Photo picking vs photo culling.
They're two names for the same decision, approached from opposite ends. Culling is the photographer's word, and it means subtracting the failures. Picking is the everyday version, and it means surfacing the winners. The difference is worth understanding, because it tells you what kind of tool you need.
Culling: the subtractive tradition
Culling comes out of professional workflow, where a shoot produces 500 frames and the client gets 40. The work is subtractive: find and remove the failures, the soft focus and the closed eyes and the redundant takes, until what's left is the deliverable. Traditionally it happens on a desktop, in a rating tool, working through the shoot in order like a contact sheet.
Picking: the additive question
Picking starts from the other end and asks which photos, out of everything here, are worth keeping. It's the camera-roll version of the problem. There's no client and no deliverable, just a library to live with, and you don't need every failure removed. You need the winners surfaced, which makes it a ranking problem.
The same decision, mapped
| Culling | Picking | |
|---|---|---|
| Direction | Subtractive — remove failures | Additive — surface winners |
| Unit of work | A shoot or a trip | A whole library |
| The question | “What fails?” | “What wins?” |
| Traditional tools | Desktop rating apps | Search + favorites, by hand |
| What AI changes | Frames arrive pre-ranked and stacked, so the review is short | Scoring — including scoring against your taste, not a generic model's |
Where they converge
In practice the two are one loop, and SpectraSort runs it as one loop:
- Pick first: the slice comes back ranked by quality, your learned taste, or what you asked for. The surfacing half is done before you start.
- Cull second: swipe through the ranked review, right to pick, down to keep, left to let go. Duplicates, bursts and look-alikes come stacked, so each repeated moment is one decision.
- Finish: Batch Process files the picks to an album or the share sheet and clears the rest, through the system dialog.
If you're wondering which one you need, the usual answer is both halves, in that order. The culling workflow in detail → · The picking side →
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