AI-Assisted Photo Culling

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 takes on the repetitive part of your workflow, the sorting, assessing, and ranking, so your energy goes back into the decisions only you can make.

As photographers ourselves, we built it that way on purpose: AI that clears the path, not one that makes the call. You can see the full list of culling features here.

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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.

Narrative assesses every photo in your shoot on your own computer:

• Focus assessments: how sharp each main face is

• Eye assessments: whether eyes are closed, and the context, such as blinking, kissing or looking down. That context helps Narrative tell a missed blink from a closed-eye moment worth keeping.

• Scenes: similar photos from the same moment, grouped together

• AI First Pass: each photo ranked within its Scene, from Best in scene to Undesirable, with the reason shown

• Key Element Detection: on a Mac, when there's no face, it finds the most important part of the frame and checks its focus

Narrative is there to inform your judgement, not replace it. It flags and ranks, and it never deletes a photo. Whether a moment is worth keeping is your call.

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.

Narrative runs on macOS and Windows. See the full system requirements.

Supported files: CR2, CR3, CRW, NEF, NRW, RAF, ARW, RW2, ORF, PEF, FFF, 3FR, DNG, RAW, RWL and JPG. On Mac, HEIC, HEIF and HIF files work too.

You can ship to Lightroom Classic on Mac and Windows, and to Lightroom CC, Photoshop and Capture One on Mac.

Yes, on Mac. Narrative supports HEIC and HEIF files, so you can import directly from your iPhone or newer cameras without converting first. Supported across newer cameras from Canon, Sony, Nikon, and Fujifilm. HEIC isn't supported on Windows yet, so convert those files to JPEG first.

People Filter shows every photo of one person, or any combination of people, with a count, so you can check coverage at a glance. Choose Any to see photos with any of them, or All to see only photos of them together. Name each person to find them faster.

People Filter is on Standard, Premium and Ultra, on Mac. Windows support is on the way.

Key Element Detection extends the Close-Ups Panel and Smart Face Zoom beyond faces. When there's no face, Narrative finds the most important part of the frame (rings, florals, a pet, a distant figure) and checks whether it's sharp.

In the Close-Ups Panel, it's on Standard, Premium and Ultra. It needs a Mac running macOS 14 or later; Windows support is on the way.

No. Your photos stay on your computer. Culling and AI assessments happen locally, and nothing is uploaded unless you use a feature that needs it:

• Help improve Narrative is optional and off unless you turn it on. If you do, image previews are shared to improve Narrative.

• Training a Personal AI Preset uploads your edited images and edit data. They stay private to you.

Read more about what happens to your images and data.

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.

Yes, with Survey Mode. Select the photos you want to compare and press N to see up to 12 whole photos side by side. Select just one photo and Survey Mode opens its whole Scene.

Press Shift + N for Face compare, which shows the faces from up to six photos together. Image compare is on every plan; Face compare is on Standard, Premium and Ultra.

Yes. When you ingest from a memory card, Narrative copies your photos to your working folder and up to four backup folders at once, so you have extra copies before you start culling. You can ingest from several cards at the same time.

Backups include photos only, not video, and they don't update with later ratings or edits. Keep your card until you've checked every folder.

Most do. The core culling workflow is the same on Mac and Windows: import, Scenes View, AI First Pass, the Close-Ups Panel, face and focus assessments, and shipping to Lightroom Classic.

Some of our newest features arrive on Mac first, with Windows support following. Check the system requirements for details.

No. Narrative is a standalone app, so you can cull and rate without Lightroom. You need Lightroom Classic or Lightroom CC to apply AI Preset edits, and Lightroom Classic to train a Personal AI Preset.

You can also send your selects to Capture One or Photoshop on Mac, or move and copy them to any folder. Narrative doesn't export finished JPEGs; that happens in your editing software.

Yes. Narrative suits any high-volume shoot with people in it. On Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 14 or later, Shoot Type Detection recognises the kind of shoot (wedding, event, sport, family, portrait and more) and tailors culling to it, for example by turning on Key People Highlighting for weddings and events. You can change the shoot type yourself in Shot Info.

Scenes View, AI First Pass and the Close-Ups Panel work the same for any genre.