Narrative

Ashton Smith

Game-changing image selection software with AI assistance to speed up your post-shoot workflow.

Culling with Narrative

Learn the basics of Narrative step by step, from creating your first project to culling, rating and shipping your photos.

Narrative Quickstart Tutorial

Learn what Narrative does, how to start a free trial and cull your first shoot, and where to find the guides you'll need next.

Getting Started with Narrative

See Narrative's default keyboard shortcuts on Mac and Windows for navigating, rating, zooming, Close-ups, views and Pre-Edit.

Narrative Keyboard Shortcuts

Use stars, color labels, tags and rejects to save your choices in Narrative, ship only your keepers, and see where ratings are saved.

Use Ratings to Select your Images

Learn how to open Preferences and set up ratings, language, shortcuts, assessments, import options and appearance to suit you.

Customise Narrative with Preferences

Switch between Loupe, Grid and Scenes View in Narrative, change the filmstrip and thumbnail size, and pick a default view.

Change your Gallery View in Narrative

Learn what XMP sidecar files are, what Narrative saves in them, and why you need to keep them with your RAW photos.

What are .XMP sidecar files and why does Narrative use them?

Change any keyboard shortcut in Narrative's Preferences, choose your arrow and rating keys, and restore the defaults.

Customize your Keyboard Shortcuts

Getting Started

Use Auto-rate to add stars, color labels or tags to your photos based on their AI First Pass category.

Auto-rate your photos with AI First Pass

Use Narrative's AI assessments as a guide for detail shots, landscapes, creative blur and closed eyes, and make sure nothing gets missed.

How does Narrative assess photos without faces or with creative blur?

Delete photos in Narrative with a right-click or the delete key, see what happens to the files, and how to reject photos instead.

Can I delete images in Narrative?

Learn how to rename photos in bulk in Narrative, in a project or while ingesting, and build your own file name formula.

Rename your images in bulk

Learn how to crop, level and change the aspect ratio of photos in Narrative, batch apply a crop and undo it.

Crop and level your images in Narrative

See each photo's file and camera details in Shot Info, change capture times, and sync times across two cameras.

Shot Information and Changing Capture Times

Sort your Narrative photos by Scene rank, capture time or filename, add more sort options and set a default for new projects.

How to Change your Sort Order in Narrative

Learn how many devices you can sign in to at once, and how to carry on a shoot on another computer.

Can Narrative sync across multiple devices?

Learn how Narrative saves your progress automatically, what it saves with your photos, and what stays on your computer.

How does Narrative save my progress?

Learn what Image Focus Scores mean, how to filter by above, below or exact scores, and why some photos don't have one.

Filter by Focus Score

Open Narrative's filters, choose which ones show, and filter by ratings, First Pass, focus and more, or hide one rating.

Using filters in Narrative

Learn what each AI First Pass assessment means, how to filter and sort by it, and how to make First Pass stricter or more relaxed.

AI First Pass Image Assessments

Learn how to use Smart Zoom and Close-ups to check faces, key elements and detail without losing sight of the whole photo.

Zoom and Close-ups in Narrative

Compare up to 12 photos, or the faces in up to 6 photos, side by side with Narrative Survey Mode, and remove photos as you go.

Compare photos side by side with Survey Mode

Learn what the eye, expression and focus indicators below faces mean, how to change how they look, and why some faces have none.

Face and Focus Assessments

Open Scenes, review each Scene with Scene rank, move around with the keyboard and change the sort order of new projects.

Use Scenes and rank ordering in Narrative

Use Loupe View to check photos up close, read First Pass assessments in the filmstrip, move between Scenes and change the sort order.

Using Loupe View in Narrative

View one photo at a time in Narrative's fullscreen mode, and learn how to rate, move between photos and exit.

Viewing Images in Fullscreen

Learn how to filter your shoot by one or more people, name people and check your coverage of the people who matter.

Filtering by Person with People Filter

Learn how Narrative detects your project's shoot type, which types it detects automatically and how to change it yourself.

Shoot Type Detection

Learn how Key People Highlighting marks the people who matter most in Close-ups, and how to turn it on or off.

Key People Highlighting

Using Narrative

Learn how to start a Narrative project from photos on your computer or a drive, or straight from a memory card.

Create a new Narrative project

Copy photos from your memory card to your working folder and up to four backup folders when you ingest.

Back up photos to multiple destinations during ingest

Copy photos from a memory card, choose a project folder and backup destinations, and check your copies before erasing the card.

Import (Ingest) your Images Directly from a Memory Card

See which cameras and file types Narrative supports, including RAW, JPEG and HEIC, and what to do if yours isn't.

Which cameras and file types does Narrative support?

Ship your photos from Narrative to Lightroom Classic or Lightroom CC on a Mac, with or without an AI Preset.

Send images from Narrative to Lightroom on Mac

Ship your photos from Narrative to Lightroom on Windows by dragging the shipped folder into your open catalog.

Send images from Narrative to Lightroom on Windows

Ship your photos and ratings from Narrative to Capture One on a Mac, or import them by hand on Windows.

Send images from Narrative to Capture One

Send your selected photos from Narrative to Photoshop (Camera Raw) on Mac or Windows.

