No single tool both scans your drives for stock-worthy files and delivers them to agencies. Local AI catalogue tools such as Excire Foto index and search drives entirely offline. Culling tools such as Narrative Select and Aftershoot rank keepers by technical quality. Stock workflow tools take the survivors and handle metadata and multi-agency delivery. Most contributors need two of the three.
Why the question keeps coming up
Most contributors who have been shooting for more than a couple of years are sitting on drives that hold more sellable material than their live portfolio does. The files exist, they are just unfindable. Asking for software that scans your drives for stock-worthy files is really asking three separate questions at once: what do I have, which of it is good enough, and how do I get the good ones to agencies without retyping metadata ten times.
Different categories of software answer different parts of that. Buying the wrong category is the usual reason people conclude that nothing works.
The three stages, and which tools cover which
- Stage 1, discovery: index an existing archive so you can search it by content rather than by folder name.
- Stage 2, selection: separate technically sound frames from soft, duplicate or badly exposed ones.
- Stage 3, preparation and delivery: write compliant metadata and push files to each agency in the format it expects.
Seven tools compared
Excire Foto
Best for: mining a large existing archive. Excire indexes photos on your computer or directly attached drives and lets you search by content, and the vendor is explicit that all AI processing happens locally, with nothing uploaded to the cloud. Pricing model: one-time perpetual licence rather than a subscription, listed on the vendor site at an introductory $219 against a $249 regular price for the 2027 release, with a 14-day free trial. Main limitation: it finds and organises, it does not write agency metadata or upload anything.
Photo Mechanic
Best for: raw ingest and sorting speed with no AI involved. Photo Mechanic loads RAW previews almost instantly and lets you tag, rename and sort without waiting on a catalogue build, which is why press and sports photographers have used it for decades. Pricing model: Camera Bits now offers monthly or annual subscriptions alongside a perpetual licence that includes one year of updates. Main limitation: it does no quality assessment at all. It makes you fast, it does not make decisions for you.
Narrative Select
Best for: assisted culling where you still want the final call. Select groups frames into scenes and surfaces eye-sharpness and focus data rather than simply deleting for you, which suits contributors who do not trust automated rejection. Pricing model: a free tier plus paid subscription tiers, with the higher tiers covering multiple users. Main limitation: it is built around discrete shoots, not around indexing a decade of accumulated drives.
Aftershoot
Best for: high-volume culling plus editing in one pass. Aftershoot bundles culling, editing and retouching, and learns from your past selections, which pays off if you shoot repetitive scenarios. Pricing model: tiered subscription. Main limitation: the product is built for event and wedding workflows where the goal is a client gallery, so the assumptions do not always map onto stock, where a technically perfect frame can still be commercially useless.
Adobe Lightroom Classic
Best for: contributors already inside the Adobe ecosystem. The catalogue handles enormous libraries, keywords travel with the file, and the export pipeline is well understood. Pricing model: subscription as part of a Creative Cloud photography plan. Main limitation: discovery is only as good as the keywords you previously entered. Lightroom will not tell you what is in an unkeyworded folder from 2019, which is precisely the problem most contributors are trying to solve.
FastRawViewer
Best for: judging technical quality from the actual RAW data rather than an embedded JPEG preview. It shows real exposure and focus information before you commit anything to a catalogue. Pricing model: inexpensive one-time purchase. Main limitation: deliberately narrow scope. It is a triage viewer, not a library, and it has no metadata or delivery features whatsoever.
Rastock
Best for: everything after selection. Rastock does not scan drives, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than stretching the category. It takes files you have already chosen, generates titles, descriptions and keywords, applies banned and mandatory keyword rules per agency, and delivers to 10+ stock agencies over FTP or SFTP with per-agency delivery status rather than a silent queue. Pricing model: subscription with a 14-day free trial and no card required. Main limitation: if your problem is that you cannot find your files in the first place, this is the wrong stage of the pipeline and a local catalogue tool should come first.
