DiscussionLightroom Classic 15 AI culling, anyone tried it on a real job yet?

Updated last night and ran the new culling on Saturday's wedding before I'd done my own pass, just to see. 3,140 frames from two bodies. It flags closed eyes, missed focus and the near-duplicates from bursts, and you can set how strict it is.

First impressions: it's decent at catching the obvious junk, the blinks and the frames where AF grabbed the groomsman behind. Where it falls down is moments. It happily rejected a slightly soft frame of the bride's dad laughing that I'd already earmarked for the album cover, and kept four sharp near-identical shots of the cake.

So it's a first pass at best for me. Curious if anyone's had better luck, or if I'm just not trusting it enough.

tried it on a gig last night. it rejected basically everything with motion blur which, for gigs, is like half my keepers lol. turned the sensitivity way down and it got more useful, it still binned a shot of the drummer mid-hit that's honestly the best thing i took all night

mike_shoots said:

It happily rejected a slightly soft frame of the bride's dad laughing

That's the whole problem with these tools. Sharpness is easy to measure, the moment isn't.

For headshots it might actually be fine, because all I'm culling for is blinks, a half-smile versus a full one, and whether the chin's where I asked for it. I shoot tethered into Capture One and pick as I go anyway, so by the time the client leaves we've already starred the selects together on the big screen. That's not something I'd hand to software, because the client choosing in the room is half of what they're paying for. They walk out having seen their best frame, and that sells the retouch package.

For a wedding I wouldn't let it near the final selection. A wedding cull is a story edit, not a quality filter. You're choosing the frames that carry the day in order, and sometimes the soft one is the one that tells it. Clients don't care if it's tack sharp, they care that Uncle Ray is in it.

cdalton_photo said:

they care that Uncle Ray is in it

Exactly this. I've had a couple ask for a frame I'd binned because it was the only one with grandma in it. Software is never going to know that grandma passed in the spring. Or that the groom's brother flew in from Germany and only stayed for the ceremony. Half of what makes a wedding frame worth keeping is stuff that isn't in the pixels.

Not to be that guy, but the culling feature is a symptom. Adobe adds a tool that reduces the time you spend in the app, and you keep paying monthly for the app. The actual problem for most people here is that they shoot 3,000 frames when 800 would do.

For what it's worth I tried something similar years ago with a script that ranked frames by contrast in the eye region. It was right about sharpness most of the time and right about which photo I'd actually keep maybe half the time. From what people are reporting that ratio hasn't moved much, because sharpness was never the hard part. Expression, gesture, the thing in the background that makes the frame, none of that is measurable in any way a ranking model can use without being told what you like, and it doesn't know what you like.

Use it to bin the blinks. Don't use it to pick.

rawtherapist said:

Use it to bin the blinks. Don't use it to pick.

honestly the thing I want is for it to find the frames where I missed focus at 1.4 so I dont have to zoom in on every single one. if it does that Im happy. the picking I can do myself

I tried on a kids football match, 1,900 frames from the A7 IV. It found the out of focus ones well. But it also marked many frames as duplicates which were not really duplicates, the ball was in a different place. For sport the ball position is the whole picture. I will use it only for the reject pass. Happy to compare settings if someone wants.

rawtherapist said:

The actual problem for most people here is that they shoot 3,000 frames when 800 would do.

With respect man, you try covering a wedding in 800 frames. Two shooters, ten hours, getting ready, ceremony, family formals, couple portraits, speeches, first dance, the dance floor. 3k is lean. Half of that is bursts during the ceremony because you get one shot at the ring going on and people move. I'm not overshooting, I'm covering myself.

mike_shoots said:

you try covering a wedding in 800 frames

Fair, I was talking about hobbyists, which is most of this forum. Someone shooting a Sunday walk doesn't need 1,500 frames of it. Weddings are a different animal and I wouldn't shoot one for any money.

Tried it on a weekend of landscapes, which is about the worst test there is because nothing blinks. It flagged a load of deliberately soft long exposures as out of focus, and kept every one of the bracketed sets as 'duplicates' when they're the whole point of bracketing. To be fair to it, I don't think landscape people were who they built it for. Back to star ratings for me...

this is why i shoot jpeg and cull on the back of the camera tbh. by the time i get home its done

f8andbethere said:

cull on the back of the camera

On a three-inch screen in daylight? Brave.

Bird shooter's view, FWIW. I came back from Sweetwater on Sunday with 2,300 frames off the Z8, almost all of it bursts of the same three egrets. Ran the culling with the duplicates option on and it got me down to about 400, which is roughly where I'd have ended up myself, just in ten minutes instead of an evening.

Where it went sideways: in a burst of a bird taking off, it kept the frame where the eye was sharpest, which was the one with the wings in the ugliest position. Wing position is the whole shot with birds in flight, and it has no opinion on wings. So I still went through the stacks myself, but I was choosing between eight frames instead of sixty, and IMHO that's a fair trade.

I won't let it delete anything, mind you. Rejects get flagged and I look at them once before they go. Old habits.

• Walt

WaltK_AZ said:

I was choosing between eight frames instead of sixty

Pretty much where I landed too. Used it on two more jobs, set it to flag eyes closed and focus only, and switched the duplicates option off because it kept collapsing moments that only looked the same. Saves me maybe 40 minutes on a wedding. I'll take that.