8 Artistic Criteria
Aesthetic quality, composition, storytelling, originality, message, humor, visual games and spontaneity, each scored 1–10. Every photo gets a full profile, not a pass/fail grade.
AI Photo Culling
Cull photos for meaning, not just focus
The first pass is a technical filter: blinks, blur, the best frame of each burst. Photoreka does the rest of the cull. It flags the near-duplicates that slip through and reads the photos you kept across 8 artistic criteria—aesthetics, composition, storytelling, originality and more—so the frames that carry your work rise to the top.
Not binary keep/reject, and not a focus check. A multi-dimensional ranking that judges each photo against the rest of your body of work: a technically imperfect frame with real narrative weight stays in.
The missing step
Culling apps filter volume. Photoreka reads bodies of work
Between the shoot and the finished work there's a step most photographers have felt without naming. It used to happen on a table or the floor, with the prints spread out to see the work as a whole.
Photoreka is that table for your whole catalog: it reads your keepers as one body of work, and that's where curation begins.
01Shoot
The fieldwork
Bursts, near-misses and repeats. A memory card keeps everything, even what you'll never show.
iPhone
02Filter
The technical first pass
Clear failures out: blinks, blur, duplicates. The best of each burst kept.
- By hand
Aftershoot
Imagen
Narrative Select
03Curate
The editorial overview
Where your catalog is read as a whole: its patterns understood, every photo critiqued, the work curated.
04Show
The showcase
A portfolio, a photobook, an exhibition, a contest entry or a client selection—chosen, and in order.
Instagram
Flickr- Your client
- A photobook
Libraries like Lightroom, Excire, Peakto or Mylio are built to keep and find everything you shot. Photoreka is built for the photos you kept—up to 50,000 of them—because it reads every photo against all the others: originality, patterns and gaps only show up in a body of work, not in a memory card.
How it works
How AI culling works
No guesswork, no black box. Here's exactly what happens when Photoreka processes your selects.
- 01
Bring the photos you kept
Start after the first pass. Send your picks or a collection from Lightroom Classic, or bring them from Google Photos, Google Drive, Dropbox or local folders. Photoreka's AI reads each image—composition, light, color, subject, mood and the story it tells.
- 02
Eight artistic scores are computed
Each photo is scored 1–10 on 8 criteria: aesthetic quality, composition, storytelling, originality, message, humor, visual games and spontaneity. Focus and blinks aren't on the list—the first pass already filtered them out. No single criterion decides the outcome.
- 03
Your body of work is ranked
Near-duplicates are flagged and photos are sorted by an overall rating or by any single criterion. The frames that carry your work rise to the top—whether they're technically perfect or compelling despite their imperfections.
- 04
Refine with natural language
Combine scoring with semantic search: 'show me my top-rated portraits from summer' or 'best compositions in black and white'. Scores and search work together to give you exactly what you need.
Features
Culling that understands photography
Focus and blinks are the first pass's job. Photoreka evaluates what makes a kept photo worth showing—from narrative weight to compositional intent.
Artistic Intent Matters
A motion-blurred street photo with raw energy won't be pushed down for being 'unsharp'. Photoreka doesn't score sharpness at all: it judges intent and artistic merit.
Instant Results
Once analyzed, scores are persistent. Filter and sort your work by any criterion at any time—no reprocessing needed. Results appear in milliseconds.
Search + Score Combined
Use natural language search and scoring together: find your highest-rated golden hour shots, or your most compositionally strong portraits from a specific trip.
Built for the Second Pass
Made for the photos you kept, not every photo you shot: a body of work of up to 50,000 photos. Each frame is read against the rest of that work—a signal that bursts and rejects would only drown.
From Culling to Curation
Once your strongest frames surface, move straight to sequencing, portfolio building or the 3D Atlas. Ranking the keepers is where the editing starts, not where it ends.
Photoreka Picks
Or rank up to 5,000 photos, no sign-up
Skip the setup: drop a batch of your keepers and let an AI jury score, critique and rank every frame to surface your best shots.
New · Photoreka Picks
Find your best shots. No account needed.
Drop up to 5,000 photos and let an AI jury score every frame, write a short critique for each one and rank them through street, documentary, landscape or award juries. Pay per photo, or try it free with 10.
- Scores on 8 artistic criteria
- A written critique for every photo
- Originals never leave your device
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Everything you need to know about AI photo culling
They're built for large volumes of photos, and they're good at it: spotting the shots that failed, grouping duplicates and picking the best frame of each moment so a shoot becomes a deliverable set. Use them for the first pass. Photoreka finishes the cull on a more carefully curated catalog—what survives—which is what lets it go a level higher: curation and editorial judgment. It flags the near-duplicates that slip through, scores your keepers on 8 artistic criteria, judges each one against the rest of your body of work, and connects the result to search, sequencing and portfolio building. They judge frames; Photoreka reads bodies of work. Compare the best AI culling software →
No. Photoreka doesn't score sharpness or technical quality, so a motion-blurred street scene or a high-grain documentary shot is judged on what it says: storytelling, originality, composition and emotional weight.
Photoreka is built for a body of work of up to 50,000 photos—the keepers of years of shooting, not every frame off the card. That's a design choice: each photo is scored against the rest of your work, and bursts, blinks and near-duplicates would drown that signal. Filter each shoot first, by hand or with your usual tool, then bring the selects: Photoreka flags the near-duplicates that slip through.
You can sort and filter by any individual criterion (aesthetics, composition, storytelling, etc.) or use the overall rating, and your profile adjusts how the criteria are weighted. With the Commercial Photography profile, subject clarity and commercial intent replace two criteria for client work; for a personal series, lean on storytelling and spontaneity.
Analysis runs in the background and typically processes around 1,000 photos per hour. Once analyzed, scores are permanent—you never need to reprocess. Filtering and sorting is instantaneous.
Yes. Select your picks or a collection in Lightroom Classic and send them with the official plugin—exactly the second pass Photoreka is built for. Photos are analyzed in the cloud (only compressed previews are sent—never your originals) and scores are available both in the web platform and referenced from within Lightroom.
Absolutely. Culling, scoring, and portfolio building are all part of the same workflow. Surface your top-scored photos, refine with natural language, and use the sequencing tools to arrange them into a cohesive portfolio or exhibition selection.
The first pass kept them. Photoreka ranks them.
Your best photos are already among your keepers. Let Photoreka surface them—scored, ranked, and ready for your next portfolio, book or contest.
Want to see the detailed scoring? Explore Photo Scoring