This feature is currently in beta and rolling out to a small percentage of users. If you don't see it in your project yet, it's on its way.
What is Pre-Edit?
Pre-Edit lets you apply an AI Preset to your images before you start culling, so you're rating and selecting edited photos instead of raw ones.
Normally you cull first and edit after. Pre-Edit flips that. As soon as your images land in a project, you can preview them through a Core Preset, an Artist Preset, or one of your own Personal AI Presets, and make that the default look for the whole shoot. That means fewer guesses on marginal images (was that shot too dark to use, or does it actually hold up once corrected?) and a faster start to editing once you've shipped to Lightroom.
Where to find it
Open a project and look for the Pre-Edit panel on the right-hand side. From here you can browse your Personal AI Presets, Core Presets, and Artist Presets, and hover over any of them to preview how they'll look on the selected image.
How to use it
Add a preset to your Applied AI Presets list. Click and drag a preset from the panel into your Applied AI Presets list, or hover over the preset and click the + button on its right side. You can add up to five presets this way, so you're not locked into one look.
Apply a preset to the whole project. Choose the preset you want as your default, then select Apply To All. Every image in the project updates to reflect that edit.
Apply a preset to a group of images. Click one image, then hold Shift and click the others you want to include. With your selection made, click Apply To Selected.
Toggle between presets. Press B to cycle through the presets in your Applied AI Presets list on any image. If you settle on a specific preset for a particular photo (black and white, for example), that's the edit that ships with the image to Lightroom; the other AI Presets can be found in your snapshots.
Check the raw version. Press \ (backslash) to see the image before Pre-Edit was applied. Useful when you want to double check exposure or focus without the preset masking anything.
Why it's useful
Culling with Pre-Edit means you're rating what the image will actually look like, not what it looks like straight off the camera. It also removes the wait: because your most-used presets are pre-applied, you're not sitting through render time once you get to editing.
Narrative also remembers which preset you use most often across your projects, and applies that one by default the next time you start a new shoot.
A note on availability
Pre-Edit is in beta and only visible to a portion of accounts right now. Feature behaviour may change before general release. We're actively gathering feedback on it, so let us know what you think through the chat bubble.