Sync Shutter vs Cull
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Sync Shutter
Automatically back up photos and videos from your SD cards to multiple cloud services and local folders. The app ensures no manual steps are needed and only copies new files after the initial backup.
- Automatic SD card backup
- Multi-destination cloud sync
- Incremental file copying
- Live progress monitoring
- Backup history and stats
- iPhone companion app
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Never lose a shoot. Sync Shutter backs up your camera card the moment you insert it. Set it up once on your Mac, then plug in any card and walk away: every photo and video is copied to every destination you chose, automatically. On iPhone or iPad, plug in a card reader and import straight from the card. It was built for photographers who come home with several cards and cannot afford to lose one. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU INSERT A CARD • The card is detected and the backup starts on its own. Progress lives in the menu bar; a notification tells you when it is done. • Only new files are copied. Already-backed-up shots are recognized and skipped, so the second run after a shoot takes seconds. • Copies to a folder or drive can be verified byte for byte after copying. • Files can be sorted into date folders taken from the photo's own capture date. • Cards that do not use a DCIM folder — video-first layouts from Sony, Panasonic and Canon bodies — are recognized too, and any card can be copied whole from the menu bar. • No internet where you're shooting? The card is still safe. Sync Shutter keeps its own copy and sends it to your cloud destinations on its own the moment you are back online. • A backup that cannot reach one of your destinations says so and names it. It never calls itself complete when something is missing. WHERE THE FILES GO Send one card to several places at once: a local folder or external drive, iCloud Drive, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Photos, the Lightroom auto-import folder, or the Photos library. Turn on as many as you like; each card is copied to all of them in a single pass. CHOOSE WHAT COMES OFF THE CARD Turn on a review step and a grid of thumbnails appears before anything is copied, so you can leave the test frames behind. SYNC SHUTTER PRO — ONE PURCHASE FOR MAC, IPHONE AND IPAD • Back up to a NAS or server: any S3-compatible storage (Synology, Backblaze B2, MinIO, Amazon S3), or SFTP over SSH. • Cold storage: Amazon S3 Glacier and Deep Archive storage classes, chosen per destination, for an archive that costs cents a month. • RAW+JPEG pairs: keep both, RAW only, or JPEG only. • Import date filters: only today's shoot, the last few days, or everything since a date. • Custom file naming from the capture date, a counter and the original name. • Per-card rules on the Mac: route each card to its own destinations. • Auto-delete from the card after every destination has confirmed the copy, and low-storage alerts before a backup would fill the disk. Pro is a single purchase, not a subscription. IPHONE AND IPAD Plug in a USB-C or Lightning card reader, open Sync Shutter, and pick the card. Photos go to your Photos library, a folder in Files, your cloud drives, or an S3 NAS. A Live Activity follows the import and a widget shows your totals. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No account, no sign-up, no servers of ours in the path. Files go straight from the card to the destinations you chose. The only thing the app ever sends home is an anonymous count of backups and errors, so that problems get fixed; it is never linked to you. Works with any card your Mac or card reader can mount: SD, microSD, CFexpress, CFast, XQD.
Cull
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Cull is the fastest way to go from a full memory card to your best shots. Import a shoot, fly through your photos with keyboard shortcuts, and export your picks straight to Lightroom — all without your photos ever leaving your device. CULL FASTER THAN EVER Press P to keep, X to reject, and move to the next shot automatically. Cull hundreds of photos in minutes instead of hours. Every action has a keyboard shortcut so your hands never leave the keys. FOUR POWERFUL VIEWS • Grid — scan your entire shoot at a glance with adjustable column density • Loupe — full-screen single photo view with a floating filmstrip for quick navigation • Compare — two photos side by side to pick the better expression or moment • Burst — automatically groups burst sequences and surfaces the best frame using AI scoring ON-DEVICE AI SCORING Every photo gets an AI quality score powered by Apple Vision — running 100% locally on your Mac's Neural Engine. No cloud, no subscription, zero privacy cost. • Face shots scored on capture quality, eye openness, and focus • All other photos scored on aesthetics and sharpness • Blurry photos automatically flagged for rejection • Adjust the rejection threshold to match your standards COLOR LABELS Tag your keepers with Lightroom-compatible color labels (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple) directly in Cull. Labels carry through to Lightroom on export. EXPORT TO LIGHTROOM One click writes XMP sidecar files for all your keeps — Lightroom reads them automatically when you import, so your picks, ratings, and labels are already applied. No plugins, no manual tagging. DESIGNED FOR RAW SHOOTERS Cull works with every format your camera shoots: RAW (CR3, ARW, NEF, DNG, RW2, ORF, and more), JPEG, HEIC, and TIFF. Files stay exactly where they are on disk — Cull never copies or moves your originals. PRIVACY FIRST All AI analysis runs on your Mac using Apple's Vision framework. Your photos are never uploaded anywhere. ONE-TIME PURCHASE Pay once, cull forever. No subscription.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Sync Shutter at none against Cull's 1. Sync Shutter also leads on update cadence (every 4 days vs every 6 weeks). On price, ads, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Cull sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Sync Shutter asks for nothing beyond the download.
Sync Shutter ships an update every 4 days, Cull every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 7, 2026 and October 12, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Sync Shutter | Cull |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 2 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 4 days — better | Every 6 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac | iPhone, iPad, Mac |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 12 MB | 3 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Utkarsh Jain | briek keters |
In-app purchases
Sync Shutter
No in-app purchases
Cull
- Lifetime License$39.99









