Software to aid in photo culling

[Velocity of Sound]

Hi everyone,

I used to enjoy culling my photos; it was a nice way to relive the experience, enjoy what came out, and reflect on it. But now I am a parent to two small children, who are also my main photo subjects these days. It means less discipline with the shutter button (trying to get that perfect moment... and children still strike me as being photographically unpredictable) and less time for photo editing, leading to nightmare scenarios in which I'm loading photos onto my computer and sorting through 2,000-3,000 photos in one go.

I want some aid to speed things up.

I'm currently using Capture One, and my general process involves manually sorting through photos, loading those from a sequence on screen to compare and try to discard those duplicates that are imperfect, choosing photos I really like for possible editing, and then either editing or leaving behind from that selection.

I used to use Apple Aperture, which - as I recall - would group similar photos (or at least, bracketed shots), which made going through them a bit easier. It's not a ton of time to manually find the start and end of the bracket, but it does add up...

I've been in search of some software assistance, and wanted to both solicit advice from what others are doing, and also share my findings. Because now there are a few programs out there that can help with this process.

First, Photo Sweeper X - at $10, it's the cheapest and probably the simplest. It's meant more for finding duplicate photos, but can also find similars and group them together. Performance seems fair, but even on its loosest setting it seems to split some similar photos into multiple groupings. It's also seemingly limited to viewing photos that macOS can view in Finder, and unfortunately for me, one of my cameras doesn't support that (compressed RAW).

Second, Optyx. Priced at $100, it's a lot more expensive but tries to do more. It has auto-grouping, similar to Photo Sweeper; like Photo Sweeper, even at its loosest setting it still seems to split photos into more groups than they should be. It goes a bit farther in automating the culling process by allowing you to designate some parameters, and then using artificial intelligence to try and rate/rank photos within groups. It's purely optional, and at this time I didn't feel it was reliable.

Third, AfterShoot. Currently in beta, it tries to fully automate the culling process, assigning tags or ratings to photos based on identified criteria. This seems like it should be a rather intensive task, and I'd say I was surprised by the speed with which it did all of this. Unfortunately, it also didn't seem particularly reliable.

While I like the idea of software being able to point out photos with blur or closing/closed eyes, at this point in time it doesn't seem to be able to do it reliably. I'm sure we'll get there some day, but for now, I think software that could group similars would go a long way toward making my life a bit easier. Maybe I need to play with Optyx and Photo Sweeper a bit more...

So, what are the rest of you doing? Any particular recommendations? Even if you're not using a software aid, I wouldn't mind hearing about workflows that help you to get through the process a bit faster and remain motivated.

 

[Andy Hewitt]

Second, Optyx. Priced at $100, it's a lot more expensive but tries to do more. It has auto-f you doing? Any particular recommendations? Even if you're not using a software aid, I wouldn't mind hearing about workflows that help you to get through the process a bit faster and remain motivated.

This on the iMac:

https://www.fastrawviewer.com/

Personally I’d be very wary of using anything automated for culling, too easy to miss a good one.

I also cull bearing in mind that some could be used creatively, some out of focus flower shots for example.

Otherwise, first try to shoot more accurately where possible. I’d rather shoot a few good shots, than hundreds that might hopefully get those few good ones.

Then I import to a local folder on the hard drive first, then cull using FRP, then import to whatever app I’m using (it used to be Lightroom, but I’ve recently changed my setup). It’s quick enough to flick through to rate/ignore/reject (as you prefer), and put rejects into a separate folder at a key press. It can do plenty of other stuff too, add keywords, star ratings, even some basic edits ready for Lightroom to take over later.

Good value for what it does, and is often on sale a bit cheaper too.

However, recently I’m starting to switch over to using an iPad Pro, and have switched to Photos + external editor (mainly Raw Power so far), and have yet to find a decent culling workflow on that. Although with unlimited broadband getting around 68meg download, I’m not too bothered about uploading a few duffers and deleting them later. I don’t use mobile data at all.

All the best.

—
Andy H

 

[robgendreau]

I use Fast Raw Viewer as well for a first pass through most of the time, especially if I had a lot of shot with exposure issues (eg I just got through shooting in the redwoods, and tons of HDR and dynamic range issues, blown highlights, etc).

Sometimes I use Photo Mechanic, because I always use that for various metadata entry chores before importing to LrC.

