Analyzing a Session

Once you have your photos cataloged in Lightroom Classic, it is time to start a culling session. To do this, configure the culling sliders to your specific event and tastes:

• Visual Similarity — This controls how visually similar photos need to be so they are grouped into the same duplicate set. The slider ranges from zero to four. At zero, visual similarities are not considered when analyzing the photos. At one, the photos need to be somewhat similar. This will create larger groupings. Photos in the same location but with slightly different poses will be groupled together. As you increase the values, the photos must be more similar to each other to be grouped together. Higher values are useful when photographing a series of people on the same background such as headshots.
• Time Between Stacks — This controls how much time is allowed between photos to be grouped together. Shorter times are better for action based events like sports. The default value of one minute is good for most portrait and wedding sessions. Longer values are more lenient, allowing the groups to be larger.

Both factors are used when determining duplicated classifications. You can press analyze and then navigate through several groups using the forward and backwards buttons to check the grouping. If the grouping isn't successful for your needs, you can adjust the sliders and press Analyse again.

Starting an Analysis

First check your preferences in Lightpanel to configure how you want metadata assigned to the automatically created groups for Selects, Duplicates, Eyes-Closed, and Blurry. You can adapt Lightpanel to assign any combination of stars, color labels, or flags based on your existing workflow.

Next, press the Analyze button in the Culling pane. This will analyze all the photos in the selected folder (and subfolders if enabled) for duplicates, Eyes Closed, and Blur. This process is broken into two phases. The first phase finds and groups duplicates. This is a fast process. After the first phase is complete, you will be placed into duplicate review mode. In the background, phase two will identify closed eyes and blurry photos.

The Analyze process will reset any existing star ratings, color labels, or flags on your photos.

Next you will review each set of duplicate photos. Duplicate photos are similar photos taken near the same time. Dupes are best viewed in survey view in Lightroom. When you press the Dupes button in Lightpanel, it will put you in survey view mode automatically. You will see the first set of duplicate photos in Lightroom. In the Faces pane in Lightpanel you will see a magnified view of each face in the currently selected photo. Use your arrow keys to navigate through the duplicate photos and use the number keys to set the star or color label to pick which duplicates you want to promote to the Selects category.

To move between duplicate groups, press the forward and background buttons in the Culling pane in Lightpanel, or use the shortcut keys (Windows: Ctrl right arrow, macOS: Cmd right arrow). Repeat the review process for each set of duplicate photos. You can promote any, all, or none of the photos to Selects using the number keys to change the rating or labels.

Once you have completed the duplicate review process, you can review the Eyes Closed and Blurry categories using the same process.