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Cull HEIC, Video, and Live Photos from an iPhone Shoot

By Ingo D ·

You shot a wedding rehearsal, a product session, or a full day of behind-the-scenes coverage entirely on an iPhone, and now you have a mixed pile of files: hundreds of HEIC stills, a run of video clips, and a batch of Live Photos with that faint motion icon in the corner. Most culling tools are built for one thing: a folder of RAW or JPEG stills. Point them at an iPhone shoot and the video clips get skipped, the Live Photos show up as two disconnected files, and the HEIC images either fail to preview or get flattened to a generic thumbnail with no rating support.

Culling an iPhone shoot needs a tool that treats HEIC, video, and Live Photos as first-class citizens, not stills-only leftovers. CullKit does exactly that: HEIC, video, and Live Photo support sit alongside RAW and JPEG in the same culling session, on the same swipe-through workflow, writing to the same XMP metadata your desktop editor already reads.

CullKit is an independent product. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple Inc., Adobe (Lightroom), Capture One, Synology Inc., QNAP Technologies, Inc., TrueNAS / iXsystems, or UGREEN Group. HEIC, Live Photo, and iPhone are trademarks of Apple Inc.

Why is culling an iPhone shoot different from a DSLR or mirrorless shoot?

An iPhone shoot mixes three format types a camera body never produces together: HEIC stills (Apple’s default photo format since iOS 11), H.265/HEVC video clips, and Live Photos, which are a still and a short motion clip bound together as one asset. A DSLR or mirrorless culling session is one format, one decision per frame. An iPhone shoot is three different review actions layered into the same folder, and a culling tool that only understands RAW+JPEG pairs will silently mishandle two of the three.

The practical effect shows up fast. Open a folder of iPhone output in a RAW-focused culling app and video clips often appear as black or grey placeholder tiles with no play control. Live Photos appear as a plain still with no indication a motion clip exists, or as two separate unlinked files if the motion component exported alongside it. HEIC files sometimes preview at low resolution or fail to render color correctly if the app expects sRGB JPEG and gets a wide-gamut HEIC instead. None of that is a fault in the files. It is a gap in tools that were never built to expect an iPhone as the primary camera.

How do I get HEIC, video, and Live Photos off my iPhone and into a culling session?

Before you can cull anything, the files need to leave the Photos app and land in a folder CullKit can browse (a local folder, an external SSD, or a NAS share over SMB). The Photos app itself is not a browsable source; the files have to be exported first, and the export method determines whether you keep the original HEIC/HEVC data or lose it to an automatic conversion.

  1. Check your transfer format first. On the iPhone, go to Settings > Camera > Formats and confirm “Transfer to Mac or PC” is set to Keep Originals, not Automatic. Automatic silently converts HEIC to JPEG and HEVC video to H.264 whenever you transfer to an app or computer it thinks does not support the native formats. If you want to test CullKit’s actual HEIC and HEVC handling, Keep Originals is non-negotiable.
  2. Export the shoot from Photos. Select the frames (stills, videos, and Live Photos together), tap the share icon, and choose Save to Files. This preserves the Live Photo’s motion component and the video’s native codec, unlike sending a photo through Messages or a web share link, which flattens everything to a single compressed JPEG.
  3. Pick a destination CullKit can reach. Save directly to an “On My iPhone” folder for a fully local workflow, to an external SSD over USB-C (iPhone 15 and later use USB-C natively; older Lightning models need a certified Lightning-to-USB-3 adapter), or to a NAS share over SMB, for example smb://192.168.1.50/Shoots/2026-09-26-Wedding, if your Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS, or UGREEN device is already on the same network.
  4. Add the folder in CullKit. Open CullKit, choose the matching source type (local folder, SSD, or SMB/NAS), and browse to the destination folder. The shoot appears in the grid exactly as it left the Photos app: HEIC stills, video thumbnails with a play badge, and Live Photos with the motion indicator intact.

If you shoot directly to a folder rather than through the Photos app (some third-party camera apps write straight to Files), you can skip steps 1 and 2 entirely and add that folder to CullKit right away.

What is HEIC and does CullKit rate it like a normal photo?

HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container) is Apple’s default photo format since iOS 11, built on the HEIF standard and typically encoded with HEVC. It stores comparable image quality to JPEG at roughly half the file size, which is why an iPhone shoot fills a memory budget so much slower than the same shot count in JPEG. Yes, CullKit rates HEIC exactly like any other still: swipe or keyboard-rate it in a culling session, and the star rating, reject flag, or colour label is recorded the same way it would be for a RAW or JPEG frame.

The one meaningful difference is where the metadata lands. Unlike a proprietary RAW file, HEIC’s container format supports embedded XMP metadata natively, so CullKit’s configurable XMP behaviour lets you choose whether HEIC ratings get embedded directly into the file or written to a separate sidecar to match a RAW-based workflow. If your desktop workflow already expects sidecars for RAW+JPEG shoots, keep HEIC on sidecars for consistency. If you want ratings baked into the file itself, so the HEIC carries its own metadata even if the sidecar gets separated from it, switch to embedded XMP for stills in CullKit’s settings.

Can I play and rate video clips during a culling session?

Yes. CullKit’s full-screen viewer supports inline video playback, so a clip from an iPhone shoot plays and scrubs the same way a still displays, and you rate it with the same swipe gesture or keyboard shortcut you would use on a photo. There is no separate “video mode”: video clips sit in the same culling queue as your stills and Live Photos, and a reject, star rating, or colour label applies to the clip exactly as it would to a frame.

