True story: I used to have nightmares about staring endlessly at thousands of wedding photos. Once, I dreamed that I finished all my culling and color-correction, only to wake up and discover there were still thousands of photos left. (On the other hand, one time I did wake up to find that all my photos had been edited, though I had no memory of doing the work!)
That’s not an AI-generated intro, by the way, that’s my real-life story as a wedding photographer of 20+ years who has seen literally millions of raw images. Needless to say, it wasn’t my favorite job in the world…
For many wedding and portrait photographers, culling in particular has long been one of the most labor-intensive aspects of professional photography. Looking at set after set of photos, mostly very similar, and picking which ones are in-focus, with good facial expressions, over and over again, narrowing down a couple thousand photos to several hundred “keepers”… This adds many hours, or even days, to the time required to complete a job.
The annoying part is, culling is not the most creative part of the process, either, although it eats up a ton of time.. There is not much “artistic liberty” involved with culling; it’s just a huge expense of your time. Honestly? This makes it the perfect type of task to “outsource” to an AI. Let a well-trained AI do the culling for you! Then, for the rare creative decisions, you can go back and spend just a tiny percentage of the time you usually would have. Sounds like a dream, right?
Well, today, Imagen’s AI Culling is officially out of its public beta. This means photographers have a revolutionary workflow tool at their disposal; it does exactly what its name states: culling done by AI!
In this article, we’re going to go in-depth with an overview of how Imagen AI Culling works. We’ll go over what we love about it, and address any concerns that might come up. So, let’s dive in..
Imagen AI Culling | Features & How It Works
The overall concept is very simple: with the Imagen app, (available for both Mac and PC) you train its AI to complete as much of your workflow as possible. Imagen AI Culling will sort your photos for you, and AI Editing will learn your own creative style, create a profile that is uniquely YOU, and edit your photos for you!
Then, as needed, you can revisit the process and apply any final artistic control that you wish to adjust. This effectively reduces your overall workflow to a fraction of the time it used to take. At the same time, you’re also making the process more enjoyable for another reason: most of the work you might still do is the creative, artistic part.
The most recent major update to Imagen is a big one, indeed: their AI Culling feature is no longer in public beta; it is a full-fledged professional product! The good news is, it’s an incredible professional tool that will save you tons of time. The other good news is, (no bad news, in our opinion!) …the service now has a subscription price, as low as $12/mo when billed annually.
As a comparison: your time is worth more than $12 per hour, and you’re certainly going to spend more than one hour each month editing photos! Since using Imagen AI Culling will quickly add up to innumerable hours of time saved, we think it’s a no-brainer to get on board. We do still want to go over more details of how it works, though, plus the integration into your overall workflow.
Refine Your Culling … With Edited Previews! (Yes, You Heard Right)
One of the coolest standout features of Imagen’s AI Culling tool is this: you can view EDITED images while you’re still finalizing your keepers!
Traditionally, of course, photographers were forced to assess unedited RAW images. In fact, the fastest way to cull was to use a totally separate app that loaded the in-camera JPG renderings of your images. Of course, this hinders you from perceiving your final creative vision, and can cause hesitation over whether certain shots will even “work” with your creative style.
With Imagen AI Culling, those days are over. You can tell the app to use your personalized AI editing profile, (or one of their Talent profiles) and Imagen renders a preview for each photo during culling. Then, you get to see the potential final image before committing to it.
This ingenious feature eliminates a huge amount of guesswork during culling, and ensures that only the most promising photos make it through. Imagen developed this unique system first, and we can only imagine what a game-changer it’s going to be for so many professional photographers.
If you’re one of those photographers who struggled with indecision and kept a lot of “just in case” shots to see how they might turn out when edited, you’re going to save even more time with Imagen Culling AI.
Keepers VS Rejects, and Smart Grouping
Imagen doesn’t merely sort photos between the two most simple groupings, keepers and rejects. AI Culling brings much more refinement to the culling process with four different levels of ranking. (“Keepers, Duplicates, Standalones, & Low-Rated”) Plus, you get their Smart Grouping system, a feature that stacks similar images together. This can dramatically “shrink” the visual appearance of each job as you go through it to make your final selections.
