Narrative vs Aftershoot. Which AI tool is better for photographers?
Aftershoot is best known for its set and forget culling, whereas Narrative offers a faster, more intuitive photo selection and culling process, that doesn’t leave you second guessing.
Aftershoot is an AI-powered photo culling and editing tool designed to speed up post-production for photographers. It automatically detects factors like blur, closed eyes, and facial expressions to help select the best images from a shoot. Aftershoot also offers AI-assisted editing based on Lightroom adjustments, applying a trained style to new photos.
AI culling focus: Aftershoot is primarily designed to speed up photo selection, automatically detecting factors like blur, closed eyes, and facial expressions to help identify the best shots.
Adaptive AI learning: Aftershoot’s AI learns from your culling and editing choices, gradually prioritizing what matters most to your style.
Unlimited pricing model: Aftershoot offers unlimited AI Editing, which some users prefer over per-image pricing.
Offline functionality: The software operates locally on Windows and macOS, meaning images don’t need to be uploaded to the cloud for processing.
Missed emotional details: Aftershoot can overlook subtle expressions or emotional moments, meaning users often need to manually review selections.
Occasional burst/grouping errors: Its automatic grouping of similar shots can misfire in tricky lighting or with similar poses.
Editing Accuracy: AI edits based on Lightroom adjustments are reported from users around 65% accurate, requiring extra corrections.
Processing time: Enabling face/eye detection slows imports and requires more processing time.
Limited creative control: Automated edits and selections not only restrict creativity, many users report having to go back through their images for any missed shots.
Narrative is an AI-powered photo culling tool built specifically for professional photographers. It helps you go from thousands of raw shots to a curated selection in minutes — and seamlessly integrates with Lightroom for final editing.
Best-in-class culling: Narrative is purpose-built to make image selection fast, intuitive, and accurate—with tools like Eye & Focus Assessments, Close-ups, and Scenes.
Editing that fits your workflow: Narrative doesn’t replace Lightroom—it speeds up your editing workflow and sends edits straight into Lightroom.
Creative control: Narrative speeds up culling and editing with an AI assisted workflow that gives you creative control.
Offline support: Work anywhere, no internet required.
No friction, no cloud uploads: Narrative works locally, with seamless performance.
Aftershoot and Narrative both use AI to speed up photo selection and editing, but Narrative clearly stands out for professional photographers who want speed, accuracy, and full creative control.
Aftershoot emphasizes automation and speed, but it can miss emotional nuances, group similar shots incorrectly, and produce generic-looking edits. Narrative, on the other hand, keeps you in the driver’s seat: you get precise culling tools like Eye & Focus Assessments, Close-ups, and Scenes, along with AI editing that adapts to your personal style over time.
Narrative works entirely offline, letting you import thousands of RAW files instantly, make creative decisions in real-time, and send edits straight into Lightroom without friction. Its unlimited AI culling and editing, combined with hands-on control, ensures you never lose the personality and emotional depth in your photos.
For photographers who shoot high volumes or want predictable results with full artistic freedom, Narrative offers the smarter, faster, and more reliable solution.
Experience it for yourself — try Narrative free today and see why it’s the best culling and editing software on the market.
Narrative is fast, AI-assisted culling and editing software specifically designed for photographers. It’s considered the best culling and editing solution for high-volume photographers who care deeply about their work, but also want to save time and focus on the things that matter most.
Narrative’s AI is assisted, meaning you stay in control of the final decisions, while the AI handles the heavy lifting. Unlike fully automated tools, you can trust the selections because they’re made by you. That means no more second-guessing or going back to check what the AI might have missed.
Narrative also includes powerful features like Scenes View to easily see how your shoot unfolded, the Close-ups Panel to help spot the best expressions fast, and blazing-fast performance that makes working through even large galleries feel effortless. When you're done, you can ship your selects straight into your favorite editing software, like Lightroom, to keep your workflow seamless.
Narrative will modernize your workflow as a professional photographer. There’s no risk in trying Narrative, as you can start with a free trial for 30 days.
As photographers ourselves, we are obsessive about creating technology that helps you, so you can spend more time doing what you love.
With our bleeding-edge technology and constant product updates, we are confident that Select will cut your culling time in half. You can see a full list of our game-changing features here.
Culling is the process of going through all the images from a shoot and choosing the best ones (the ones you want to edit). By culling, you will get rid of duplicates and objectively bad images and you will save yourself time when it comes to editing.
Culling with a dedicated image selection tool (like Narrative) is very different to culling within your editing program. Narrative is lightning-fast, AI-powered and purpose-built to help you identify and eliminate images that you won’t want to edit.
Any professional photographer who shoots high volumes of images (especially if those images are of people) will benefit from having a dedicated image selection tool.
We have built industry leading AI that detects faces and assesses images.
Our assessments include:
Focus assessments to tell you how well your subject is in focus
Eye assessments that gives you information about when your subjects eyes are closed (blinking, kissing, looking down, etc)
Image assessments to let you know if we think there are other images within a scene that may be better than this one
Our approach is to build AI that empowers you by augmenting your already existing skill set. We don’t think of AI as some magical phenomena that can do your job for you.
We believe that tools using AI can help you to be more efficient and more accurate, but AI should not replace your ability to interpret whether a moment you have captured in a photograph is one worth sharing and celebrating.
Using Narrative, there are no wait times to import or navigate through your photoshoots. You can import thousands of RAWs in seconds.
There are no low res images, no loading bars and thumbnails load immediately. This makes it incredibly fast to flick through your images.
Our image assessments allow you to quickly identify potential picks from your shoot. Filtering by Potential Picks means you only need to look through half of your images to pick a great selection.
Narrative is built from the ground up to save you as much time as possible.
You can use Narrative on both macOS and Windows. View the full systems requirements here.
Narrative supports the following image formats: CR2, CRW, CR3, NEF, NRW, RAF, DNG, RAW, RWL, ARW, RW2, ORF, PEF, FFF, 3FR, JPG.
Narrative supports one click import to edit your shoot in Lightroom Classic (mac and windows) as well as Lightroom CC, Photoshop and Capture One on mac.