Coloring and curating has been a problem for artists forever, and I genuinely think it’s one of the biggest reasons people don’t put their best work out. In this video I show my exact culling process before I ever touch Lightroom—because if you try to do all of this inside Lightroom, it’s slow, it’s inaccurate, and once your catalog gets big your computer just crawls. The goal here is simple: pick the best images with the best composition, the best focus, and the best camera settings, then move on without wasting time. I walk you through how I use Narrative (I’ve used it for about four years) and the different views that actually make culling fast: loop view for chronological scrolling, grid view to confirm everything imported, scene view to jump through similar compositions, and survey mode to compare images side-by-side. I also show the face zoom tool with focus and expression scores, how I filter for sharpness (my usual ballpark is focus score 6+), and how I rate images with star ratings that match Lightroom. Finally, I show how I “ship” my selects straight into a new Lightroom Classic catalog—optionally with Narrative’s AI pre-edit for consistent color, contrast, white balance, and exposure—so you can trust the process and start editing only the photos that deserve your time.