I’ve never really talked about the AI thing and my feelings on it. But this week kind of pushed me to write something about it.
Please Read Before Commenting
Also, I’m happy to have a conversation around this topic. To help keep the comments from becoming yet another string of over-ranted-on ”the ethics of editing” and should we use Photoshop or not, or how far is too far, please just answer this question:
Do you believe AI is helping your photography / photo editing or hurting it. And why? Or What would you like to see for AI in the future.
There are Two/Three-ish Sides of AI in Photo Editing
First I think it’s good to clarify were AI is used in Photo Editing right now. The way I see it, there are three ways:
#1 – Help with the Grunt Work – most of the AI I see out there is to help take away, what I call, the ”grunt work”. AI is being used to sort through photos, and find ones with closed eyes, blurry, etc… so people can quickly weed out the bad shots. It’s being used to detect noisy or blurry photos and improve image quality. It’s also being used to make selections and masking simpler. There’s AI sky selection, subject selections, background selection, and now with the new version of Lightroom… portrait selection. That’s specifically the area I’m going to talk about here.
#2 – AI to actually edit the photos for you – there’s also AI that does the editing for you. Luminar is probably leading the pack there. But there are other programs that will do the editing for you based on their AI software. Adobe even released a photo restoration filter (under Neural Filters) that automatically detects and removes creases and cracks from old photos for you.
#3 – Adaptive Presets – There are AI Presets too. But consider this. We’ve had presets for decades. Before this week we had portrait presets and nobody complained. Now we have portrait presets that actually work better because it can find the eyes, lips, teeth etc… and now they’re bad? All that happened is they work better than they used to. It’s not like presets were just invented this week.
AI Has Been in LR and PS For Decades?
Here’s something to think about. Have you ever clicked the Auto button in LR. Photoshop has had an Auto button in Curves for decades. When you click Auto, the computer was looking at the histogram and tonal values in the photo and making an adjustment. Nobody claimed that ”Auto is ruining Photography and creativity” 20 years ago right? So now that the ”Auto” is just more trained and better, all of the sudden it’s killing photography?
What is AI Really Doing in Most Cases?
I think a lot of the sentiment comes from not really knowing what (most) AI is doing. Take sky replacement for example. Everyone says AI Sky replacement is killing photography. But in Photoshop, all the AI is doing for you is making the selection. You’re still in charge of clicking on the sky you want and that requires a creative skill, talent and an eye for what looks good. Trust me… 90% of the photos people send me are techincally done well. But most of the lack in the creative skills both in camera and in post processing – and AI isn’t helping with that in most cases. The selection part of sky replacement was just a barrier to get to the good stuff, and all AI is doing is helping us get to the good stuff faster and more accurately.
Take the new Portrait masking features in the latest versions of LR and PS. They still require you to know what a good look is. Just because it makes a selection of the eyes automatically, doesn’t mean what you do to them is good. That’s where the real skill is at – knowing what looks good – not making a selection.
Let’s Bring Back the Stick Shift – Manual Transmission!
So here’s what I think it’s boiled down to and it’s actually an age old argument in all aspects of our lives. It’s come down to people thinking that new technology is making (insert whatever activity or career you want here) too easy. Think about it. That’s what all of the arguments are saying – “it’s becoming too easy”.
Some of your cameras have AI in them, with eye focus, etc… I actually had some one tell me that I was cheating beause I was using an AF mode that tracked the subject. By the way… this person had a Sony a1. So you mean to tell me that you bought a $6500 camera… one that’s BIGGEST claim to fame is it’s auto focus tracking… and you’re just going to turn that off and use one tiny point in the center to manually keep on a fast moving bird across the sky? Crazy right? But there are people that feel this way. It’s like saying today’s drivers are no good because they never had to learn to drive a stick shift.
What I’m seeing most recently with the introduction of the AI Portrait features in Lightroom and Photoshop is that it’s taking the creativity out of photography. But I wonder if people realize that these AI features they’re talking about are simply making selections for you. That’s it! It’s grunt work. There is no fun and creativity in making complex selections. As some one who’s taught this for 20 years, It’s the most hated part of photo editing.
From there, the argument goes to ”Well I learned how to make complex selections 10 years ago, and I feel everyone should know how”. So now people are saying that you should have to learn the hard way?
I almost feel bad for the amount of pessimism it requires to look at the world that way. Think about it… With nothing but progress behind us, some people see nothing but doom and the destruction of photography in the future. How odd?
