Culling
The process of reviewing a shoot and selecting which frames are worth keeping and editing.
Measured in
%
In depth
Culling is the highest-value hour in most workflows, because editing time scales with the number of frames selected. Efficient culling proceeds in passes — a fast rejection of technical failures, then a comparison of near-duplicates, then a final selection — rather than deliberating over each frame once.
Examples in practice
A 2,000-frame wedding is culled to 600 deliverables in three passes, each faster and more selective than the last.