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Cullant

Free, open source photo culling for desktop and mobile

Rate, flag and reject a whole shoot from the keyboard. Or from your phone, reading the card or drive directly. Nothing on your disk changes until you say so.

The Cullant photo culling app, showing a grid of photos from a shoot with rejects dimmed and ratings on the keepers.
Download for free
  • Open source
  • Works offline
  • No account or subscription

It works with every camera format.

  • Canon
  • Nikon
  • Sony
  • Fujifilm
  • Panasonic
  • OM System, Olympus
  • Leica, Sigma, Pentax, phones
  • Pentax, Ricoh
  • Samsung
  • Sigma
  • Hasselblad
  • Phase One
  • Epson, Mamiya, Kodak, Leaf
  • iPhone HEIF
  • MP4 and MOV
  • Canon
  • Nikon
  • Sony
  • Fujifilm
  • Panasonic
  • OM System, Olympus
  • Leica, Sigma, Pentax, phones
  • Pentax, Ricoh
  • Samsung
  • Sigma
  • Hasselblad
  • Phase One
  • Epson, Mamiya, Kodak, Leaf
  • iPhone HEIF
  • MP4 and MOV
The full format list

On the go

Cull without a computer.

A trip, a hotel room, a flight home. Cullant runs on the phone in your pocket and opens the card in your bag, so the shoot is culled before you unpack. iOS and iPadOS are next.

  • Any storage, straight from the home screen

    A card in a reader, the camera on a cable, a USB stick, the phone itself. Pick it and start.

  • No import, no copy

    Cullant reads the storage where it is, subfolders included. Your phone never fills up.

  • Full RAW previews

    The same embedded-JPEG path as the desktop. CR3, NEF, ARW and the rest, at full speed.

  • Finish it at the desk

    The ratings live on the card. Plug it into your computer and carry on where you stopped.

It sees the one folder you hand it, and nothing else on the phone.How it works

Speed

No import. No demosaic. No spinner.

A demosaic takes seconds per frame. An embedded preview takes milliseconds, and it is the picture the back of your camera showed you.

  1. 1

    Open a folder

    No import, no catalogue, no copy. Subfolders come along.

  2. 2

    See the frame at once

    Cullant shows the full-size JPEG your camera wrote inside the RAW, the same trick Photo Mechanic made famous.

  3. 3

    Never wait twice

    Thumbnails are cached to disk as you go, so the second pass is instant.

RAW + JPEG

Two files. One photo.

Rate the pair once and both get the rating. Reject it once and both go. No orphan RAW left on the card.

IMG_0421.CR3IMG_0421.JPG

Same folder, same name, one photo.

Or keep them apart

  • MStop pairing, without losing a rating.
  • Alt+DelDrop the RAW, keep the JPEG.
  • Shift+DelDrop the JPEG, keep the RAW.

Filters

Three thousand frames down to the twenty that matter.

Every facet is read while the folder scans. Stack them: five stars, on the 85mm, wide open, second day.

Your marks

  • Pick
  • Reject
  • Unflagged
  • Stars
  • Colour label
  • Task tag

The camera

  • Body
  • Lens
  • ISO
  • Aperture
  • Shutter
  • Focal length
  • Date

The file

  • RAW
  • JPEG
  • RAW + JPEG
  • Portrait
  • Landscape
  • Folder
  • In a burst

  • Bursts collapse

    Forty frames take one cell. Open the burst, knock out the losers, keep the winner.

  • Group by day

    A sticky header keeps the date in view across a multi-day shoot.

  • Walk the folders

    A tree down the side narrows the grid to one subfolder, with a count beside each.

Keyboard first

The shortcuts you already know.

Lightroom defaults, all of them remappable.

  • PXUPick, reject, unflag
  • 1…5Stars
  • 6…9Colour labels
  • Tthen1-9Your own task tags
  • GECGrid, loupe, compare
  • Z100% zoom

Caps Lock advances for you

One key per photo, all the way through the shoot. Hold Shift to stay on the frame for one press.

Task tags on their own keys

Stars say how good a frame is. Tags say what it needs: retouch, trim, stabilise.

See every shortcut

Nothing happens by accident

Reject freely. The files stay put.

A reject is a note in a database, not an operation on your disk.

  • You read the list first

    Deletes, moves and copies wait in a queue until you confirm them.

  • Deletes go to the Recycle Bin

    A project trash folder and a permanent delete are there if you choose them.

  • A commit can be undone

    Undo a whole commit, or one line inside it, afterwards.

Ctrl+Enteris the only step that touches a file.

The Cullant commit dialog, listing the queued deletes, moves and copies with a count beside each phase.

It fits your workflow

Cull here. Edit where you already edit.

Cullant does the one job editors are slow at, then hands the shoot over.

XMP sidecars

Optional export of the rating, flag, colour label and orientation, in the form Lightroom Classic and Capture One read.

Your folders stay yours

No library, no proxy cache in your user folder. Photos move only when you queue a move.

The state travels

One small database inside the project folder. Copy the folder and your work goes with it.

100% local

Your photos never leave the machine.

Cullant has no code that talks to a server. Nothing to trust, nothing to switch off.

  • No account or subscription
  • No upload, no cloud
  • No telemetry
  • No ads, no paid tier
  • Works offline
  • Fast and easy

Free because it is open source, under the GPL, which also means nothing funds it. If Cullant saves you time, tell another photographer, or send a RAW file from a camera nobody has tested yet.

Ways to help

Where it runs

Every platform, one keyboard map.

  • Windows

    Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit.

  • Android

    Android 7 and later. Pick any folder, on the phone or on a card.

  • macOSplanned

    The code runs. Nobody builds a signed .dmg yet.

  • Linuxplanned

    The code runs. Nobody builds an AppImage yet.

  • iOS and iPadOSplanned

    Scaffolded, not built. The HEIF decoder still needs its rung.

Your next shoot is already on the card.

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