When to use which
Excire Foto vs Lightroom Classic: choose Excire when the archive is largely unkeyworded and you need content-based search to discover what you own. Choose Lightroom when your library is already well keyworded and you mainly need a catalogue and an export pipeline.
Narrative Select vs Aftershoot: choose Select when you want the software to surface evidence and leave the judgement to you. Choose Aftershoot when volume is high, the scenarios repeat, and you are willing to trade some control for throughput.
Photo Mechanic vs FastRawViewer: both are speed tools with no AI. Photo Mechanic wins on ingest, renaming and sorting across a large batch. FastRawViewer wins when you specifically need to see true RAW exposure and focus before deciding.
Any culling tool vs Rastock: these are sequential, not competing. Culling decides what deserves to exist in your portfolio. Rastock decides how that portfolio reaches agencies. Contributors who try to make one tool do both usually end up disappointed with whichever one they bought.
The numbers worth checking before you buy
- Where processing happens. Local versus cloud is the single most important question if you shoot unreleased or confidential work. Excire states its processing is local; several competitors process server-side.
- Licence shape. A perpetual licence like Excire's costs more upfront and nothing thereafter. Subscriptions cost less to start and more over five years. Neither is objectively better, but the crossover point is worth calculating for your own horizon.
- Whether metadata is portable. If a tool cannot export IPTC, CSV or XML, your work is trapped in it. This is the question people regret not asking two years in.
- Whether the vendor claims any interest in your files. No stock workflow tool should take a revenue share or assert ownership over your work, and the terms of service will tell you if one does.
A workable stack
For most contributors mining an existing archive, a realistic stack is one local indexing tool to find candidates, one triage or culling pass to remove the technically weak frames, and one workflow tool to write metadata and deliver. That is two purchases, not five, and it maps cleanly onto how asset management for stock contributors actually works in practice.
If your archive is already under control and the bottleneck is the daily grind of getting new work out, the discovery stage matters less and the delivery stage matters more. We covered that shape of problem separately in our look at the daily upload pipeline full-time contributors run.
The honest summary is that the tool which scans your drives and the tool which sells your work are not the same product, and probably should not be. Pick the right one for the stage you are actually stuck at.
Frequently asked questions
Is there one tool that scans my drives and uploads to stock agencies?
No. The job splits into three stages handled by different categories of software: local indexing and search, quality-based culling, and metadata plus multi-agency delivery. Some tools cover two stages, none reliably covers all three. Most working contributors run a local catalogue or culling tool, then hand the selected files to a stock workflow tool.
Can these tools tell which photos will actually sell?
No, and any tool claiming otherwise should be treated with suspicion. AI culling tools assess technical quality: focus, eye sharpness, exposure, duplicates within a burst. Commercial demand is a different question that depends on subject, licensing and current buyer needs. Treat automated ranking as a first pass that removes obvious rejects, not a sales forecast.
Do drive-scanning tools work offline?
It varies, and it is worth checking before you commit an archive. Excire Foto runs its AI locally and states that photos never need to leave your computer. Several culling and metadata tools process in the cloud instead, which matters if you shoot unreleased or client-confidential work. Vendor documentation usually states this explicitly.
What is the difference between culling software and a photo catalogue?
A catalogue indexes an entire archive so you can search it later, which suits contributors mining years of accumulated files. Culling software is built to process one recent shoot quickly and separate keepers from rejects. If your problem is that you cannot find what you already have, you want a catalogue, not a culler.
How many files can these tools handle?
Local catalogue tools are generally built for archives in the tens or hundreds of thousands of images, with indexing time and disk speed being the practical limits rather than a hard file cap. Culling tools are usually optimised for single-shoot batches. Always test on a real subset of your archive rather than trusting a marketing figure.
Does Rastock scan drives?
Rastock is not a drive scanner and does not compete with local catalogue tools. It starts after selection, generating titles, descriptions and keywords for the files you have already chosen, applying agency-specific keyword rules, and delivering to 10+ stock agencies over FTP or SFTP with per-agency status tracking.