Great work needs a great workflow
Get started with Narrative for free on Windows and macOS. No credit card required.
Unlimited projects | Unlimited images | Integrates with Lightroom.
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Instantly see all the faces in an image so you can make an immediate decision
about which photos are keepers, and which ones should be rejected.
Make decisions quicker. Zooming in on each face individually is slow, time-consuming and frustrating.
See focus issues and facial expressions ten times quicker!
See the parts of the photo that matter most.
It's especially helpful for photos with lots of posed subjects – but it's helpful even for couple photos or photos with just a single person.
Jonathan Suckling • @jonathansuckling
Get started with Narrative for free on Windows and macOS. No credit card required.
Unlimited projects | Unlimited images | Integrates with Lightroom.
The Close-Ups Panel shows enlarged faces beside the full photo, so you can check expressions and sharpness for everyone in a portrait, couple or group shot without zooming and panning.
When there's no face, it shows the key element (rings, florals, a pet), or the centre of the frame. Key element close-ups need a Mac with macOS 14 or later; on Windows the panel shows faces for now.
Press / or . to open or close the Close-Ups Panel, click the Close-ups button, or go to View → Close-ups.
To open it straight into pan mode, press ⌘ / on Mac or Ctrl / on Windows.
Yes! The Close-ups panel can zoom in on a maximum of 24 faces at once, and it will choose the main subjects to show first if there are more than 24 in your shot. This allows you to compare them side-by-side in order to choose the photos with the best overall expressions.
Narrative sorts each face into main, secondary or background, and shows the faces that matter most. Background faces are skipped on purpose, so they don't slow scanning or skew your results.
On weddings and events, Key People Highlighting (Mac) also marks the people most likely to matter, like the couple, with a blue icon.
Click a face or key element in the panel to switch to pan mode, centred on what you clicked. Drag, or use your trackpad, to move around, and use the minimap to jump to another part of the photo. Click again to go back.
Standard, Premium, and Ultra. Close-ups is not included on the Lite plan. See our pricing for more information.
Key People Highlighting marks the people most likely to matter in your shoot, like the couple at a wedding, with a blue icon in the Close-Ups Panel. Your eye lands on them first, without filtering.
It turns on automatically for wedding and event shoots, and you can switch it on for any project in People Filter. It's on Standard, Premium and Ultra, on Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 14 or later. A highlight only points someone out; it doesn't mean you have to keep the photo.
No problem! For more detailed help, check out our Support Articles, or reach out to our expert team at [email protected].