If I have a lot of action brackets, or stuff for panoramas, I use LrC and set the time interval to stack those. I want to go through everything first before getting enmeshed in merging them or picking the best shot out of a sequence. And it makes it easier to decide if I say don't want any of that panos shots or any of the burst shots. On a second or third pass I expand the stack and just work on that.

I've also use Bridge for this at times. I has a feature Lr lacks for comparing a bunch of images super quickly and picking one, Review Mode. Easy to use with the keyboard too.

But basically there really aren't that many shortcuts to the procedure you outlined in Capture One. Be nice if we didn't have so many to cull, but in some situations you really do need to capture lots of bursts, brackets, etc. I sometimes chimp in the camera and delete then, because sometimes the reason why I took that group is fresh in my mind, and it's easier to decide if I got what I want or have to try again. But even that isn't always possible. Good luck.

 

[D00M]

I'm in the similar situation. I used to put my photos in folders (sorted by year, month, location/shoot); Photo Mechanic for culling; and LR for post processing. But after I had kid, my photo quantity exploded. Plus I have less time for culling and editing. I had vacation photos I didn't even get to until 1 year later. And I was falling further behind over time.

This is my work flow now. I really like it. And I find I'm much efficient with this flow. I think the most important factor is that I can now cull my photos anywhere and anytime when I have free time.

I have Sony a6400 and I shoot RAW.

• Import all images into Mac Photos app.
• I cull using Photos app. App is fast. Spacebar or double click to select photo. Z to check 100%. The downside is that it doesn't have side-by-side comparison. But now, I prefer not to use side-by-side, because it is too slow. What I want to check is focus, and I don't need side-by-side for that. And for composition comparison, I prefer flipping back-and-forth (which allows me to see the delta) vs side-by-side.
• Post process: I export photos that I want to post process further and edit in Capture One Express (free for Sony).
• Note that Photos app can also be used to make edits. For me, I only edit a small percentage of photos, and I want to have the most flexibility, so I use Capture One instead of Photos app.
• Import finished photos back to Mac Photos app and tag them as Favorites.

Advantages are:

• All my photos are in iCloud and synced across all devices.
• My photos from iPhone and camera are all in same place.
• I can cull photos on Mac, iPad, iPhone, etc. This way, whenever I have some time, I can cull. I don't need to find a block of time to get on the computer for culling. (I wish the photos I take on camera can automatically loaded so I can start to to cull them immediately, like I do on iPhone).
• My edited photos are also in iCloud and tagged Favorites so I can find them fast.
• Photos app has AI that does facial recognization (for family and friends) and automatically recognizes other objects (bird, dog, cat, food, mountain, lake, ocean, beach, etc)

The downsides are:

• iCloud storage has to be sufficient to enable photos across all devices.
• Photos app does not have side-by-side comparison.
• For post processed photos, there can be multiple copies. I have the original in Photos. I have the original (and with post processed info) in Capture One. I have post processed JPEG image in Photos. This doesn't affect me much as I only edit a small % of photos. If you edit most of your photos, this will not work.
• If you edit meta data for your photos, other 3rd party software might be better than Photos. I don't bother with meta anymore as Photos has AI.

 

[LarryRC]

I use lightroom and pick or reject. Usually just use reject quickly as a first pass for that many photos.

 

[Martin.au]

I use Mylio. It's very fast. You can rate and tag photos very quickly, and set it so it automatically moves to the next. I flag bad photos, and rate decent ones. Then every so often I go and delete all flagged photos.

 

[lightandaprayer]

Rather than seeing the problem as software-related, I think that it would be a lot more beneficial to focus on developing your shooting discipline.

Shooting too much has always been around but the advent of digital imaging has made it an everyday thing for many photographers. Back in the film era, there were more practical limitations: Film and processing cost a lot of money. Editing and storing images was more onerous (I have four 5-drawer filing cabinets with slides and negatives from those days). And picture editors, clients, etc. were simply not incline to look at hundreds of photos.

Now we have relatively inexpensive cameras that can shoot multiple frames per second whereas in the past that required buying a separate motor drive that wasn't nearly as quick as the today's fastest DSLRs.

I think that one of the most important core photographic skills is learning when and what to shoot. The subject really does not matter. . . An ultra-fast FPS camera does not make up for a lack of practice and attention on learning how to anticipate and capture the moment that becomes a really good photograph. It may seem that pros like sports photographers rely on having a fast frame rate. But the best of them have honed these skills so well that they can consistently capture amazing moments. The photographers who rely on luck never even make it to the sidelines.

