Features
Everything it does, and nothing it doesn’t.
Cullora has one job: get a shoot from a memory card into sorted folders faster than anything else, without ever risking a file. It is not an editor and it is not a catalog. Here is the whole of it, marked honestly for what ships today.
01 / Open
A shoot opens in seconds, not minutes
No import step, no catalog, no database. Point Cullora at the folder your card filled and it reads the JPEG preview already baked into every file.
Instant previews from the RAW itself
Every RAW file carries a full-size JPEG made by the camera. Cullora shows you that, so a frame appears in milliseconds instead of waiting on a RAW develop.
Seven RAW formats
ARW, CR2, CR3, NEF, RAF, ORF and DNG, plus JPEG. Sony, Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, Olympus, and anything that writes DNG.
A justified grid that never crops
Rows are laid out at each photo's real aspect ratio, so a vertical stays vertical and nothing is centre-cropped into a lie. Thumbnail size is a slider.
Nothing is uploaded, ever
Culling happens entirely on your machine. Cullora has no server that sees your photographs, and buying a licence does not change that.
02 / Judge
Look properly before you decide
A culling tool that makes you squint at a thumbnail is a file manager with extra steps. Full screen, real zoom, and the shooting data when you want it.
100% zoom to the point you clicked
Click anywhere to zoom straight to that spot, drag to pan, Ctrl and scroll to zoom around the cursor. The target level is configurable at 100, 200 or 400%.
EXIF panel
Shutter, aperture, ISO, focal length, lens and capture time, read from the RAW or the JPEG.
Neutral grey surroundings
The chrome around a photograph is desaturated on purpose. A warm interface shifts how you perceive white balance and skin tone, which is why every serious editor does the same.
03 / Cull
One hand on the keyboard, the shoot goes past
Lightroom key conventions, so there is nothing to relearn. Rate as you pass through, then filter down to what you rated.
Star ratings and pick/reject flags
The same keys Lightroom uses, so muscle memory carries straight over. Rate on the way through rather than in a second pass.
Live filters
Filter by flag and by minimum stars, with counts that update as you cull, so you can watch the shoot shrink to the keepers.
Ratings written to XMP sidecars
Carry your stars and flags straight into Lightroom or Capture One instead of doing the whole pass twice. Cullora edits an existing sidecar in place rather than rewriting it, so your develop settings, crops and masks are left exactly as they were.
04 / File
The keeper lands in the right folder, whole
This is what separates a culling tool from a viewer. A decision is a keystroke, and the keystroke moves real files.
RAW, JPG and sidecar move as one photo
DSC00123.ARW, DSC00123.JPG and DSC00123.xmp are one photo group. Move it and all three go together. No orphaned sidecars, no RAW left behind on the card.
One destination folder
Pick where the keepers go, then send the photo you are on there with a single chord.
Nine destination folders
Name nine folders and file into any of them as you go: keepers, maybes, client picks, black and white, the second shooter's, one per subject. This is the actual professional workflow, and it is why a shoot leaves Cullora already sorted instead of merely shorter.
Choose what actually moves
Move the whole group, the RAW and its sidecar only, or just the JPG. Useful when the JPGs are the deliverable and the RAWs stay on the archive drive.
Rename as you file
Number photos into a client convention as they land: Lamborghini_001, Lamborghini_002, then BMW_001 in the next folder. Renaming is per destination folder, so one pass can number into several conventions at once. The whole group is renamed together, collision suffixing still applies so nothing is overwritten, and undo puts the camera's original names back.
Static gallery export
Export what your filters currently show as a self-contained folder with its own web page: no internet, no account, nothing to install. Hand it to a client on a USB stick or upload it to any host.
05 / Trust
File operations are treated as sacred
Everything above only matters if it cannot lose a photograph. This is the part of Cullora with unit tests around it.
Nothing is ever overwritten
A name clash gets an explicit suffix, never a silent replace. If any file in a group fails to move, the whole move rolls back rather than leaving you half filed.
Undo, one hundred deep
Every move is journaled and reversible, and undo refuses rather than clobbering a file that has since reappeared at the original path.
Moves, not copies
Your originals stay your originals. Cullora does not build a second library, a cache of your photographs, or a proprietary format you would have to escape from later.
Free is a complete culling app.
Not a trial, not a demo, no card, no photo limit. Download it, cull a real shoot with it, and only think about Pro when you want the shoot to come out the other end already sorted, renamed, and readable by Lightroom.
Questions
Is the free version limited by how many photos I can cull?
No, and it never will be. There is no daily cap, no monthly cap and no shoot-size limit. A twelve-hour wedding with three thousand frames culls on the free version exactly as fast as on Pro. The paid tier adds workflow; it does not sell back the thing the app is for.
What is the actual difference between Free and Pro?
Free culls: one folder in, keepers out, unlimited photos, the whole keyboard workflow. Pro delivers: nine destination folders instead of one, ratings written to XMP sidecars so Lightroom sees them, renaming as you file, and gallery export. Free gets you through the shoot. Pro gets the shoot out the door.
Which platforms does it run on?
Windows today. macOS is in progress, and one licence covers both, because it is a licence for Cullora rather than for an operating system.
Does Cullora edit my photos?
No. It reads, it sorts and it moves. Developing, retouching and export stay in Lightroom, Capture One or whatever you already use. Cullora is the step before those, and it hands over cleanly.
Do I need an account?
You need a free account to download the app and to activate a Pro licence. You never need one to cull. Once installed, Cullora works completely offline, and no licence check can stop you working.