My Narrative Select Workflow (+ Why I Still Outsource Weddings)

This year is my 10th anniversary of starting my business as a wedding and elopement photographer. And looking back, I can’t believe how much things have changed. When I first started, my “workflows” were nonexistent. I used Word to create invoices, imported full (un-culled) shoots into Lightroom, had just discovered a new app called Instagram, and had never heard of things like a CRM.

It is honestly hard to think about how I ever managed to run my business the way I did when I first started, although the burnout I suffered a couple of years in was probably the first real wakeup call that something wasn’t working.

I’ve been an Adobe Lightroom user since the very start. I learned to use Lightroom to edit, and even had a few presets I used regularly. However, back in those early years, I was importing full shoots into Lightroom. The import process took so long, and I remember that I was filling up my hard drive so quickly with tens of thousands of RAW files.

I don’t remember if it was 2018 or 2019 before I first came across Photomechanic. Chatting with some other photographers at a conference, we were speaking about workflows and culling. That was the first time I realized that my workflows were woefully inefficient.

Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to test out many different tools for culling and editing. And while I have chosen to still outsource my elopements, Narrative Select + Edit has become a staple part of my workflow for smaller shoots.

In this article, I’ll walk you through my editing workflow, how I use Narrative Select + Edit, and why I still outsource some of my work to humans to edit over AI.

Why I Tried Narrative Select + Edit

I was first made aware of Narrative Select around the same time that a few other (now) well-known AI-driven culling software options were gaining popularity. I was actually asked to test a few for an article on this website, and that’s how I came to know about Narrative Select (the “Edit” function came later).

I tried a few of the fully automated AI culling tools, and at first impressions, I was quite underwhelmed. While most did an OK job, there was no way I would trust them to do a full cull of a wedding without my looking over the results. And since I was looking over the results myself, this wasn’t saving me any more time than if I had just manually culled everything myself in Photomechanic. And yes, I know that the AI needs to be trained on multiple shoots to get better results. The fact was, I didn’t trust it enough. So I didn’t use it.

When I tried Narrative Select, that was different. Instead of giving up control to AI, with Narrative, I was still 100% in control of the selections. Rather than the software choosing for me, it rated the images to help me choose faster.

It rated images in a sequence, so I could see which were the best ones, gave images ratings for sharpness, rated images for eyes open/closed, and selected the faces, so I could instantly see which ones were the keepers. But the key thing is it didn’t make the selections for me – it simply analyzed my images, gave them ratings, and let me decide which ones I wanted to keep.

When they launched the additional Edit feature, I was skeptical, as I’m not really a fan of AI editing (or AI in general, to be very honest). But I decided to test it out on a last-minute engagement shoot booking since my editors didn’t have availability for an additional job. And I was actually pretty pleased with the result. And now I use it for all of my smaller shoots (like proposals, couple shoots, etc.).

How Narrative Select + Edit Fits Into My Workflow

My post-shoot workflow always starts in exactly the same way, regardless of whether I plan to edit the shoot myself or send it to my editors. As soon as I get home, I use Photomechanic to import, rename, and back up all of the raw files from the shoot. I rename the raw files to the couple’s names so that they are easily searchable, and back them up to two additional locations. I also name the folder Name + Name RAW.

Once everything is imported, renamed, and backed up, I then open the folder of raw files in Narrative. This takes just a couple of minutes until everything is loaded, and I can start reviewing them.

After a recent shoot, the full workflow went like this:

Step 1 – Import photos into Photomechanic.
Rename and backup files to two locations.

Number of files: 397
Time taken to import and backup: 3 mins 21 seconds

Step 2 – Import folder in Narrative Select + Edit.
During this next step, I let Narrative analyze the images, then I go through them an mark which ones I want to keep. For this shoot, I reduced the selection from 397 to 188 images.

Time taken to import and cull: 10 mins and 28 seconds

Step 3 – Export to Lightroom and add initial pre-edit.
During this step, I only export the selected images to Lightroom using the Narrative “Ship + Edit” function. For this shoot, I had selected 188 images to ship to Lightroom.

Time taken to export 188 images to Lightroom: 4 mins 19 seconds

Step 4 – Make final adjustments in Lightroom.
Once the initial edits were applied, I went through the full selection in Lightroom, made some minor adjustments (such as cropping, denoise, and adjusting white balance). I culled a few more images out at this stage to result in a final gallery export of 94 images.

Time taken: 1 hour, 25 minutes

Why I Still Outsource Weddings and Elopements

This system is working great for me for smaller shoots, such as lifestyle sessions and couple shoots. It allows me to have a super fast turnaround, whilst still delivery a high-quality end product. However, for weddings and elopements, I am still outsourcing the main cull and edit.

Whilst I think that AI-assisted culling and editing can help speed up a workflow, I personally don’t feel like it is enough for my standards to rely on this alone. There is still a need for that human-touch – checking the culled files and adding a more detailed edit. And because I like to have a fast delivery time for galleries, I outsource this to my editors so that even in high season, I can have galleries delivered in 2-3 weeks.

I do still use Narrative for the initial cull for weddings and elopements, as this saves me a lot of money compared to having my editor do the full cull. I use Narrative Select to help me remove the NO photos from the gallery, leaving the YES and MAYBE images for my editors to review. This usually means I can cull 50% of the files before sending them to my editors, which saves me around $40 per wedding.

The Benefits of This Hybrid Approach

This hybrid approach is working really well for me. I’ve found it to be a great balance of control over the editing process, whilst still being fast and efficient with gallery deliveries.

This has allowed me to increase my income by taking on smaller shoots, but without dramatically increasing my workload, and continuing to deliver a consistent, polished final product.

Ready to give Narrative Select + Edit a try? Click on the link below to start a free trial