Hey, how’s it going? I’m Andy Jones and this is episode 78 of the Photography Side Hustle podcast.
This week's title is …
This is a photo editing game changerIf you have listened to previous episodes you’ll know I use Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop for editing. A few months ago they added some mask options that let you select the sky or the subject. This made editing so much easier, especially being able to select the subject.
During the summer I was shooting lots of macro, and being able to select and edit just the insect cut my editing time by half.
Now, this is made possible through the use of artificial intelligence, or AI. This isn’t new, Adobe and lots of other software companies have been developing it for years. The difference now is that it’s making editing photos much easier and way faster.
So this week Adobe did some more updates and they were doozies. I’ve spent way too many hours playing with them.
Photoshop
Let’s start with Photoshop. The main changes that I found were in the filters, the Neural Filters to be exact.
In Neural Filters - portraits there is …
Skin Smoothing - this identifies the faces in the image and you choose which one you want to work on. You can then apply smoothness and blur to get the skin texture that you want. It takes no more than one minute per face and is the kind of effect glamour photographers produce.
Smart Portrait - now this blew my mind. All of these effects if used in moderation will be very helpful if you shoot weddings or group portraits. You can change how happy a person looks. You heard me correctly, how happy a person looks. The filter actually makes them look happier or less happy if you like, by literally putting a smile on their face.
The next one under Smart Portrait is Facial Age, yes you can make someone look older or younger. Again, in moderation, it’s hard to notice the changes, but it works.
Other options are Hair thickness, Eye direction, Surprise, Anger, and Head direction.
If you have ever taken a group shot of say five people and one of them isn’t smiling, or is looking in the wrong direction, then this will make everything perfect.
Next, we have Makeup Transfer, and you can take makeup used in another photo and use it on your subject. I’m not sure whether you would need this, maybe your model couldn’t find her favorite lip gloss for the shoot. No problem I’ll take it from a different photo.
One you might find useful is Depth Blur, which lets you make your background blurry.
Now, these options are really useful if you have ever tried to repair old B&W photos.
Photo Restoration repairs any damage to the photo, and Colorize can add color to a B&W photo. There are people that have done this for years and have had to train themselves how to do it. Now there is an app for that.
Ok, let’s have a look at what has changed in …
Lightroom
If some of the Neural Filters in Photoshop are useful but a bit gimmicky. The Lightroom upgrades are serious game changers.
Adobe has added more options to the masking section. The previous release added Select Sky and Select Subject which were great. Before that, you would need to use the Brush mask to paint in the areas that you wanted to edit.
This new release offers Select Background. I haven’t played with it yet but I think it will be very useful.
The biggest of the options by far is Select People. When editing a portrait in lightroom using the brush, you would create a Mask for each part of the person's face that you needed to edit. This was very time-consuming, especially if it was a group photo.
Now the Select People mask not only identifies each person in the image but then makes separate sub-masks for hair, body skin, facial skin, lips, pupils, whites of the eyes, and eyebrows.
All this is set up in a matter of seconds, and I can only imagine how much time a portrait or headshot photographer can save. Hours of editing can now be done in minutes.
Some other masks are Objects, which I haven’t tried yet but I think I will find lots of uses. Linear Gradient, Radial Gradient, Color Range, Luminance Range, and Depth range.
Now Adobe isn’t the only software out there, Luminar seems to offer lots of AI tricks but I haven’t used it so I won’t comment on it.
Saving time and making more profit
There is one piece of software that will do all your editing for you. It’s called Imagine AI and it learns your preferences and how you edit your images. For busy wedding photographers, this is definitely a great option. When I first heard about Imagine AI you had to upload your files to get edited, but now they have a desktop app for Lightroom users.
You let the AI look at your edited images, it works out what you do and tries to copy your editing style. If it isn’t quite right you make changes and teach the AI to be more accurate.
Imagine shooting a wedding and having 1000 images to edit. Even with presets, it can take hours and hours of work. This AI software can edit an image in under half a second, that’s 1000 images in under 6 minutes.
Artificial Intelligence allows you to edit faster and more accurately. When using AI-enhanced software to edit your images you need to learn fewer software tricks to produce professional photos, and it makes you way more profitable.
Years ago I took an online course to learn how to edit portraits in Photoshop. Editing a portrait back then took me a couple of hours, but now I can do it in under 20 minutes.
I started using Photoshop in 1999, and Lightroom when it came out in 2007, and these latest releases are the biggest leap forward for photographers I have seen.
As you can tell I’m really excited about what it allows you to do. Yes, the photoshop updates are potentially helpful but a bit gimmicky. The Lightroom release is mind-blowing for photographers.
I can’t imagine what is coming down the pipeline over the next few years.
Ok, that’s it for another episode.
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Anyway, thanks for listening to me waffle on, I’ll be back next week, talk to you soon, bye.