I was once in your shoes. . . I was making too many slides and spending a lot of time editing. In my case most of the time the photos I did make weren't very good. To top it off, the experience of photographing itself wasn't satisfying as well.

It may seem counter-intuitive but by slowing myself down and shooting less, I began to get more and better "keepers." Most important for me was not allowing myself to feel pressured to make even one photo unless I was certain that it was going to be a good one. Because I was more in the moment, I could better sense what was coming. What began to happen was when I finally snapped the shutter I often knew that I had got the shot I had envisioned.

This attention to improving my shooting discipline really paid off in the long run for me. Especially when I began doing editorial photography for a living. But it's a valuable skill for my personal work as well. I might spend a couple of weeks in a bustling European city and only shoot a couple hundred frames. (Most of them include people because I generally photograph very few "things.") But I come home with over 100 very good images that tell a story about my trip, photos that have real meaning for me and my family. And because I'm not always peering through a camera viewfinder, I get to fully experience and enjoy my surroundings, my wife, new-found friends. . . the whole travel enchilada.

Man, I wish that I had a digital camera back in the early days. . . I often had to wait a couple of weeks before I had confirmation that I had indeed captured the moment (Kodak processing LOL). On the other hand, I think that chimping is not conducive to improving one's shooting discipline and that it should be very limited unless it is necessary because of the subject, shooting parameters, etc.

 

[Ken Seals]

I am very happy with Photo Mechanic. I also use FastRawViewer at times for a more detailed look at the raw data. I do the ingest function in Photo Mechanic, then back up everything before the next step.

My culling process is not culling at all. I use a PICK process. As I go through the photos from a shoot (sometimes thousands from a day long music festival), I pick all the potential "candidates" for processing. Then I sort by pick and delete all the ones that didn't get picked.

Then, the picks get imported into LrC for further star ratings and processing. This process saves me a bunch of time. As much as I love LrC, culling is not it's strongest feature.

 

[Hans de Zomers]

I use Photo Supreme for ingesting, culling, tagging, organizing, and sharing.

 

[harshithdwivedi]

Third, AfterShoot. Currently in beta, it tries to fully automate the culling process, assigning tags or ratings to photos based on identified criteria. This seems like it should be a rather intensive task, and I'd say I was surprised by the speed with which it did all of this. Unfortunately, it also didn't seem particularly reliable.

While I like the idea of software being able to point out photos with blur or closing/closed eyes, at this point in time it doesn't seem to be able to do it reliably. I'm sure we'll get there some day, but for now, I think software that could group similars would go a long way toward making my life a bit easier. Maybe I need to play with Optyx and Photo Sweeper a bit more...

Hey!

Creator and Developer of AfterShoot here.
Thanks for creating this thread and I really appreciate you sharing your feedback.

Would it be possible for you to let us know where the app fell short and what could be done to make it more reliable?

AFAIK, we already do club similar-looking and duplicate images together and add color labels and star ratings to those images.

We're also currently reworking the way we detect the "Best from Duplicates" and "Closed Eyes" in an image along with having a full-blown results page that can help you in easily selecting or rejecting the choices that AfterShoot has made, and we expect to have an update out by the end of the month.

If there's something that you felt could be improved; I'll be happy to include it before we release the new version!

Thanks again.

 

[Peter Guma]

another vote for fastrawviewer .... best invested 20 bucks

i do sort in this programm and then import only keepers

 

[Velocity of Sound]

Hey!

Creator and Developer of AfterShoot here.
Thanks for creating this thread and I really appreciate you sharing your feedback.

Would it be possible for you to let us know where the app fell short and what could be done to make it more reliable?

AFAIK, we already do club similar-looking and duplicate images together and add color labels and star ratings to those images.

We're also currently reworking the way we detect the "Best from Duplicates" and "Closed Eyes" in an image along with having a full-blown results page that can help you in easily selecting or rejecting the choices that AfterShoot has made, and we expect to have an update out by the end of the month.

If there's something that you felt could be improved; I'll be happy to include it before we release the new version!

Thanks again.