I’ll 100% admit that it is becoming easier. But isn’t anything that removes barriers to overly technical and complex areas, in a hobby or job, a good thing? Hasn’t it happened in every single aspect of our lives? Many of you reading this would never have taken up photography or photo editing at all, if it weren’t for improvements in cameras, computers and software. Try having a good photo workflow in 2001. It didn’t exist!
Good Will Always Prevail
Good always wins over evil right? 🙂 I’ll start wrapping this up by saying great photography will always win. I have yet to see a contest winner or scroll through photo websites or social media and be wowed at bad photos that were simply fixed with computer editing. I see photos all the time where people have done crazy amounts of editing and you know what… it ALWAYS looks like it – 100% of the time. A great landscape photo can be made better with a sky replacement, but you still need great light and you need to be in a great place. No sky can hold an amazing landscape photo alone. So what if you do a sky replacement? I’m sorry to say. But on a lackluster subject, it won’t make a difference.
Great wildlife photos come that way out of the camera. I’m sorry to tell you that NOBODY has made an award winning wildlife photo in Photoshop. If you didn’t take a photo of a great subject, doing something great, in at least “okay” light, no amount of editing will make it great.
You Are In Charge Of How You Feel
I’ll finish with this. You are in charge of how you feel about your photography. The vast majroity of people reading this are in to photography because they like it, not because you’re doing it for a business. So let me ask you… Why do you care what AI is doing to other people’s photography? It’s not your place to judge anyone’s photos. No program REQUIRES you to use it. So if you don’t like it, simply don’t use it, and stop worrying about what some one else is doing.
Contests are notorious for archaic rules. So if you enter contents, you’re a LONG way away from having AI edited photos to compete with. So you’ve got nothing to worry about there.
If you’re a working photographer, I hate to tell you – suck it up. Every job in the world gets made simpler by technology. And the people that are good, figure it out and excel in the new landscape. The ones that complain about ”how we used to do it” get left behind. AI is here – it’s not going away – so figure it out or get ready to be left behind – and if you’re one of the ones complaining I hate to tell you but you’re on the brink of getting left behind if you haven’t been already.
Lastly… I believe, for the most part, that happiness is a choice. And in photography, for some one that is simply doing it because it’s enjoyable for them, you can choose to be happy and ignore all the AI stuff. Or you can choose to complain about how it’s ruining photography (even though it has zero impact on you).
Final Harsh Advice
So I’ll finish with some harsh advice. Mind your own business and don’t worry about what anyone else is doing. If you want to “walk to school, uphill… both ways, in the rain, snow and blazing sun all in one day, like you did when you were a kid” – go for it! No software you use requires you to use their AI features. So forget about the features you don’t like – use the tools the way you want to use them, and CHOOSE to be happy with your photography and photo editing.
Thanks for reading and please READ THE COMMENT GUIDELINES ABOVE so this doesn’t turn in to another ”what’s acceptable in photo editing rant”. We’ve got too many of those already 🙂
Do you believe AI is helping your photography / photo editing or hurting it. And why? Or What would you like to see for AI in the future.
I love teaching and photography... In that order. I feel that enjoying photography, and photo editing can get WAY too complicated. So my personal mission (and favorite thing to do), is to create education that simplifies the process of taking great photos, and how to edit them to get the results you’ve always wanted.
The law courts will eventually decide what is ‘real’ photography and what is partially fabricated by use of microprocessor and software/apps. Already we are seeing some digital photographs being rejected as evidence – the photos that have significant intervention in their transformation from a poor rendition to a visually more acceptable image that has been ‘value-added’ by either in-camera/phone software or post-processing.
Interesting times ahead for sure – lawyers, scientists, practitioners, in a court room drama for the ages 🙂
AI is ruining ‘photography’ . Some photographers have worked there asses off for years and some jumped up tech geek comes along and pretends they are doing the same thing , when in actuality it’s a computer doing a composition of many photos , which is not photography , it is ‘computer art’. So by definition , AI is ruining ‘pure out of camera photography’ which some people have honed and perfected over many years.
What you said doesn’t really make sense. You are still free to enjoy photography any way that you want right? Computer art has been around for decades, and some one is allowed to enjoy it if they want. AI just helps them. I have yet to see a photographer, say “To heck with this camera… I’m just going to start generating my photos on the computer… it’s the same thing”. We all know it’s not. So why not let people generating their creative work any way they want. It doesn’t impact your life one bit.
I think anyone that criticizes others who use ai as a stage of editing has no creativity or imagination.
I remember when Photoshop was a bad word, mostly from lazy photos that didnt want to take the time to learn a complex software.