Send images to Photoshop and Camera Raw

Learn how to move or copy photos and their XMP files to another folder or drive from Narrative, and fix common issues.

Move or copy your images from Narrative

Sync ratings, edits and AI Presets between Lightroom Classic and Narrative without losing work, step by step.

Sync metadata safely between Lightroom Classic and Narrative

Learn how to add more photos to an existing Narrative project from a memory card or folder, with backups and duplicate checks.

Add more images to an existing Narrative project

Create a new Lightroom Classic catalog straight from Narrative's Ship + Edit window on a Mac, and what to name it.

Create a Lightroom Classic catalog from Narrative on Mac

Getting Images In and Out of Narrative

Fix photos that don't show up in Lightroom after you ship from Narrative, whether some or all of them are missing.

Images are missing when shipping to Lightroom

Fix blurry or pixelated RAW previews in Narrative, including Sony ARW and DNG files, with high-res previews.

Why do my DNG or ARW files look blurry or pixelated?

Fix missing faces, eye and focus assessments, or an empty Close-ups panel by checking your settings and letting scanning finish.

Missing faces or face assessments in Narrative

Fix photos that look blurry in Narrative because of small previews in RAW, JPEG or DNG files, with high-res previews.

Why do my photos look blurry in Narrative?

Split photos from two cameras that show as one CR2+CR3 file in Narrative because they share a file name.

Why are my photos showing as CR2+CR3?

Download Narrative for Mac or Windows, install it and sign in, plus how to uninstall it without canceling your plan.

How do I download and install Narrative?

Fix DNG files that look pixelated or don't show in Narrative, and create DNGs with full-size previews.

Work with DNG files in Narrative

Find out why a soft-looking photo can get a high focus score in Narrative, what to check, and how to report it.

Why does an out-of-focus image have a high focus assessment score?

Work through fixes for slow or unresponsive Narrative, including clearing the cache or database, then send your logs to Support.

Narrative is running slowly or is unresponsive, what can I do?

Record your screen on Mac or Windows to show our support team an issue, and send it safely.

Record your screen to show Narrative Support an issue

Fix color labels from Narrative showing as white or missing in Lightroom Classic when Lightroom isn't set to English.

Color Labels are Not Showing in Lightroom Classic

See which editing programs read Narrative's tags and rejects, and three ways to get your tagged photos into Capture One and others.

My editing program can't see the tags or reject labels I apply in Narrative

Send your Narrative logs to Support from the Help menu, check the upload finished, and what to do next.

How do I send my logs to Support?

Fix photos that show gray, crossed-out thumbnails in Narrative after you import them.

Images are not loading or show gray thumbnails

Check drive access, XMP files and Lightroom import settings when ratings, tags or AI Preset edits don't carry across from Narrative.

Why are my ratings, tags or AI Presets not appearing inside of Lightroom/my editing software?

Work through fixes for ERR105 in Narrative, including clearing the cache or database, then send your logs to Support.

I'm receiving ERR105, what should I do?

Fix a Narrative sign-in page that's stuck loading or doesn't take you back to the app, on Mac or Windows.

Why can't I sign in to Narrative?

Running into a problem with Narrative? Have a look at these help articles to easily figure out how to get culling again!

Narrative Troubleshooting

Contact Narrative Support from the app, Help Center chat or email, and see what to include so we can help faster.

How do I contact Narrative Support?

Narrative culls on its own. See when you need Lightroom Classic or CC, and how other editors like Capture One work with it.

Is Narrative standalone, and do I need Lightroom?

See which parts of culling Narrative automates, what you still decide, and how optional Auto-rate can apply ratings for you.

Does Narrative automate photo culling?

Learn how Narrative updates itself, how to check for an update, and where to see what's new in each version.

Update Narrative and see what’s new

Prepare Narrative for offline culling and editing, keep local files and models ready, and understand the 30-day sign-in limit.

Can I use Narrative Offline?

Find projects Narrative archived after 40 days, restore them from the Archived tab, or turn automatic archiving off.

Where are my old projects in Narrative?

Find Narrative's Privacy Policy, see what happens to your photos and data, and how to ask us a privacy question.

What are my privacy rights with Narrative?

Understand local photo processing, optional image uploads, Personal AI Preset data and where to find Narrative's privacy policy.

What happens to my images and data with Narrative?

Learn when Narrative uploads photos, how to control optional preview uploads, and how Personal AI Preset training works.

How does Narrative use your photos?

Check the Mac and Windows hardware and operating system you need to run Narrative, plus our recommended setup.

What are the minimum system requirements for Narrative?

Narrative works on Windows 11 and macOS 12 or later. Learn how to download it on Windows, and why Publish is Mac only.

Can I use Narrative on Windows?

Check your macOS version and upgrade to macOS 12 or later, so you can keep using and updating Narrative on your Mac.

How do I upgrade macOS to use Narrative?

Compare the basic culling tools in Lite with Advanced AI Culling on Standard, Premium and Ultra, including Scenes and Close-ups.

What’s the difference between Lite and Standard culling?

Learn how to delete or archive Narrative projects, what you keep and lose, and how to restore an archived project.

Delete or archive projects in Narrative

If you have a general question about Narrative it's probably here! Take a read and let us know if you have any questions. 

Narrative General FAQs

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Build your first workflow and watch it run end to end.

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