Pet photography editing and culling that finds the dog first
A spaniel who won't sit, a cat who sits only when you've lowered the camera, and four hundred frames of ears, tails and blur. CullTone's pet preset finds the animal in every frame, keeps the sharp ones, and leaves the personality calls to you.
The pet, not the owner
Cats and dogs are looked for before people, so the owner's smile doesn't decide the frame.
Sharp where it counts
Focus is judged on the animal itself, and the sharpest head with the biggest presence wins its burst.
Named in the reason
"The dog is sharp." "The cat is cut off at the left edge." Short, plain and about the right animal.
Horses too
Any animal the cull can find gets the same treatment, from a rescue cat to a show pony.
A culler should cut misses and leave the choosing to you
The owner's favourite frame is rarely the sharpest one. It's the head tilt, the tongue, the look back over the shoulder. No software reads a dog's personality well, so the pet preset doesn't pretend to. It puts sharpness and framing first, judges expression only lightly, and sends the near-misses in every burst to Review, where you pick the one with the soul in it.
- Motion blur on the animal is a fault. A dog mid-sprint has to be sharp to be a keeper.
- Indoor sessions up to ISO 12,800 pass without a noise flag.
- Each run of near-identical frames keeps one, and at least two frames survive from every set-up, so the park and the sofa both make the gallery.
- An animal cut off at the frame edge, or too small to judge, gets a reason saying so.
- The preset aims to keep around twenty frames in a hundred, and you can raise or lower that per session.
Every reason the cull can give is on the culling page.
Warm, clean edits for fur
The starting edit keeps colour natural with a light white-balance correction. Golden-hour glow is a favourite for outdoor sessions, Light & airy suits white studio sweeps, and Film: Portra warm gives indoor portraits a soft, homely feel. Painting out a stray lead or a tennis ball is free in the edit studio for small distractions.
A gallery the owners will show everyone
Owners get one link, open it on a phone and heart their favourites, which tells you exactly which frames to print or retouch. They can approve photos, ask for a redo with a note, and download single images or a ZIP if you allow it. The gallery stays up for six months, with an extension a click away. The gallery delivery guide walks through it.
Quick answers
What does it need?
A Mac with Apple silicon. Culling runs there, free per photo. CullTone is in beta, with no Windows build yet.
Does it work for wild animals too?
There's a separate preset for that. See wildlife and bird photography.
Bring a session full of wagging tails
Free for 30 days. Then plans from $9 a month. Pick a plan later.