Been seeing more AI culling apps lately — AfterShoot, Narrative Select, Pixellu Smart — and I’m curious which ones stay light on RAM. I’m culling about 1,800 RAWs from a wedding on a 16" M1 Pro with 16 GB and LR Classic 13.3, and a couple spiked to 12–14 GB during previews. Any picks that are fast, don’t demand full catalog access, and push ratings/flags back to Lightroom cleanly?
On my 16 GB M1 Pro, Narrative Select’s been the least spiky — around 3–5 GB on about 1,800 RAWs — and it writes flags/ratings to XMP so LR picks them up cleanly without catalog access. > and LR Classic 13.3, and a couple spiked to 12–14 GB during previews. Any picks that are , same here; I avoid that by quitting LR while Select builds previews, then reopening LR and doing Metadata > Read Metadata from Files. Small caveat: AfterShoot felt faster on faces, but it pushed past 10 GB for me, so I only grab it when I really want auto-rejects.