In practice
A unit stills shoot produces far more frames than anyone will publish. Editing narrows the take down to the strongest images, and those go through talent approval, where cast sign off the frames they appear in. The images that survive that pass form the approved set.
Key selects are the next step in. Once cast have signed off within their kill rights and any other stakeholders have had their say, the unit publicist or a producer typically works through the approved set and picks out the hero frames — the images the production actually wants out in the world. Every key select is therefore an approved image, but not every approved image is a key select.
Key selects are usually delivered as fully captioned, correctly named, high-resolution files — ready for posters, press, streaming artwork and social. Each one is effectively a publicity still: chosen, approved and fit to release.
Keeping the key-selects set clean matters, because it is the version the distributor and sales agents rely on. For delivery specifics, see our guide to delivering approved stills.
Not to be confused with photographer selects
“Selects” gets used at two different points in the process, and conflating them causes real confusion on a production.
Photographer selects are the photographer’s own highlight set from a shoot day — their pick of the strongest frames, made from the raw take before anyone has approved anything. They are often delivered ahead of the wider batch, and on some productions they are what becomes the live set that goes into approvals in the first place.
Key selects sit at the other end. They are chosen by the publicist or producer, from the approved set, after cast have exercised their kill rights. The full sequence runs: shoot → photographer selects → talent approval → approved set → key selects → distributor.
So a photographer select is a judgement about which images are good; a key select is a judgement about which cleared images the production wants to lead with.