Smart Cull (Smart Select)

Smart Select is the AI behind a select's Culling step. It groups burst shots and near-duplicates into stacks, keeps the sharpest frame of each, and, when you choose Remove bad photos, leaves the weak frames out of the client link. Nothing is ever deleted: every photo stays in the select, and your client makes the final call.

Where you find it

Open a select and go to Step 2: Culling. The step asks "What goes into the link?" and offers two choices. Both run Smart Select before the link is made (see "Selects and the client link" for the whole select).

• Keep all photos — "Group them into stacks and send — your customer picks". Every photo goes into the link, with similar frames stacked so your client decides one moment at a time.
• Remove bad photos — "Drops blurred, soft and duplicate frames, you review the rest". The removed photos stay in the select; they are only left out of the link.

A new link starts on the choice you used last (a "Last: …" note on the right says which). If you do not see Remove bad photos, Pixamatch has turned AI culling off, and every photo goes to your client.

What it does to a shoot

1. Finds bursts and duplicates. Photos that look almost the same (the same moment shot several times) are grouped into one stack. Only photos taken close together are compared, and a stack never mixes two parts. With Keep all photos Pixamatch recommends how alike photos must be for each select; you can change it with the Grouping similar shots slider and see the stacks before you send (see "Selects and the client link").
2. Keeps the best frame. With Remove bad photos, the sharpest frame of each stack is the one shown first. With Keep all photos nothing is ranked: a stack shows its earliest frame first.
3. Leaves out the weak frames (Remove bad photos only). Blurred and soft frames and extra copies of the same moment go first. The best moments are kept until your target is reached, spread across the whole shoot from start to finish, so no stretch of the day is left empty. A group photo is judged on everyone in it, not on its one sharpest face, and a photo where one person blinked while the others have their eyes open ranks below its neighbours.

Two more rules can apply to every run: preferring frames where eyes are open, and culling only photos with a face. Pixamatch sets these for you; they are off unless Pixamatch has switched them on.

Choosing how many to keep

Remove bad photos asks how many photos to keep: "Keep the best N photos", with the share beside it, for example "30% of 1,200 · the client can still skip more". Type the number you want (for an album, often 40 or 150), or use the slider underneath, which runs from 1% (Tight) to 80% (Loose) in steps of 1% and starts at 30%. A typed number can go below the slider's 1% — 40 of 7,000 is 0.6% — and the run keeps exactly that many. On a computer, click the slider and use the ← → keys to move it one percent at a time.

A new link holds one function (see "Selects and the client link"), so it has one number and one slider. A re-run into an older link that holds two or more functions also gets a number box and a slider per function, under the first slider, which is then named All functions. Each shows its count and share, for example "810 of 1,800 · 45%". Use them to keep more of the functions that matter for the album (the wedding) and less of the rest (an eve party, the reception).

• Moving All functions moves every function you have not set yourself.
• A function you typed a number for, or moved, keeps its own number. Same for all puts every function back on the All functions slider.
• Each function is cut to its own number, so a big function never eats into a small one.
• The select remembers the numbers for the next run.

Beside it, What your client opens shows the photos the link would keep and dims the ones it would leave out, with a line such as "About 360 of 1,200 — they ♥ their favourites from the shortlist".

Below about 15% the cull starts dropping whole moments rather than extra frames. That is fine for a function that matters little to the album, which is why a slider goes down to 1% (a function with photos always keeps at least one); keep the important functions higher. With a tight number, check the Next best tiles under Does the number fit? on the review screen: they are the moments that only just missed.

Keep all photos has no keep slider: every photo goes to the client.

Keeping more of the key people

Under Advanced options, Keep more of the key people is on for every Remove bad photos run. Pixamatch looks at the faces in the select and picks the people seen most, across the most functions: for a wedding, the couple. A photo with them in it is kept ahead of a similar photo without them.

When the option is on, the faces seen most are shown under it, with a ring around the key ones and the line "Picked for you: the people seen most. Tap a face to change." Tap a face to add or remove a person; your pick is saved for the select. Back to automatic returns to the people seen most. Switch the option off to cull without it.

Keeping more of the moments shot most

Under Advanced options, Keep more of the moments shot most is on for every Remove bad photos run. Clients mostly pick two kinds of photo: moments the photographer shot many frames of, and photos with the couple in them. So Pixamatch does two things:

• A moment counts for more when it is a big stack, and when the key people are in it. An ordinary frame of the couple can be kept over a sharper photo of a guest.
• More of your keep target goes to the stretches of the shoot full of such moments, and less to stretches of one-off shots. Every stretch still keeps at least one photo, so no part of the day goes missing.

Out-of-focus and badly exposed photos are still left out first. Switch the option off to go back to keeping the sharpest moments, spread evenly across the shoot.

Preferring smiles

Under Advanced options, Prefer smiles is on for every Remove bad photos run. Pixamatch reads how much the main faces in a photo are smiling. In a burst, a smiling frame is picked over an equally sharp one without the smile. Between similar photos taken close together, the smiling one is kept first. It never removes a photo on its own, and a serious moment where nobody smiles is treated as before.

A face seen from the side, or partly hidden, has no smile reading and is left out of this. Photos uploaded before 3 October 2026 have no smile readings, so the option changes nothing for them.

Picking the best-looking photos (beta)

Under Advanced options, Pick the best-looking photos (beta) is off unless you switch it on for a run. With it on, Remove bad photos stops ranking moments mainly on sharpness and on how many frames were shot of them. It looks at every moment instead: how the photo looks (light, composition), how the faces came out (focus, open eyes, smiles), and whether the couple is in it. Then it spreads the picks over different scenes, so 40 photos are not 40 frames of the same moment. It is meant for tight numbers, like the best 40 for an album.