In this way, AI Culling provides an advantage: Instead of going back and forth between dozens of similar images, trying to find all the best ones while making sure not to include too many, the AI highlights the strongest candidates for review. This drastically reduces the number of photos that require manual scrutiny, thus cutting your culling time down by many hours.
Rather than replacing the photographer’s creative judgment, Imagen’s AI Culling acts as an assistant, a second pair of eyes, streamlining the decision-making process by keeping you organized and helping out as much as possible, without sacrificing creative quality.
Culling As Part Of a Complete Workflow
By the way, AI Culling is not a standalone tool, of course. It integrates seamlessly with your full workflow. Operating within the Imagen app, you will transition seamlessly from culling to editing. No need to export or transfer raw files, or start up a completely different software; everything happens in one place. We’ve reviewed the Imagen AI Editing side of things before, and suffice it to say, we love the results!
Imagen’s compatibility with Adobe tools, including Lightroom and Photoshop, ensures that photographers can also use their preferred software without disruptions. So, whether you’re simply keeping all your RAW files organized, or you’re delivering a polished final collection of images to a client, Imagen streamlines the entire process, making your workflow faster, more intuitive, and allowing maximum creative freedom.
NOTE: Imagen also offers Cloud Storage for backing up your current jobs! Using their built-in raw file optimization, (compression without loss of resolution) you can have a cloud backup of approximately 50,000 photos (500GB) for just $3/month, or a staggering 200,000 photos (2TB) for just $10/month. Additionally, new subscribers get 3 months of free Cloud Storage.
AI Profiles | Train Your Own Photo Editing AI
Both while culling and certainly when creating the final images that a client will see, Imagen’s various AI Profile options elevate the editing process. There are three options: the Personal AI Profile, the Lite Personal AI Profile, and the Talent AI Profile. These diverse options allow beginner photographers to get started right away, and seasoned professionals to create a highly customized AI that is trained based on your exact style.
The Personal AI Profile requires at least 3000 of your own raw images, ones that you’ve already edited, to properly train it. With a Lite AI Profile, you can start with one single image that you’ve already edited to your liking, and load that into Imagen as a Lightroom Preset. From there, you can fine-tune the profile as you go! Lastly, the Imagen Talent AI Profiles are, you guessed it, based on the styles of some of the many prestigious professionals who use Imagen. You can browse their showcase of profiles, pick one that suits your own style, and once again you can also make subtle changes to your own liking.
Imagen Pricing Plans
With Imagen’s AI Culling now officially available, photographers can take advantage of a special pricing offer: unlimited AI Culling for just $144 for the first year. At just $12 per month, this pricing makes advanced AI culling accessible to photographers at all levels. (To sign up month-to-month, the price is $18/month with no commitment.)
For those who are curious, the AI Editing plans start at just 5 cents per photo and a minimum $7/month credit, or $67.50 per month for 18,000 photos per year. You can find additional options on their pricing page here.
If you’re not ready to commit, Imagen offers 1000 free edits to let photographers experience its capabilities firsthand. This risk-free trial is perfect for those curious about how much time and effort they can save. (My advice is, pick a number for how much your time is worth per hour, and do a little math to estimate how many hours per month you spend on editing! Obviously, that’s going to be a far bigger expense than Imagen’s AI Culling and AI Editing. So, really, the only thing left to do is try it out and see how many hours you can save! Imagen’s own research from user polls states that workflow time can be cut by as much as 96%.
Conclusion | Change Your Future as a Photographer
Imagen’s AI Culling is more than just an updated tool—it collectively represents a major transformation of what’s possible in photography post-production today. By tackling one of the most tedious aspects of the workflow, Imagen allows photographers to reclaim their time, focus on creativity, and grow their businesses. With features like smart grouping, edited previews, and seamless integration, the AI Culling platform isn’t just keeping pace with industry demands, it’s setting a new standard.
For photographers ready to embrace the future, Imagen offers a streamlined, intuitive, and incredibly efficient way to work smarter, not harder. Say goodbye to late-night (or all-night) culling marathons, and say hello to a brighter future with a faster workflow.