Thanks for the reply, I feel honored to receive a reply from you directly! I definitely appreciate the app and think it has a lot of promise. I looked over the way the program handled the photos I threw at it, and here were some things I noted:

1) I may have misread something, or the terminology was changed - was it originally set to detect bracketed shots, or was it always "duplicates"? For some reason I thought it was for bracketing, and that did not work well. If it was for duplicates the entire time, then I apologize (that's what I get for trying this out well past my bedtime), and I'd note that it's a little better... but still seems to miss photos or occasionally include something as being a duplicate that's really not.

Admittedly, the photos that appear to be marked as duplicates without another similar photo near them in sequence could possibly be identified as a duplicate with a photo taken later on. That's more a limitation of Capture One not allowing grouping. Your idea of having a results window in AfterShoot would probably take care of that.

Actually, that results window would elevate the program's utility significantly for me; I think a lot of my issues are related to trying to use Capture One to sort through the photos once they've been tagged and rated.

2) If the detection works perfectly then it may be less of an issue, but otherwise it would be nice to have some way to direct the program about how strict to be with detection of these things. For example, in general I have many photos that I'd want to regard as duplicates, but they're not exactly duplicates. As an example, it's hard for me to tell based on the tagging alone if AfterShoot is regarding a sequence of five extremely similar photos as two different groups of duplicates, or if it sees all five as duplicates of each other. Most of the programs I tried (as mentioned in my original post) were still too strict, even on their loosest setting... but I can appreciate that some people have different needs and need the stricter settings.

3) I'm guessing these are related to the beta status and will be resolved once it's released and paid for, but I wish the app were signed so that it stopped triggering all of the security warnings, and I wish I didn't need to keep signing in with my Gmail account.

I see that there's an update since I ran my initial run; I'll re-run it and see how it is. I'll continue to follow your progress - I'm rooting for you and sincerely hoping that things work well enough that this program becomes a regular part of my photo workflow!

 

[Velocity of Sound]

I'm in the similar situation. I used to put my photos in folders (sorted by year, month, location/shoot); Photo Mechanic for culling; and LR for post processing. But after I had kid, my photo quantity exploded. Plus I have less time for culling and editing. I had vacation photos I didn't even get to until 1 year later. And I was falling further behind over time.

This describes my situation exactly. Even before becoming a parent I was probably not as disciplined with my photo-taking as others, but I never had issues with overwhelming amounts of photos to sort through. That changed with the birth of my first child. Actually, I gave up on culling during that first year of life and just picked the photos I liked for editing and sharing, archiving the rest and figuring I'd sort them later. While I did some set up-style shoots with my child, most were a matter of grabbing the camera, rounding off some photos and hoping that some would be passable, and then getting back into the action. Things change so rapidly when children are that small so you feel the pressure to capture what you can of those moments, and babies are rather unpredictable so it's difficult to get the timing right. As my child went from baby to toddler this became better; I had a bit more time and didn't feel quite as rushed in my photos.

Now we're on baby #2, and the situation isn't much better - in fact, it's probably worse. This is partly what's pushing me to seek out these aids to automate at least parts of the culling process. I agree with everyone sounding alarms over having artificial intelligence delete photos just because they're a bit blurry, but do I really need to spend my time manually grouping photos from one sequence? Would it hurt to have the program indicate to me that this photo has a blinking eye, or that photo's focus is a bit off? I can still look them over, and any time-saving would really be welcomed.

 

[harshithdwivedi]

Thanks for the reply, I feel honored to receive a reply from you directly! I definitely appreciate the app and think it has a lot of promise. I looked over the way the program handled the photos I threw at it, and here were some things I noted:

The pleasure is all mine! Unbiased feedbacks and reviews are what will help us improve the app and make it even better.

1) I may have misread something, or the terminology was changed - was it originally set to detect bracketed shots, or was it always "duplicates"? For some reason I thought it was for bracketing, and that did not work well. If it was for duplicates the entire time, then I apologize (that's what I get for trying this out well past my bedtime), and I'd note that it's a little better... but still seems to miss photos or occasionally include something as being a duplicate that's really not.

Yeah, that's something that's going to be improved in the new version again! As I mentioned earlier, it's going to be a major revamp which includes significant improvements to the app based on the feedback that we received in the first round of beta testings.

Admittedly, the photos that appear to be marked as duplicates without another similar photo near them in sequence could possibly be identified as a duplicate with a photo taken later on. That's more a limitation of Capture One not allowing grouping. Your idea of having a results window in AfterShoot would probably take care of that.

