The Narrative Quickstart Tutorial walks you through culling your first shoot in Narrative, from creating a project to shipping your photos to your editing software.

The Narrative Quickstart video covers the same steps as this tutorial. Watch it first, or follow along as you read.

To start culling, create a project from a folder of photos. Create a new project for each shoot.

Narrative imports your photos and starts working out Scenes and AI assessments. To see how far along it is, hover over the project's tab. Wait for it to finish before you rely on Scenes or assessments.

If your photos are still on a memory card, connect it while Narrative is open and Quick Ingest opens. You can choose which sessions to copy, where to copy them and up to four backup locations.

Important: Narrative copies photos and their XMP files, not videos. Check every copy has finished before you format the card. Learn how to ingest from a memory card.

Narrative groups similar photos into Scenes, so you can compare them side by side and pick the best one. You can move around your shoot with these default shortcuts:

You can change these shortcuts in Preferences. Scenes need a Standard, Premium or Ultra plan.

Within each Scene, Narrative ranks the photos so the strongest ones come first. Start with the top-ranked photo, then compare it with the others before you choose. You can keep more than one photo from a Scene.

You rate photos with the number keys. Ratings don't have a set meaning, so use whatever system works for you. Many photographers give every keeper 1 star.

You can also rate a photo by clicking the rating block on its thumbnail, from the right-click menu or from the Rate menu.

Narrative saves your ratings in XMP files, small sidecar files that sit next to your photos in the same folder. Keep the XMP files with your photos, or you'll lose your ratings. Learn more about XMP files.

Narrative opens in Loupe View, which shows one large photo with a filmstrip. You can switch views with these shortcuts:

To zoom in, press Space. Narrative zooms to the main face in the photo. If there are no faces, it zooms to the key element, and if there isn't one, it zooms to the center.

Press Space again to zoom back out.

Close-ups show a crop of every face in the photo next to the full photo, so you can check expressions without zooming in. Press / or . to open or close the Close-ups panel. Click a face to pan around it.

If there are no faces, Close-ups shows the Key Element, the main object or subject in the photo, or the Image Center if there's no key element. Key Element and Image Center Close-ups need a Mac running macOS 14 or later. They aren't on Windows yet, but Windows support is on the way. Until then, Close-ups on Windows shows faces only.

To open Close-ups straight into pan mode, press ⌘/ on Mac or Ctrl+/ on Windows.

In Wedding and Event shoots, Narrative marks the people who matter most with a blue icon in Close-ups, and a blue frame appears around them when you hover over them. To turn this on or off, click the People filter, open the ⋮ menu next to Key people and check or uncheck Highlight key people in Close-ups. Learn about Key People Highlighting.

The icons under each face in Close-ups are face assessments. They tell you about each person's eyes, expression and focus.

The colors tell you whether Narrative found a problem:

Hover over an icon for more detail. The top row describes the expression, and the bottom row gives the face a focus score out of 10. A score of 8 or above is great. A face can be sharp even when the eyes are closed, so check both icons.

Narrative can miss faces in some photos, so check the full photo too. You can change the face assessment colors in Preferences.

First Pass is Narrative's AI culling assistant. It puts a colored hexagon on each thumbnail to show where the photo sits within its Scene. There are five categories:

First Pass is guidance only. It never rejects or deletes your photos. Hover over a hexagon for a short explanation, or click it for more detail.

To change how strict First Pass is, go to Preferences and choose Ruthless, Balanced (the default) or Cautious. Ruthless puts more photos into the lower categories, and Cautious gives more photos the benefit of the doubt.

You can use the First Pass filter in the toolbar to show only the categories you want. A count next to each category shows how many photos match.

You can combine First Pass with the People filter to find your best photos of the couple or a family member, or with the Focus Score filter to find the sharpest photos. Clear your filters now and then so you don't miss photos they're hiding.

Narrative can rate your photos in bulk based on their First Pass category.

Important: Auto-rate can replace ratings you've already added. Check the ratings for each category before you apply them.

When you've finished culling, you ship your photos to your editing software, like Lightroom Classic.

Narrative sends your photos and their ratings to your editing software.

Your photos can arrive in Lightroom already edited if you apply an AI Preset when you ship. In the Ship + Edit menu, turn on Apply AI Preset for Lightroom and choose an AI Preset you've downloaded.

AI Presets work with Lightroom Classic and Lightroom CC. Applying more than one AI Preset at a time only works with Lightroom Classic, and you can compare them with Snapshots in Lightroom Classic. You then finish your edits and export your photos from Lightroom.

If you haven't found your style yet, try an Artist AI Preset. If you have your own style and at least 1,500 consistently edited and exported photos, you can train a Personal AI Preset on Premium and Ultra plans. Learn how to ship with an AI Preset.

Pre-Edit is in beta. It lets you preview and apply AI Presets while you cull, before you ship. To request access, contact our support team. Learn about Pre-Edit.

Yes, you can use Narrative offline. Set Narrative up and download what you need while you're online first, and keep your original photos on a drive you can reach. Get ready to work offline.

You can find every shortcut in Narrative Keyboard Shortcuts.