Culling

Learning goal

You will be able to set apart, quickly and decisively, the few frames worth sharing or editing from among hundreds. You will explain why culling comes before editing; in the first round you will cut the technically unusable frames with the reject flag; in the star round you will rank the remaining ones by expression and feeling with a star rating; you will put frames that look very alike side by side in compare view and choose the best; you will try waiting a night and looking with fresh eyes, against the feeling you lived at the moment of shooting clouding your judgment; and you will build a consistent selection made of a few strong frames. You will also learn the limit of keeping a frame where a face can't be read, thinking "I'll fix it anyway," and the respect of not sharing frames that humiliate a person.

The question

The bike tour's three hundred twelve frames sit in the catalog, and the town library wants twenty frames from you for a small exhibition next month. You open the frames one by one and linger long on each: this one is nice too, and this one, let me keep that one. An hour later you are still on the fiftieth frame, and the ones you set aside as "maybe" have passed two hundred. Behind every frame there is a memory: your friend out of breath on the climb, the fountain where you stopped for a break, the road coming out of the mist.

How do we choose 20 out of 500 photos? When you are attached to every frame, why does cutting feel so hard; is there a way to do this job not in hours but in minutes? In this lesson we will talk about culling, that is, setting good frames apart from the others quickly and decisively.

Context

Think of a book's editor. The writer brings them five hundred pages; the editor's job is to decide which pages will stay and which will go, so the book is strong. The writer loves every page, because they lived something while writing each one; the editor, on the other hand, looks at what will reach the reader. In photography the same person often takes on both these roles, and the difficulty comes from here: the eye that shoots and the eye that chooses are the same eye.

Culling is editing's first and perhaps most effective step. Editing a bad frame for hours doesn't make it good; but pulling a good frame out from among weak ones and putting it forward changes entirely what the viewer sees. Editing programs offer flags, stars and comparison tools for this job. This lesson tells the way to cut fast in a few rounds with these tools.

Simple explanation

What does the first round cut?

Culling is the job of going through all the frames of a shoot and separating the ones that will be used from the ones that won't. The first round is fast and technical: you look at each frame for a second or two and cut only the ones that definitely can't be used. Blurry frames, moments where the subject's eyes are closed, frames where the bright areas are blown out or the face is lost in the dark, photos of the ground taken by mistake and framings that cut off the head go in this round. Don't cut frames you find hard to decide on in this round; leave them for the next round.

A reject flag is a label that marks a frame as not to be used. Most editing programs tie marking a frame as picked or rejected to a single key; moving between frames with the arrow keys while your fingers rest on these keys finishes this round in minutes. A reject flag doesn't delete the file; it only marks it. As we saw in Lesson 17.2, you make the decision to delete separately and knowingly; many photographers keep the rejected frames for a while too.

The first round has a trap, and it shows most on faces: keeping a frame that can't be technically saved, saying "I'll fix it anyway." Remember the linear capture math from Lesson 15.1: if a dark face has been left darker than needed, or the forehead of a light face has blown out, editing may not be able to bring that detail back. Enlarging the face before keeping a portrait and looking at whether the eyes, skin and hair carry detail takes much less time than struggling for hours later and giving up anyway.

What does the star round rank?

A star rating is a mark from one to five given to a frame that shows how strong it is. In the star round, you evaluate the frames that survived the first round by expression and feeling: does this frame say something, does it carry a moment, an expression, a light? Giving stars with a system makes the job easier: for example three stars usable, four stars strong, five stars a candidate for the selection. Then seeing only the three-star-and-up frames with the program's filter brings the remaining frames in front of you at a glance.

Frames that look very alike are the most time-consuming part of culling: which of ten frames taken in a burst is the best. Compare view is a view that shows two or more frames side by side on screen at the same size. Putting two frames side by side and cutting the weaker one, then comparing the winner with the next, finds the best frame of a sequence in a few rounds. Looking at sharpness, the eyes, the expression and the edges of the frame speeds up this comparison.

How are feelings and the selection managed?

The feeling you lived at the moment of shooting can make a frame look stronger than it really is: the tiredness and joy you felt climbing the hill make that moment's blurry, flat frame look precious to you. That is why many photographers cull not right after the shoot, but a night or a few days later; looking with fresh eyes lets the photo, not the memory, speak. Showing the selection to someone who wasn't at that shoot helps too; that person looks only at the photo.

