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Lightroom Classic vs Narrative

Narrative vs Lightroom Classic: What’s the Best culling and editing tool for Professional Photographers?

When it comes to culling and editing RAWs, Adobe Lightroom Classic has long been the industry standard. But as AI-driven tools emerge, many photographers are discovering smarter ways to cull images faster - and that’s where Narrative comes in.

In this guide, we’ll compare Narrative vs Lightroom Classic and help you decide which tool is best for your workflow.

What Is Lightroom Classic?

Adobe Lightroom Classic is a comprehensive desktop-based photo editing and cataloging tool. It’s widely used for its powerful editing features, metadata management, and ability to handle large photo libraries.




🔥 Strengths of Lightroom Classic:

  • Full suite of editing tools, including advanced color grading, masking, and healing

  • Deep metadata and export control

  • Industry-standard software with countless tutorials and presets

  • Part of the Adobe Creative Cloud ecosystem

  • Supports tethered shooting for studio setups

  • Global support and wide adoption



🥀 Weaknesses of Lightroom Classic:

  • Not built for image culling – lacks tools to make fast selections

  • Outdated interface and a steep learning curve for new users

  • Performance issues – slow imports, laggy rendering

  • Overloaded with niche features most photographers don’t need




Adobe Lightroom Classic is a comprehensive desktop-based photo editing and cataloging tool. It’s widely used for its powerful editing features, metadata management, and ability to handle large photo libraries.

What Is Narrative?

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.

🔥 Key Benefits of Narrative:

  • AI culling that understands photography – sort by eye contact, focus, duplicates, and more

  • Blazing fast performance – start working as photos import

  • Simple, modern interface built for speed

  • Designed for storytelling and delivery — especially useful for weddings, events, and portrait work

  • Works with Lightroom, not against it — export seamlessly into your existing workflow

Try Narrative Free
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.
Narrative vs. Lightroom Classic

How to use Narrative with Lightroom Classic

Import thousands of RAWs to Narrative and cull your shoot.

Import and cull

Import thousands of RAWs to Narrative and cull your shoot.

Apply your AI-Preset when Shipping to Lightroom from Narrative.

Ship and edit

Apply your AI-Preset when Shipping to Lightroom from Select.

Your images are edited and show in Lightroom in minutes.

Adjust and improve

Your images are edited and show in Lightroom in minutes.

Final Verdict: Use the Right Tool for the Right Job

If you’re using Lightroom Classic for culling, you’re wasting time.

Lightroom is powerful, but it wasn’t built to help you make quick decisions between near-duplicate images or sort through thousands of frames efficiently. Narrative does that, and then hands off your final selects straight into Lightroom Classic for detailed editing, retouching, and delivery.

Narrative Cull is the fastest way to select your best photos.

Lightroom Classic is the best tool to edit them.

Rather than choosing one over the other, the smartest photographers use both: Cull smarter in Narrative, Edit confidently in Lightroom Classic.‎

Save time. Improve your workflow.

Spend more time shooting and less time selecting.

If you’re using Lightroom Classic for culling, you’re wasting time. Lightroom is powerful, but it wasn’t built to help you make quick decisions between near-duplicate images or sort through thousands of frames efficiently. Narrative does that — and then hands off your final selects straight into Lightroom Classic for detailed editing, retouching, and delivery. Narrative Cull is the fastest way to select your best photos. Lightroom Classic is the best tool to edit them. Rather than choosing one over the other, the smartest photographers use both: Cull smarter in Narrative, Edit confidently in Lightroom Classic. Save time. Improve your workflow. Spend more time shooting and less time selecting.

Let great work flow

Cull and edit with AI. Keep creative control.

Try Narrative Free
Narrative | Cull and edit with AI. Keep creative control.
Narrative | Cull and edit with AI. Keep creative control.
Narrative | Cull and edit with AI. Keep creative control.
Narrative | Cull and edit with AI. Keep creative control.
Narrative | Cull and edit with AI. Keep creative control.
Narrative | Cull and edit with AI. Keep creative control.

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

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