder is where the files live, a collection is what you are delivering, and keeping those two ideas separate prevents most of the confusion that shows up later.

Now the rejects. Lightroom has a Delete Rejected Photos command, on Ctrl + Backspace or Command + Delete in the Library module, and it opens a dialog with two very different buttons. Remove takes the photos out of the catalog and leaves the files on the drive. Delete From Disk sends them to the Recycle Bin or Trash. Read that dialog every time, because only one of the two is reversible.

For most photographers neither is urgent, as we argue in what to do with the photos you do not pick. Then press Ctrl + Alt + 2 or Command + Option + 2 for Develop, and start editing a set you trust. That is the whole point of the seven steps.

FAQ