A selection is a small group of frames that work together, brought together for a purpose. A twenty-frame exhibition selection isn't twenty separate best frames, but twenty frames that tell something together: near and far, calm moments and lively moments, consistency of light and color. When building a selection, leaving out frames where a person would feel humiliated, moments where they were caught with eyes half closed, mouth open or worn down with tiredness, is also a respect; when in doubt, asking them is the right way.

Visual evidence

You leave the culling for the next morning. You get your coffee and start the first round: one finger on the reject key, one on the arrow key, a second or two per frame. Blurry frames, friends with closed eyes, frames with the edge of the lens cap in them, and a frame on the climb where a face in shade has turned into a dark void get rejected. You pause for a moment on the portrait of your dark-skinned friend at the fountain and enlarge the face: their eyes and the water drops on their forehead are detailed; the frame passes the round. In twenty minutes three hundred twelve frames come down to a hundred forty.

In the star round you score the remaining frames, and forty-five frames are left above three stars. You cut the nine burst frames of the road coming out of the mist two by two in compare view; the winner is the frame where a cyclist in front is right at the edge of the mist. Then you show the forty-five frames to your sister, who saw none of them the evening before; she pauses on two frames and passes eight quickly. In the last cut, you ask your light-skinned friend about the frame on the climb where they are out of breath, face flushed red and eyes half closed; they laugh and say "leave it out." The twenty-frame selection turns into a journey where near and far, calm and lively frames lean on one another.

Common mistakes

Summary

Culling is the step that comes before editing and changes most what the viewer will see; in the first round, technically unusable frames are cut quickly with the reject flag, in the star round the remaining ones are ranked by expression and feeling with a star rating, and similar frames are put side by side in compare view to find the best. Instead of keeping a frame where the face can't be read, thinking "I'll fix it anyway," enlarging the face to check the detail, and waiting a night to escape the spell of the memory and look with fresh eyes, sharpen the decision. A selection is built from frames that lean on one another; leaving out frames that humiliate a person, or asking them, is the respect of the selection for people of every skin tone.

Mini assignment

In this assignment you will cut a shoot in two rounds and build a small selection.

1. Choose a shoot of at least a hundred frames and leave the culling for a night later.
2. In the first round, looking at each frame for a few seconds, mark only the technically unusable ones with the reject flag; in portraits, enlarge the face and check the detail.
3. In the star round, give stars to the remaining ones, and cut similar burst frames two by two in compare view.
4. Build a ten-frame selection; show it to someone who wasn't at the shoot, and if there is a frame in it where a person could feel humiliated, ask them.

Check yourself

• Did the first round move fast, without getting stuck in indecision?
• When choosing the best among similar frames, what did you look at: sharpness, the eyes, the expression?
• In the portraits in your selection, do faces carry detail on every skin, and do people appear in a way they would feel good about?

Glossary

Mini quiz

1. Which frames are cut in the first culling round?

• A) The ones that feel emotionally weak
• B) The technically unusable ones: blurry, eyes closed, blown out or with the face lost
• C) The ones in color
• D) The oldest frames

2. What does a reject flag do to a frame?

• A) It deletes the frame from the disk
• B) It shrinks the frame
• C) It marks the frame as not to be used, without deleting the file
• D) It moves the frame to another catalog

3. Which is the fast way to find the best among nine similar frames taken in a burst?

• A) Putting them side by side two by two in compare view and cutting the weaker
• B) Keeping all of them
• C) Choosing the first frame
• D) Deleting all of them

4. You are about to keep a portrait of a dark-skinned friend left in shade, thinking "I'll fix it anyway." What should you do first?

• A) Give it five stars right away
• B) Rename the frame
• C) Apply a preset
• D) Enlarge the face and check whether the eyes and skin carry detail

Answers

1. B — The first round is fast and technical; frames you hesitate on are left for the next round.
2. C — The flag only marks; deleting is a separate, deliberate decision.
3. A — Side-by-side comparison finds the best of a sequence in a few rounds.
4. D — Detail lost in the dark can't always be saved; you need to enlarge and look first.

Summary card

• Cull first, then edit.
• First round: fast, technical; a reject flag doesn't delete.
• Star round: stars; similar frames in compare view.
• Wait a night; show the selection to someone who wasn't there.
• Enlarge the face, don't say "I'll fix it anyway"; don't include a frame that humiliates anyone.

Bridge to the next lesson

Twenty frames are chosen; now it's time to edit each of them. When you open the editing program's Basic panel, a dozen sliders appear in front of you: temperature, tint, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks. When you move one, another seems to change too, and you can't tell which one to start with. What is the right order for the sliders? The next lesson talks about the Basic panel, and building an edit in an order that stretches from white balance to the black point.