What Is Culling In Photography?

If you are a photographer, then you may capture unlimited photos every day. But at the end of the day, you had to select the best one among them. And this selection process gets better and easier with photo culling. 

Photo culling is essential because, without it, you cannot organize your photos according to your priority. Because of that, if your client fails to get the appropriate picture, it will affect your profession.

What is Photo Culling  

As a photographer, it is your duty to give professional service to your clients. In this case, you can utilize the photo culling process. But if you do not know what photo culling is, then it is high time you focus on this. 

The photo culling stage mainly helps you decide which photos you should keep for editing and which ones you should delete. If you are here to learn about what is culling in photography, then you may pay attention below to learn about photo culling in an elaborate manner.

Why Is Photo Culling Important 

You can be a newbie photographer or an experienced one, but you can not ignore the importance of photo culling. Suppose you are a wedding photographer, and of course, you do not want to panic at the end of your photo delivery. To ignore this type of difficulty, you’d better just organize your photos with the best photo culling software immediately after extracting them from your camera. 

When a photographer captures photos all day long, I bet at the end of the day he feels the necessity to do a cull of his photos. But why is photo culling so important? Here are a few reasons: 

To Get Rid Of Duplicate Photos 

If you click your photo in burst mode, there is a possibility that you will get around 30 photos in a minute, so after a whole day of the photoshoot, you will get a bunch of duplicate photos. These duplicate files will distract you when you go to select them for editing. The process of getting rid of the duplicate photos is:

• If you are in Lightroom, put a rating on your photos during photo culling.
• The easy solution is to keep checking and deleting. 
• For safety reasons, switch the duplicate files onto another device.
• Choose a standard photo to compare with other duplicate photos.

Removing The Low Rated Photo 

It is so obvious that during the photoshoot you will get a few disaster photos, which will be filled with misfocused objects, blurry content, inappropriate expressions, etc. In this case, those photos do not need to be edited. So, during photo culling, you should just remove those bad images.

Related: Best Time To Take Outdoor Photos

To Save Your And Clients’ Time 

Photo culling itself is a time-consuming process, but investing your time in photo culling will be worthwhile because during editing if you find a lot of duplicate photos, it will confuse you. So before getting confused, just remove the duplicate photos and save your time with photo culling.

Moreover, it will also enhance your photography profile when you deliver your photos to your clients on time. So save the time, both of yours. 

Be Determine 

To do photo culling you have to be ruthless and determined. Here are some tips for you:

• Be sure which file you want to remove.
• Do not take too much time to make a decision.
• Do not confuse your client by asking which file is the best.
• Choose a smooth and fast photo-culling software.

Photo Culling Process

Although the photo culling process is comparatively simple, you still need to follow some steps or processes, such as:

Be Prepared For The Culling

Do not jump into editing immediately after extracting your photo. Take your time and decide which photos you need and which you don’t, then begin the editing process. Doing editing without culling is a sign of an unprofessional photographer. 

If you are doing photo culling in Lightroom, then here is the easiest photo culling step that will save your time:

• Go to grid view.
• Select your images
• Press Ctrl/Cmd+A
• To exit, press the ‘X’ key.

And then after culling, press Ctrl/Cmd+D to deselect all your images.

Insert Metadata 

Adding a name, place, and time to your image is mainly called metadata. In the case of doing photo culling, inserting metadata is important because metadata will help you find your picture easily. After seeing your photo, it will be easier for you to remove duplicate photos easily.

Star The Keeper Images

In the case of Lightroom, star or flag your images, but if you are using other software, make a separate folder and keep their ratings in the file name so that you can cull them quickly.

Removing  Stars, Flags, And Folder

Just remove the flag, rating, and folder after the culling that you have done in your previous culling session. Because as a photographer, you insert a bunch of photos every day into your memory. 

Clean the rejected file

There is no need to keep rejected photos on your device for a long time to jumble yourself. Just delete them after the rejection. 

Focus On One App

From a bunch of applications choose your desired one, do not just go here and there to do experience on photo culling.

Final Verdict

To conclude, hopefully, you have got the answer about what is culling in photography. Photo culling will save you time and help you to be a professional photographer. Without photo culling, you may do photography professionally but before editing, you will definitely suffer. So do make your photography profession smooth with the photo culling process, without any second thought.