This matters because an iPhone shoot often mixes a handful of video clips into an otherwise photo-heavy session: a bridal prep clip shot between stills, a product-turntable pan, a short interview soundbite for behind-the-scenes content. Culling those clips inline, in the same pass as the stills around them, means you are not exporting them to a separate video-review tool and losing the context of where they fell in the shoot. Because CullKit’s XMP behaviour can be configured to write metadata for RAW and video files specifically, video ratings travel to your desktop editor the same way a RAW rating does, via a sidecar written alongside the clip.

How does CullKit handle Live Photos during a cull?

A Live Photo is not two unrelated files that happen to share a name. It is a single asset made of a still (JPEG or HEIC) and a short paired QuickTime motion clip, typically capturing about 1.5 seconds before and after the shutter press, linked internally by a shared content identifier so the Photos app treats them as one item. When a Live Photo leaves the Photos app through Save to Files, both components come along, and CullKit’s viewer recognises the pairing: the full-screen viewer plays the motion clip on the Live Photo the same way it would surface video playback, rather than showing you a static frame with no indication that motion exists.

For culling purposes, you rate the moment once. The decision you make on a Live Photo, whether that is a 5-star select or a reject, is the decision for that asset. You are not separately reviewing “the still” and “the clip” as two competing frames in your queue, which is exactly the kind of duplicate-review problem CullKit already solves for RAW+JPEG pairs shot on a mirrorless body. If you only need the still for delivery and never touch the motion clip again, that is fine. The pairing is there so the culling pass does not force you to make the same decision twice.

How do my HEIC, video, and Live Photo ratings get into Lightroom or Capture One?

Every rating, reject flag, and colour label from a CullKit culling session is written to XMP, the same open metadata standard Lightroom and Capture One already read on import. For a RAW+JPEG shoot, that means a sidecar file. For an iPhone shoot, the path depends on the format and the XMP mode you have set in CullKit: HEIC stills can carry ratings as embedded XMP directly in the file, which Lightroom reads the moment you import, no separate sidecar to keep track of; video clips get a standard sidecar (IMG_1234.MOV.xmp) that Lightroom Classic and Capture One both read when you point them at the folder; Live Photos inherit whichever mode applies to their still component, since the still is what your editor treats as the primary asset.

Open Lightroom Classic, point Import at the exported folder, and your star ratings and rejects appear on the thumbnails before you even click Import, exactly as they would for a culled RAW shoot. If the folder is already in your catalogue and you culled a second pass afterward, use Library > Synchronize Folder, or select the images and run Metadata > Read Metadata from Files, to pull the updated ratings in. Capture One needs the same one-time nudge: Metadata > Load Metadata reloads sidecar and embedded changes for anything already sitting in a session or catalogue. For the full mechanics of how XMP sidecars and embedded metadata travel between apps, see the XMP sidecar workflow guide.

None of this requires uploading anything. CullKit runs entirely on your device and writes metadata to your own storage, whether that is a local folder, an SSD, or a NAS share; see the FAQ for the full privacy answer if that is the deciding factor for your workflow. Culling and rating are Pro features (a 7-day free trial, then monthly or yearly, see pricing); browsing your library is free.

Troubleshooting: HEIC, video, and Live Photo culling

My photos arrived as JPEG instead of HEIC, and my videos are H.264 instead of HEVC. This is the “Transfer to Mac or PC: Automatic” setting doing its job. Go to Settings > Camera > Formats on the iPhone and switch it to Keep Originals, then re-export the shoot. Files already converted cannot be recovered back to HEIC; you will need to re-export from the original Photos library entry if it still exists.

A Live Photo shows up as a plain still with no motion clip. This almost always means the export method flattened it. Sharing through Messages, most social apps, or a generic “Copy Photo” action strips the motion component and keeps only a JPEG. Re-export using Save to Files from the Photos share sheet, which preserves both parts of the asset.

Video clips will not preview or play back. Very high-bitrate footage, including ProRes recorded on Pro models, or HDR (Dolby Vision) clips can render dim or oddly coloured on a display that is not HDR-capable. This is a playback rendering limitation, not a corrupted file; the clip is intact and will grade correctly once opened in an HDR-aware editor.

HEIC ratings are not showing up in Lightroom after import. Check which XMP mode CullKit is set to for stills. If it is set to sidecar mode but you are only copying the HEIC files (without their .xmp sidecars) to your import folder, the ratings never travel. Either copy the sidecars alongside the HEIC files, or switch CullKit to embedded XMP for stills so the rating lives inside the file itself.

Video ratings are not appearing on the clip in Lightroom Classic. Confirm the .xmp sidecar uses the exact same base filename as the video file, including case. A mismatch as small as .MOV.xmp versus .mov.xmp on a case-sensitive file system will cause Lightroom to skip it silently. Run Metadata > Read Metadata from Files after fixing the name to force a re-read.

Try it on your next iPhone shoot

The next time an assignment is shot entirely on iPhone, whether that is a behind-the-scenes reel, a rehearsal dinner, or a full day where the phone was faster to grab than the mirrorless body, export it to a folder and run it through a CullKit culling session before you touch a desktop editor. Rate the HEIC stills, scrub and rate the video clips, and let the Live Photos keep their motion intact, all in one pass, with every decision already waiting in Lightroom or Capture One by the time you sit down to edit.

Download CullKit on the App Store

CullKit is an independent product. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple Inc., Adobe (Lightroom), Capture One, Synology Inc., QNAP Technologies, Inc., TrueNAS / iXsystems, or UGREEN Group. Compatibility claims only.

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