I used to dread the part of a shoot that came after the shooting. Not the editing - I genuinely love editing. The part I dreaded was sitting down to a folder of 400 nearly identical frames and trying to figure out which three were worth keeping. For a long time I just brute-forced it, clicking through every image one by one, second-guessing myself the whole way. It was slow, exhausting, and guaranteed to make me hate photos I should have loved.

That changed when I started treating culling as a system instead of a feeling. Watch the full tutorial on YouTube - in this Aaron Nace (PHLEARN) tutorial, he walks through his personal culling workflow inside Lightroom, and the core idea is deceptively simple: don’t try to find the best image on your first pass. Instead, eliminate in layers. It sounds obvious when you say it out loud, but actually building that habit into your workflow is a different thing entirely.

What Nace demonstrates in this video is a repeatable process you can use whether you shot 80 portraits or 800 concert frames. The techniques here aren’t flashy, but they’re the kind of thing that separates photographers who feel in control of their catalogs from photographers who have 47,000 unorganized RAW files sitting on an external drive they’re afraid to open.

Step 1: Build 1:1 Previews Before You Do Anything Else

Lightroom Library menu open, showing Previews submenu options Lightroom Library menu open, showing Previews submenu options Before you click a single image, go to Library, hover over Previews, and select “Build 1:1 Previews.” Select all your images first, then let Lightroom render everything out. This takes five to ten minutes depending on how many files you have, so step away and make coffee or flip a record. The payoff is significant: instead of waiting two or three seconds every time you click a new image for the preview to load and sharpen, everything is instant. When you’re moving through hundreds of frames, that lag adds up to a genuinely broken rhythm. Render the previews once upfront and the entire session flows faster.

Step 2: Reject Your Absolute No Images First

Filmstrip showing flagged images with black reject flags visible Filmstrip showing flagged images with black reject flags visible Your first pass through the catalog is not about finding winners. It’s about eliminating anything that clearly doesn’t work. Nace calls these the “absolute no” images - frames that are badly exposed, obviously out of focus, test shots, accidental frames, duplicates where the subject blinked, anything you know immediately you won’t use. When you find one, press X on your keyboard. That assigns a Reject flag, shown as a black flag in the filmstrip. You can also Shift-click to select a range of bad frames and hit X to reject them all at once, which saves real time if you have a burst sequence that mostly misfired. Don’t overthink this pass. If your gut says no in under a second, it’s a no.

Step 3: Reject in Batches, Not One Frame at a Time

Multiple images selected in filmstrip, reject flag applied to group Multiple images selected in filmstrip, reject flag applied to group One thing Nace does that I now do on every single shoot is reject in groups wherever possible. If you fired a burst of eight frames and only two of them have potential, Shift-click the other six and reject them together. This is faster than reviewing them individually, and it keeps your eye calibrated. When you’re evaluating one questionable frame surrounded by its near-identical siblings, it’s easy to talk yourself into keeping it. Seeing them as a group makes the weak ones obvious. The goal of this entire first pass is speed and decisiveness, not perfection.

Step 4: Think of Culling as Multiple Rounds, Not One Decision

Lightroom grid view showing full catalog of shoot images Lightroom grid view showing full catalog of shoot images This is the conceptual shift that makes the whole system work. Nace is explicit about it: don’t try to pick your hero image on the first pass. You’re making a rough cut first, then a tighter cut, then a final selection. Each round you’re working with a smaller, better pool of images, which makes comparison easier and your decisions sharper. Trying to find “the one” while still looking at 300 frames is like trying to hear a specific instrument in a room where a full band is playing. Narrow the room down first.

Step 5: Use Flags and Stars to Mark Your Keepers Between Rounds

Single image with reject black flag shown in top-left corner Single image with reject black flag shown in top-left corner Once you’ve rejected the obvious eliminations, your next passes should use Lightroom’s flag and star rating system to mark images you want to keep or elevate. Press P to add a white Pick flag to any image that stands out. In later rounds you can layer in star ratings - one star for maybe, three stars for strong, five stars for the shot you’re building the whole edit around. The combination of flags for broad sorting and stars for ranking within that shortlist gives you two independent axes to work with, which is more flexible than trying to do everything with stars alone.

What I’d Add: Filter as You Go

The one thing I’d layer on top of Nace’s workflow is using Lightroom’s filter bar aggressively between rounds. After your first reject pass, filter the grid to show only non-rejected images so you’re not visually processing the frames you already eliminated. After your pick pass, filter to show only flagged images. Each time you filter, your catalog gets quieter and your remaining decisions get cleaner. You can access the filter bar at the bottom of the grid view or press the backslash key to toggle it. It’s a small habit but it keeps the visual noise from creeping back in and slowing you down.

I’ve also started doing my first reject pass at the smallest thumbnail size I can still read, which forces a gut-level reaction rather than a deliberate analysis. Blurry, obviously bad, wrong subject - those things read even at small sizes. Save the zoomed-in pixel-peeping for your final round when you’re comparing your top three frames.

Culling isn’t the glamorous part of the job, but it’s the part that determines how much you enjoy the editing that follows. A tight, confident selection going into Lightroom’s Develop module means you’re working with images you actually believe in, which makes every adjustment feel more intentional. Nace’s layered approach - reject the obvious failures first, then refine in passes, then commit to your best frames - is the clearest framework I’ve found for making that process feel less like archaeology and more like editing.

Watch the full tutorial on YouTube to see Aaron walk through a complete real-world shoot from start to culled selection, including a behind-the-scenes look at the lighting setup they used.