Actually, that results window would elevate the program's utility significantly for me; I think a lot of my issues are related to trying to use Capture One to sort through the photos once they've been tagged and rated.

That sounds awesome!
Would you be open to trying out the new version to give your thoughts on the overall look and feel of it? We have the prototype ready and we're doing some usability testing with our beta users to see what are the features that they really like the most.

If you would be willing to do so, please drop me a line at [email protected] o and I'll share more details with you!

2) If the detection works perfectly then it may be less of an issue, but otherwise it would be nice to have some way to direct the program about how strict to be with detection of these things. For example, in general I have many photos that I'd want to regard as duplicates, but they're not exactly duplicates. As an example, it's hard for me to tell based on the tagging alone if AfterShoot is regarding a sequence of five extremely similar photos as two different groups of duplicates, or if it sees all five as duplicates of each other. Most of the programs I tried (as mentioned in my original post) were still too strict, even on their loosest setting... but I can appreciate that some people have different needs and need the stricter settings.

Yeah, this is a problem, and the way we aim to fix this is by giving you a slider on the results page after we complete the culling process along with having a slider before you start the process. By moving the slider across you should be able to select how strict or how lenient you want the duplicates detector to be without having to run the entire cull again.

This way you can tweak the results to your heart's content.

3) I'm guessing these are related to the beta status and will be resolved once it's released and paid for, but I wish the app were signed so that it stopped triggering all of the security warnings, and I wish I didn't need to keep signing in with my Gmail account.

Oh yeah, we've already applied for the Apple Developer account and once we have the payment approved; the followup versions would be signed by default.

As far as signing in goes; in the new version, we have our custom OAuth with email and password along with social sign-in which should make things easier!

I see that there's an update since I ran my initial run; I'll re-run it and see how it is. I'll continue to follow your progress - I'm rooting for you and sincerely hoping that things work well enough that this program becomes a regular part of my photo workflow!

Oh yes, absolutely!
Some users complained about the closed eyes detector being inaccurate so that's something that we fixed in the update. Let me know what you think of it

Thanks again and if there's anything that I can help you with, feel free to drop a message here or shoot me an email. Have a good night/day!

 

[grcolts]

You can download Darktable (free) as the newest version has a culling feature in its lighttable.

 

[darinb]

I used to use FastRawViewer but then had to abandon it. It is fast and easy to use but it turns out they are wedded to the idea that they are a raw viewer, not a culling app, per se. So, for example, they have no intention of supporting iPhone photos in HEIC since that doesn't fit their vision of who they are.

This may have changed--I last corresponded with them several months ago.

I shoot Fuji, Sony, and--more and more--an iPhone for serious work, sometimes mixed in with the others on the same project. I miss Aperture.

--Darin

 

[Iliah Borg]

it turns out they are wedded to the idea that they are a raw viewer, not a culling app, per se.

I use FastRawViewer for culling. So do many of my correspondents.

they have no intention of supporting iPhone photos in HEIC

Usually we try to explain that non-raw formats are not a priority for FastRawViewer, and that we will add support for HEICs when time permits. Version 1.7 (Beta, at minimum) is expected this Fall and it will support HEIC images. The reason why we elevated the priority of HEIC support is that Canon started to use H.265 for embedded thumbnails.

 

[darinb]

it turns out they are wedded to the idea that they are a raw viewer, not a culling app, per se.

I use FastRawViewer for culling. So do many of my correspondents.

they have no intention of supporting iPhone photos in HEIC

Usually we try to explain that non-raw formats are not a priority for FastRawViewer, and that we will add support for HEICs when time permits. Version 1.7 (Beta, at minimum) is expected this Fall and it will support HEIC images. The reason why we elevated the priority of HEIC support is that Canon started to use H.265 for embedded thumbnails.

I'm looking forward to it and will try again. Right now my workflow is sort of a mess, with various DAMs being used (Capture One Fuji for Fuji, Apple Photos for iPhone, etc).

Just heard that Affinity is NOT working on a DAM--old news but new to me. Sigh.

I have low demands but nothing seems to meet those needs...yet.

--Darin

 

[Austen_Nut]

This is a question, and not a suggestion, but would iMatch or Photo Supreme work in this instance? I know that they can compare up to 8 shots at a time to aid in selection of one's favorites, but they're very much in the DAM bucket, but does culling fall into DAM?

 

[darinb]

I would think a robust way to cull would be fundamental to any good DAM.

--Darin