How to Use Aftershoot: A Step-by-Step Guide to Culling, Editing, and Retouching a Full Gallery

A Step-by-Step Guide to Culling, Editing, and Retouching a Full Gallery

If you’ve ever finished a shoot feeling amazing about the photos, then dreaded the days of post-production waiting for you, this guide is for you. Aftershoot is AI-powered software that handles the slow, repetitive parts of your workflow — culling, editing, and retouching — so you can deliver galleries faster and get your evenings back.

But like any powerful tool, it works best when you set it up thoughtfully and understand each step. So instead of just telling you it’s great, I’m going to walk you through the whole thing: getting Aftershoot installed and ready, then taking a full gallery from a memory card to finished, delivered images.

Grab a coffee! This is the complete walkthrough. If you want to follow along in the software, you can start a free trial and get 15% off here.

Part 1: Setting Up Aftershoot Before You Use It

A little setup up front makes everything downstream smoother. Here’s how to get ready.

Step 1: Check that your computer can run it

Aftershoot is a desktop application — there’s no mobile version — and it processes images locally on your machine, which is what keeps it fast and private. Before installing, make sure your computer meets the basics:

At least a 4-core CPU and 8GB of RAM (more is better, especially for large weddings).
macOS Catalina or newer, or Windows 8 or newer.
Enough free drive space for your shoots and exports.

Because it runs locally, you don’t need an internet connection to cull or edit, and your client files never leave your computer.

Step 2: Download and install

Head to Aftershoot’s download page (you can get there through my link for 15% off).
Create your account and start your free trial — it’s a 30-day full-access trial and no credit card is required to begin.
Choose the version that matches your system (Mac or Windows). A file called aftershoot.zip will download automatically.
Open the .zip, double-click the installer, and let it run.
Aftershoot launches on its own when installation finishes. The whole thing takes about five minutes.

Step 3: Organize your files first

This is the step most people skip, and it’s the one that saves you the most headaches later. Before you import anything, get your files in order:

Pull the RAW (or JPEG) files for the shoot you want to work on into one single folder. Aftershoot culls from a folder of images, so a clean, consolidated folder makes import painless.
Build a folder structure you’ll actually stick to — many photographers organize by year, then client or shoot name, then subfolders for raw, edited, and exports.
Back up your cards before you do anything else. When you import from a memory card, Aftershoot can even back the files up to your drive as part of the process — use it.

Step 4: Get oriented

When Aftershoot opens, you’ll see a home screen and, once you’re in an album, a row of tabs across the top — Cull and Edit sit next to each other, with retouching and gallery delivery built into the same flow. That tab bar is your roadmap for everything below. The big idea to keep in mind: Aftershoot’s AI learns from you. The more you cull, edit, and retouch, the more it picks up your patterns and starts making choices that look like yours. Consistency on your end teaches it faster.

Part 2: Culling a Gallery

Culling is the part that usually eats hours, so it’s where you’ll feel the time savings most immediately. Here’s the full process.

Step 1: Create a new album and import

On the home screen, click + Create Album (or + New Album). You’ll land on the Import screen, where you add the folder of images you prepared earlier. If you’re pulling from a memory card, choose the option to back up your files to your device during import.

One important note: you can cull RAW and JPEG files, but you cannot cull Lightroom or Capture One catalogs — those can only be edited. So for a fresh gallery, always start from your raw files.

Step 2: Choose your shoot type and name the album

After importing, Aftershoot asks what kind of shoot you’re working with. Pick the genre that fits (wedding, portrait, family, and so on), then give the album a clear name so you can find it later.

Step 3: Start the cull and pick your culling style

Click the Cull tab at the top, then hit Start Culling. You’ll be asked to choose how you want to cull:

AI Automated Culling — Aftershoot analyzes the full take and selects the best images for you to review. This is the fastest, most hands-off option and a great default.
AI Assisted Culling — You make the selections yourself, but with AI support: duplicate grouping, Key Faces Detection (so you can see who’s in focus and whose eyes are open), and image quality scores. Choose this when you want more control over a creative or unusual shoot.
Manual — You assign your own star ratings and color labels without running the AI cull at all.

You’ll also be able to set your culling preferences here — for example, which star ratings and color labels get applied to different groups like Selected, Duplicates, Blurred, and Closed Eyes. Once your preferences are set, click Start Cullingagain and let it run. On a large gallery, this is the moment you walk away and refill that coffee.

Step 4: Review the AI’s selections

When the cull finishes, you’ll get a notification in the app (and an email). Now you review — and this part matters, because the AI gets you most of the way there, but you make the final call.

