Help · AI Cull
AI Cull walks every photo of a folder in the order it was taken. You keep, reject, star and label from the keyboard; near-identical shots are stacked with a suggestion ringed. This page lists every key, and says exactly what is written when you are done.
Nothing, until you press a button at the end. Keeping, rejecting, starring and
labelling are held in FolioSort while you work. Write for Lightroom then writes the rating and
the colour label of the photos whose marks changed: into a .xmp sidecar for camera RAW
files, which are never modified, and inside the file for JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, PNG and DNG.
Copy, Move and Trash are separate choices, each with its own confirmation. Rejects go to the Trash
(Recycle Bin on Windows), and the last batch can be undone. A .xmp or .aae
sidecar always travels with its photo.
Choose a folder and AI Cull opens its first photo. On the Mac, Import from Card ends with Pick the keepers in AI Cull ›, which opens the folder you just imported. Stars, rejects and labels already in the files — from Lightroom or Photo Mechanic, in a sidecar or inside the file — are read when the folder opens.
Keep · Reject · Unmark
With Next photo after marking on, which it is by default, each key also moves to the next photo.
Stars and colour labels
Moving and looking
Next left jumps to the next photo you have not decided. RAW files are shown from the preview the camera stored inside them, and the next photos are loaded ahead so there is no wait between frames.
N stacks of near-identical shots found
Shots that are almost the same photo are stacked. One frame in each stack is ringed: the one FolioSort rates best on sharpness, faces and open eyes. The screen says what that is worth — The ringed frame is FolioSort's technical guess, not your taste — choose with your own eye. An exposure bracket is never made into a stack.
Show the N stacks · Filters › Only stacks
Shows only the photos that are in a stack, to deal with the bursts first. Filters › Only stacks turns it off again.
Deciding a stack
K on a frame of a stack keeps that frame, rejects the frames of the stack you had not decided, and moves past the stack. R rejects only the frame you are on. ⌥← and ⌥→ (Alt on Windows) walk the frames of the stack. Marks you set by hand are left as they are.
Write for Lightroom
The button carries the name of the cataloguer FolioSort found on the computer; when it finds none it reads Write stars & rejects. It asks before writing, and the sheet says what it is about to do: Read by Lightroom, Capture One, Bridge and Photo Mechanic.
Only photos whose marks changed are written. A format that cannot carry a rating is skipped and listed in Activity. Stop finishes the photo in hand and stops. Undo takes the write back, including removing a rating from a photo that had none before.
Copy · Move
Copies or moves exactly the photos on screen — the button says how many — to a folder you choose. When the photos you are moving have sidecars a cataloguer may be tracking, FolioSort warns you first and offers Copy Instead.
Rejects to the Trash
Sends the rejected photos, with their sidecars, to the Trash (Recycle Bin on Windows) after you confirm. The last batch can be undone.
Which plan
Below Elite, AI Cull opens the first 20 photos of each folder, in capture order, for everything on this page; the rest of the folder is shown blurred. A RAW and its JPEG count as one photo, and a folder of 20 or fewer is fully open. Elite opens every photo of every folder. AI Cull is not part of Pro. See the plans.
FAQ
No. Nothing is marked until you press a key. In a stack of near-identical shots FolioSort rings the frame it rates best on sharpness, faces and open eyes, and says so on screen: the ringed frame is FolioSort's technical guess, not your taste. There is no button that accepts every suggestion at once.
The standard XMP Rating and Label fields, and nothing else. A photo you kept without giving it stars gets five stars; a rejected photo gets Adobe's rejected value; the stars and colour labels you gave are written as you gave them. Camera RAW files get a .xmp sidecar next to them and are never modified; JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, PNG and DNG get the fields inside the file. Only photos whose marks changed are written, and the write can be undone.
The cull is written as standard XMP ratings, which Capture One, Bridge and Photo Mechanic read too. In Lightroom Classic, if the photos were already in the catalog, use Metadata › Read Metadata from Files to pick the new values up.
Below Elite, AI Cull opens the first 20 photos of each folder, in capture order, for everything — marking, writing, copying, moving and the Trash — and shows the rest blurred. A folder of 20 photos or fewer is fully open. Elite opens every photo of every folder; it is not part of Pro. See the pricing page for the plans.