How to Quickly Cull Thousands of Photos

There is honestly no task I hate more than culling large image sets, but if you are a sports, events, wildlife, or wedding photographer, you are probably used to coming home with sets of thousands of images. So, how can you make this tedious task as efficient and painless as possible? This excellent video tutorial will show you a fast and effective workflow. 

Coming to you from Katelyn James, this great video tutorial will show you how to quickly cull a large set of photos. Though James is using Photo Mechanic and culling a wedding set here, the principles generally apply to whatever genre you work in and whatever program you use. If you are someone who is used to just culling in Lightroom, the reason many professionals use a program like Photo Mechanic before they move into Lightroom is because these dedicated sorting programs are built with one and only one task in mind: lightning-quick culling. Programs like Photo Mechanic can render previews far more quickly than Lightroom can, and that time really adds up when you are dealing with larger photo sets, such as those you would come home from a wedding with. Check out the video above for the full rundown from James. 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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2 Comments

9 to 9:30 gets to the meat and actually culling images. Manual culling that we all have done, label, star, sub-folder... but "jump" around the day's shoot so you don't get board in the culling process. I have the feeling most of us do that though, I know I do. 🙂

It was a good watch and she is pleasant enough, could have been culled to around 5 minutes though. (teasing)

So many YouTube videos are too long (over 10 minutes) for monetary reasons.