Hey photo friends! Or anyone who takes pictures and wants to know how to cull through them faster! I’ve got tips for you today! Check out this video to watch me use adobe bridge for quickly culling and selecting which images I want to edit from a session. Full instructions below as well!

Adobe Bridge is a free program put out by Adobe. I think it’s supposed to be for organizing photos, but I use my own system for doing that. I use Bridge for quickly going through and selecting which images I want to drop into Lightroom and edit in there. Here’s how I use it:

1. Once I’ve downloaded my RAW files into a file on my external hard drive, I open up Bridge and select the appropriate folder.

2. You’ll see all your files pop up at the bottom. When I used Lightroom for culling, I would go through and delete ones I didn’t like. With Bridge, I give each image I love, or even kinda like a 5 star rating. Bridge is awesome because it can quickly read a large RAW file. Faster than Lightroom can read them.

3. I quickly go through the session and pick out the best. If there’s a series that I can’t quite tell which one is most in focus or has the most “good” faces, I just 5 star all of them.

4. Once I’m done, I head to the left side of the screen and select “5 star” images. I then select all of those and open Lightroom.

5. With Bridge and Lightroom both open, I just drag all the 5 star images over to Lightroom and it imports them while keeping them in the same location on my hard drive.

6. That’s it! I go through and do a mass edit with my favorite preset and then go through and do tweaks to each image as needed.

Super easy and such a time saver! I usually cull a Classic family session (60 minutes) in about 10-15 minutes. I’ve even culled weddings in about 30-45 minutes vs. the HOURS it took me to cull my first wedding!

I highly, highly recommend checking out Bridge if you’re looking to streamline and speed up your culling experience! Let me know if you have any questions!