By default you’ll see your picks in Grid View, with Selected and Highlights shown first and duplicates stacked so you’re not distracted.
Use the Cull Filters on the right to jump between groups: AI Selections (Selected, Highlights) and For Review (Blurred, Closed Eyes).
Switch between Grid, Loupe, and Survey views depending on whether you’re scanning quickly or comparing a few frames closely.
Use Flags (the P key) to mark your own must-keeps in the My Selections group.
Skim the “For Review” groups to rescue any blurred-but-meaningful or eyes-closed-but-perfect-moment shots the AI set aside.

Step 5: Save your changes

If you adjusted any of the AI’s selections — and you usually will — click Save Changes. It’s an easy step to forget, and forgetting it means redoing your review.

At this point you have two options: export your selects to your editing software of choice, or stay in Aftershoot and keep going into editing. Since the whole point is keeping it under one roof, let’s keep going.

Part 3: Editing the Gallery

This is where Aftershoot stops being just a culling tool and starts saving you serious editing time — especially once it’s learned your style.

Step 1: Choose how you’ll edit

Click the Edit tab (right next to Cull). You’ll choose what’s applying your look:

Professional AI Profile — Your own personal style, trained on your past Lightroom catalogs. This is the gold standard: Aftershoot studies how you edit and learns to replicate it. The more consistent your past edits, the better it matches you.
Instant AI Profile — A faster way to get a personalized look by training on a preset you already love and a few sample edits.
AI Styles / Creator Styles — Pre-built styles (including ones curated by well-known photographers) you can browse, preview on your own images, and apply. Great if you’re still developing your signature look or want a starting point.

Step 2: Set your editing preferences

With a profile selected, choose your color profile and decide whether you want Aftershoot to handle automatic cropping and straightening as it edits. You can also lean on subject masking for more control over specific areas of the image. If you only want crops and straightening without a full edit, there’s a Crop & Straighten–only option in the profile dropdown.

Step 3: Filter and run the edit

Use the filters to narrow down to exactly the images you want to edit — for instance, only your four- and five-star selects. Then click Edit [X] Photos and let it work. As with culling, you’ll get an in-app and email notification when it’s done.

Step 4: Review and fine-tune

The AI gets you most of the way, and then you polish. Aftershoot includes manual editing controls that will feel familiar if you’ve used Lightroom or Capture One, so you can fine-tune exposure, white balance, and individual images right inside the app. Spot-check the gallery for consistency, fix any frames that drifted (tricky lighting and white balance are the usual culprits), and adjust to taste.

A tip that pays off: every manual tweak you make teaches the AI. Over a few galleries, you’ll find yourself correcting less and less.

Part 4: Retouching

Once your edits look right, you can retouch without ever opening Photoshop. Aftershoot’s AI Retouching applies natural, professional portrait enhancements across the whole gallery in a single pass.

It handles the repetitive retouching work you’d normally do image by image:

Skin smoothing and blemish removal, with a finish that still looks like skin.
Wrinkle reduction and teeth whitening.
Hair, glare, and background cleanup, including backdrop replacement.

Apply it across the album, then review. The goal is a polished, natural result — so as always, scan through and dial anything back that feels heavy-handed. You stay the final editor; Aftershoot just removes the grind.

Part 5: Delivering the Gallery

Here’s the newest piece, and it’s a big time-saver: you can deliver straight from Aftershoot instead of juggling another service.

Build a client gallery right inside the app, upload your edited and retouched images, and share it.
Control downloads — offer them free, or charge for them and connect Stripe to get paid.
Sell prints through the built-in store, and use the face filter so guests can instantly find photos of themselves (a genuine money-maker for weddings and events).

Prefer to finish elsewhere? You can also export — straight to a folder on your computer, or directly into Lightroom Classic, Lightroom, Capture One, Bridge, or Photoshop, with your ratings and labels carried over.

A Few Habits That Make Aftershoot Even Better

Be consistent so the AI learns faster. It’s modeling your patterns; clean, consistent input trains a sharper profile.
Always review its work. Treat the AI as a fast, tireless first-round assistant — not a replacement for your eye.
Cull in one sitting when you can. Momentum beats perfection, and Aftershoot makes a single-session cull realistic even on big galleries.
Train your Professional AI Profile on your best, most consistent past work, not a random grab-bag — the quality of what you feed it shapes the quality of what it gives back.

Ready to Win Back Your Time?

The honest takeaway: Aftershoot won’t replace your creative eye, and it shouldn’t. What it will do is hand you back the hours you’d otherwise lose to clicking through duplicates, matching edits frame by frame, and retouching one portrait at a time. That’s time you can pour into shooting more, serving your clients better, or simply logging off at a reasonable hour.

The best way to see if it fits your workflow is to run it on a real gallery. You can start your free 30-day trial and get 15% off with my link here — no credit card needed to start.

xoxo

Cassidy