The first run on a shoot takes longer, a few minutes for a few thousand photos, because Pixamatch looks at each moment once. Later runs on the same photos are quick. Out-of-focus and badly exposed photos are still left out first. It is a beta: check the Does the number fit? question on the review screen, and tick what it missed.

Making the link

Under Advanced options, Protect with a PIN puts a PIN on the link ("Shown next to the link once made"). It starts on unless Pixamatch has switched that default off.

Press Generate link (Keep all photos) or Remove bad photos & review.

• Keep all photos usually takes seconds. Photos that were never grouped before can take a few minutes.
• Remove bad photos usually takes seconds, and a few minutes on a large set.

While it works you see "Building your client's link" or "Removing the bad photos", with a progress bar and a line saying what it is doing, such as "Checking sharpness & focus…" or "Choosing what to keep…". If other jobs are running first, it says "In the queue…" and your place in it.

The run happens on our server, and the link is made when it finishes, so keep the page open until then. If you refresh the page, it picks up the run where it was. Stop following this run stops waiting and makes no link; press Generate again when you are ready. (If the run had already finished, the link is made straight away.)

When it finishes

After Keep all photos the select moves to Step 3: Client link and says "Client link ready." The link card has the link, the PIN if you asked for one, and the buttons to send it.

After Remove bad photos the third step is called Review & send and says "Picks ready to review." Nothing has gone to your client yet. The step is one screen, Check the AI's picks, that walks you through three questions in the order that works. Answer each one, press Next, and send at the end.

1. Did it miss a moment? Each row is a moment the AI kept nothing of: the time on the left, the frames it dropped on the right. Tick the frame you want back (or press P on it). Skip rows that are rightly gone. Rows where every frame was out of focus or badly exposed are folded away behind "N rows hidden · Show", since there is nothing sharp to bring back. Do this first: a missed moment is the one mistake the album cannot recover from, and you only know how much to trim once you see what was missing.
2. Same moment twice? Each row is one look-alike moment the AI kept two or more frames of. Untick the extras and leave one. This frees the places the first question used. Prefer a frame on the right? Press Use instead under it: that frame is picked and the kept one next to it unpicked in one go.
3. Does the number fit? The grid, in the order of the shoot, with each function's count: "Wedding: 43 / 40 · 3 over", "Reception: 38 / 40 · 2 under" or "fits". Over: untick the picks you can spare. Under: tick the tiles marked Next best, the moments that only just missed.

Ticked or unticked the wrong photo? Press Ctrl+Z (⌘Z on a Mac), in the grid or full screen, or Undo at the bottom of the screen; the photo goes back exactly as it was, reason and all. Ctrl+Shift+Z (or Redo) does it again. Undo remembers every change, Use instead included, until you leave the screen.

Every tile says what it is under the picture, never over it: AI for the AI's picks, Next best, or why a frame was left out (Out of focus, Badly exposed, No face). A number with a stack icon is how many frames the moment has. Open a tile full screen to see the whole frame and, on an AI pick, why that frame leads its stack, for example "Sharpest faces of 6 frames · 2 others had a blink · 3 blurry frames removed first". Going over the number never blocks sending; the count is there to help you decide. The question you were on is remembered if you reload the page.

When you are happy, press one of the two buttons at the top:

• Send to client makes the client link. The step becomes Client link and the link card has the link, the PIN if you asked for one, and the buttons to send it. Your client never sees the reasons.
• Finish without a client takes the kept photos as your own picks. No link goes out. The picks appear as Your picks, with Copy originals to folder, Download ZIP, Lightroom XMP and Design album, the same as picks a client sent.

Run the cull again at the bottom of the step re-runs it with a different keep target.

More about the photos left out:

• After sending, the link card's "N photos left out · See them" opens the list of everything left out. The list shows each photo with its reason (Out of focus, Badly exposed, No face, or Over the keep target for a fine photo that did not fit the share you asked to keep), and a button per reason narrows it. Next best narrows it to the moments ranked just under the ones kept — the best of what a tight number cut, best first — and marks them on the tiles. Press Put back on a photo to return it to the link at its place in the shoot; a photo that stands for a stack comes back with the whole stack. You can put photos back until your client makes their first choice. After that the list is read-only, and re-running the cull into the link is the way to change it.
• To try a tighter or looser cull, press Generate another link and run it again. The link you already sent keeps working ("This makes a new client link. The one you already sent keeps working."). Older links fold under Previous links (N).
• To change what an existing link shows, open the link's ⋯ menu and choose Re-run cull into this link, Cull again, remove bad photos or Cull again, keep all. The step then reads "Re-run this client link" and the button Re-run into this link. If your client has already made choices, Pixamatch asks "Clear what your client has done?" first: re-running starts them over, and the link and PIN stay the same. Press Re-run anyway to go ahead.

Tips and messages

• Upload the whole shoot before you generate. Photos added later are not in a link that was already made; generate again or re-run the link.
• "Upload some photos first." — the select has no photos yet.
• "Server is busy finishing other jobs — try again shortly." — wait a minute and press Generate again.
• "Could not start Smart Select — try again." or "Smart Select failed — try again." — your photos are unchanged. Press Generate again, and ask Pixie (the help chat in the studio) if it keeps failing.
• "Smart Select finished but the link could not be created — try Generate again." — the cull worked but the link was not saved. Press Generate again.
• For a client who wants to see everything, use Keep all photos. For a client who wants a shortlist, use Remove bad photos and set the slider to the size of shortlist you want.