Culling errors and what they mean
Culling runs on your computer with an engine bundled inside the plug-in, and asks the cloud AI to pick the best frames of each group. Here is what the messages you may see mean.
"The culling service is temporarily unavailable…"
Since 1.99 the plug-in checks that the selection service is working before every cull. When it is down, culling stops before it starts – nothing in your catalog changes and no cull is used. There is nothing to fix on your computer; please try again later. The related message "Impossible Things cannot reach the culling service. Please check your internet connection and try again." means your own connection, a firewall or a VPN is blocking the check.
"No culling information was received for 120 seconds."
The culling engine did not start. The usual causes:
- Still on 1.92 or older on an Apple Silicon Mac. Those versions used an Intel-only engine that needs Rosetta, which macOS 27 does not include. Update the plug-in (how) – since 1.98 the engine runs natively on Apple Silicon.
- macOS Gatekeeper blocking the bundled culling app. Open System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security, allow it, and try again.
- Antivirus quarantining the engine on Windows. Restore it from quarantine or add an exception.
- The plug-in ended up in the wrong place, or an update was corrupted. Run the DVLOP Installer again to reinstall.
"The culling engine stopped before it finished. Please try again; if this keeps happening, contact support."
The engine started but quit before finishing. The culling window no longer hangs silently: if the engine exits unexpectedly, the plug-in stops within about a minute and shows this message. Try again. If it repeats on the same set, send support the log files below.
"Finished the culling! An error occurred during culling. Please check the log file."
The engine ran through but hit an error along the way. Part of the run may have been applied. Send support the log files below.
"To keep things running smoothly, your plan supports culling orders of up to N images."
Your plan has a per-order limit. Split the selection into smaller orders.
Timing expectations
On an Apple Silicon Mac the culling window shows progress within a few seconds. On Intel Macs and Windows allow roughly 10–15 seconds before the first progress line appears, longer on slower disks. After that, progress is per group, and a few hundred images typically take a few minutes.
Log files to send to support
The quickest way is File ▸ Plug-in Manager ▸ Impossible Things ▸ Troubleshooting ▸ Send diagnostics to support…. To attach the files yourself, find them in Lightroom's log folder (Mac: ~/Library/Logs/Adobe/Lightroom/LrClassicLogs/, Windows: Documents\LrClassicLogs\\): Culling.log, ExecuteCulling.log and Impossible Things.log. Include your plug-in version, operating system and how many photos were in the order.
Everything culling writes is normal Lightroom metadata: flags, ratings, colour labels and the Selected, Duplicates and Rejected collections. You can change or remove any of it freely.