Meet CullKit — Cull before Lightroom. On your phone

Photo And Video

CullKit

Cull before Lightroom. On your phone.

Every feature, from the first launch.

No account, no login, no cloud. Everything runs on your device and works fully offline — nothing in this post is hidden behind a wall.

What CullKit does

CullKit is the offline pre-Lightroom photo culler for iPhone shooters. Cull 2,000 frames during a flight, on the bus, in the field — and write 1-to-5-star ratings directly into the Photos library so Lightroom Classic picks them up on next import.

What CullKit does:

— Burst + near-duplicate detection on-device. Vision framework groups your photo bursts and visually-similar shots automatically. Swipe through one group at a time. — On-device blur detection. Vision flags soft focus and motion blur. CullKit suggests a pick within each burst, you keep or override. — Eyes-closed + face detection. If everyone's eyes are open, the photo bubbles up. — Big-thumb star rating. 1-to-5 stars per shot with one tap. Or reject with a swipe-left. — Writes back to Photos. The star rating becomes a real Photos rating. When you import to Lightroom Classic, the rating travels with the photo. — Cull from any folder. Your last shoot, your last trip, an entire month, a smart album. — No cloud. No upload. No AI service. No subscription. Vision + CoreML runs entirely on your iPhone's Neural Engine.

Photographers shoot 2,500-4,500 frames per wedding (Aftershoot). The culling step costs them 3+ hours per event. CullKit cuts it to one — without ever leaving the phone.

A look inside

Tap any screenshot to open the full-resolution version.

What's inside

Album picker — Pick the album/shoot to cull; Photos permission asked once
Cull view — Single-photo big preview; star rating + reject buttons; swipe between bursts
Burst grouping — Vision-based; jump between burst groups instead of single shots
Stats — How many culled, how many kept, time saved
Settings — Toggle: auto-suggest pick / detect eyes closed / detect blur

Why we built it

Photographers spend hours culling photos before Lightroom but every iOS culler is either Mac-only (OptiCull), cloud-AI-dependent (Aftershoot), or doesn't write XMP-compatible star ratings into Photos.

What makes it different

CullKit is the only iOS culler that runs burst grouping + blur + face/eyes-closed detection 100% on-device with Vision and writes 1-5 star ratings directly into the Photos library (round-trips to Lightroom Classic on import) — PhotoPicker writes ratings but has complex UI, OptiCull is Mac-only, Aftershoot requires clo…

Who it's for

Visual journalers, the time-lapse curious, and anyone trying to remember what last spring actually looked like.

In one line: Cull before Lightroom. On your phone.

Try it

See the CullKit app page for the full feature list, the info table, and support links.

Use CullKit, found a bug, or have a feature request? Comments are open below — anonymous is fine.