Should You Be Cautious of Machine Learning and AI for Culling and Editing?

Whether you are a professional or amateur photographer finding an efficient way to process your photos is essential. AI can help us do just that, saving us hours of the most tedious part of photography.However, there are reasons for caution.

Time is something we never get back, and carrying out mundane tasks makes us realize the importance of getting on with the important stuff in life. As I make my living from photography, time is also money.

I'm already really busy. Therefore, the opportunity cost of time-consuming culling and editing eats into my bottom line and my life. I've turned away work because I have been too busy processing what I've already shot. I recently canceled going out to shoot the glorious golden light all because I had too much work on my plate. Worse still is having to shave off time with family and friends because of my workload.

In the latter half of last year, I had a particularly heavy deluge of work. Weddings and other photoshoots threatened to overfill my already bulging working days; I often work from 5:30 am until 6:30 pm or later. That is a situation many self-employed photographers find themselves in. So, new ways to streamline my workflow became essential.

With AI, jobs that used to take days now take just a few hours, freeing me up to do other things. Let's look at how it works for me and see if it can work for you.

The Two Problems That Need Solving

The first challenge of any professional photographer is culling photos. When I shoot a wedding or other day-long event, the photos can end up in the thousands; far too many.

Secondly, since no two pictures are the same, I’ve found Lightroom presets never quite give the effect I want on every photo; each photo needs individual development. They can be a good starting point but, after applying them, I invariably must adjust and re-save the preset, and I end up creating ever more of them. I might need to tweak those yet again for the next photoshoot.

Putting Your Trust in AI

As a photographer who is very particular about the products I deliver, it was a daunting thought to hand over some of my tasks to a suite of AI tools. I am not usually one for passing on my creative tasks to even trusted third parties and giving it to a machine was even more scary. Asking an AI system to do some of the heavy lifting grated against the Luddite in me.

However, once I let go of that fear, I found with AI programs I still had absolute control over my photos. I now think of it as akin to having another me looking through my images, helping me decide which photos to choose and what adjustments to apply. My trust in it has grown.

How Do AI Programs Work?

Culling

I haven't yet met any photographer who enjoys the culling process, and I certainly don't. Working my way through 2000+ wedding images takes a long time, and it can become monotonous and easy to make mistakes. I had previously poured over sets of similar-looking shots, comparing them, and trying to find the best ones to keep. But sometimes, I still missed those drooping eyelids, photos with slightly missed focus, and movement-blurred hands on my first and second reviews.

AI-driven programs sort through the pictures saving time and the boredom of doing so. Good programs should quickly identify issues like missed focus or closed eyes, but they should also learn to mirror your selections, choosing the most pleasing shots and rejecting those that don’t come up to your mark.

At first, I would not allow the AI to do that, relying solely on my full control over the program's choices. But placing trust in the programs is essential for that time-saving. Furthermore, quality programs are enormously accurate, speedily weeding out the images that you would want to reject if you were doing it manually.

After Culling Comes Developing and Editing Your Images

When you have culled your photos, you want to apply your developments. Good AI programs have machine learning. They use your previous edits to create a profile that matches your style. That often requires you to identify 3,000+ images that have been developed by you previously. Some programs will learn from the developments you do in Lightroom Classic. 

Once the AI has learned all the subtle nuances that you alone apply to your images, the apps then analyze your new photos and apply individual adjustments for each separate photograph.

Using Other Established Photographers' Profiles

But what if you don’t have 3,000 edited photos to upload that a program can learn from? Luckily, most programs have built-in profiles from other photographers that you can call upon. You may also be able to teach it using a preset that reflects your preferred style. Some programs will also ask you to answer a handful of questions about your editing style. Following that information, the program can create a profile for you.

AI programs also have the option to fine-tune adjustments too, so you can amend the results if the program doesn't quite give the outcomes you want.

Additionally, every time you add further developed photos to the program, you improve the AI’s understanding of what you are trying to achieve. In other words, the more you use it, the better it gets.

Enlisting the Help of Established Photographers

Some programs will supply other established photographers' profiles that allow you to apply their style to your photos. This is useful for those who struggle to achieve a particular look. You can also tweak these third-party profiles to produce a style closer to yours.

Good AI programs will feature photographers' profiles from various corners of the world, thus encompassing different regional styles and the multitude of skin colors that make up humanity. I can see this feature being incredibly useful for new photographers who are still finding their feet.

 

The streamlined AI development process saves me time. Hardly any manual tweaking is necessary. The programs accurately make adjustments so each of my photos matches my style, and I get a consistent look to the entire photoshoot.

A Caveat

AI is an incredibly useful tool in our arsenal. Whether it is built into the camera to help focus on particular subjects or part of a software package to speed up our processing, it can help us to succeed. I know a novice photographer who uses their camera's AI Subject detection and they achieve multiple successful shots of fast-flying birds that would have been difficult for a seasoned wildlife photographer to capture but a few years ago.

However, I would urge a degree of caution. Although I applaud any tool that makes photography accessible to more people, if we hand over all our creativity to AI, we lose the skills that were once hard-earned. I would urge new photographers to use AI as a gateway to access our art, and also to hone their photography and processing skills skills.

Of course, we can argue that has happened in the past with the advent of TTL metering, semi-automatic metering modes, autofocus, and single-click image adjustments and filters. However, the loss of skills is something to be mourned. Having full control over your work brings a great deal of personal satisfaction that is lost when we hand it all over to automation.

So, although I happily use AI to speed up my workflow for commercial shoots, when it comes to personal projects AI is excluded from processing. In fact, I am regressing to an entirely analog and manual workflow, which I find far more rewarding.

AI Programs With Machine Learning

I think that programs that use machine learning are superior to those that only use pre-programmed AI. There are increasing numbers of AI programs with machine learning out there. Although I used Imagen for this article, Aftershoot is another that I found works excellently for culling and developing. ON1 Photo Raw has machine learning for developing, image enlargements, and other functions.

Do you use AI in your workflow? It would be fascinating to hear your experiences in the comments.