I still laugh at the ones that say they are purists, and proud of unedited garbage. Its called amateur.
Name me one photographer that understands photography theory shoots in manual, and learned photoshop, but would rather sell unedited photos.
Ai is fascinating and I love using it as a part of my editing now.
Totally agree with you on AI in photography….totally disagree about a stick shift! Other than that an insightful article.
Hi Matt,
Great editorial. You cover all the salient points and the logic you present is bang-on. Many older folks (which you’re a long way off from being) are often suspicious and wary of rapid change. Also exhausted by it. Today’s AI & PS & LR represents a quantum leap in rapid change. It means we “mature folks” (I’m 71) have to learn new stuff or, as you said, be left behind. Being forced into a position of having to learn new stuff just to keep going at all – taxes our energy. We’re not all up for it. I’ve been there and feel that often. I’m here because I’m in the process of updating my understating of new PS selections capabilities and also new additions in LR so I can start taking advantage of them for my photo-based projects. I taught myself PS the year after it came out, about 1988. There was NO help whatever and it was a major, time-consuming and highly frustrating undertaking. I love having access to high quality video tutorials (like yours) to make learning the new stuff faster and easier – thus, less painful. Your attitude is constructive. No one can teach taste or inborn talent. At best (or worse . . . ) AI will only ever be able to imitate those (and fool a lot of people one day, but that’s a different conversation.) I have decades of experience both in photography and in creating hand-drawn visual art. Everything you said is insightful, your examples illuminating, and your advice solid. The main problem people of my generation have is the fact that we have to deal with the pace of change. It’s a very different animal, historically, from how often things changed over the span of our lifetimes. The acceleration is as disturbing to some as the changes themselves. Those may seem relatively welcoming and normal to you – it definitely isn’t for most of us. I appreciated your reference to the history of AI in those applications to help put things into context. You can see some of my work at huguettemay.com
Yes, sucking it up is a good summary, Matt.
I agree with you on the AI topic. I use Topaz labs, mostly the AI denoise. I’m not sure this qualifies as cheating, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on external applications AI. Topaz Denoise, Topaz sharpen, etc.
I agree with you Matt AI takes the grunt work out of editing; and for this 80 year old man That is Good!
I now have more time to be creative with my photos.
I fully agree with you Matt! The last editions of LR make life so much simpler and I have better final pictures using the masking capabilities. I love them. Going faster and better, what’s wrong with that? Thank you so much with all your classes and teachings, I got all of your classes except wild life, there are no birds in my area, unfortunately.
Happy Halloween!
You said “AI is being used to sort through photos, and find ones with closed eyes, blurry, etc… so people can quickly weed out the bad shots.” I have been looking everywhere for software that will identify all the blurry shots in a collection of photos. What software does this?
Excellent article, Matt. I’m 80 and have been at it since grade school in my father’s darkroom, but only trying to get serious in college. Stacked up years of Pop Photo and Mod Photo mags. Criticism of the latest tools were going strong when I started and have continued unabated. Agreed: use what you’re comfortable with and keep fresh by dipping into new waters to see if you find a new trick you can use successfully.
I was selling my photos, first b/w, then added Cibachrome color prints from my slides. One of our photo club members who was doing 11×14 b/w negs that he contact printed showed off making contrast masks to simplify his dodging and burning tasks, which I figured out how to apply to masking my 35mm Kodachrome slides to match them better to Cibachrome’s contrast. Seeing digital cameras on the horizon (no clue how close that horizon really was) I got a film scanner and started learning PS4 by working on slides from my box of “I wish there were some way to make these usable” images – so learning by working with some of the worst first. I went whole hog digital when the Canon 5D came out and side-by-side shots with the 5D and my trusty Minolta SRT101 said it was time. Some of my film shots are still in my repertoire, and better with all the digital tools.
Thanks Matt! Excellent commentary. As you and Blake say “Auto is only a starting place.” If you don’t like it, don’t use it — and don’t complain.
Thank you for that! It’s funny… my wife is a civilian photojournalist for the US AIr Force. They have pretty strict rules for what they can and cannot do to a photo in order to preserve the “documentary” nature of the photos, which is their primary mission. But even so, they regularly use the “Auto” button to quickly go through the sometimes hundreds of photos they take, edit and caption every day. And you’re right, they’ve been doing it that way for years. Generally these exposure adjustments would have been done in the “old” days during the printing process anyway. Yes, you can do more now but, you’re right… it generally comes down to enhanced selection abilities. What you do with it is still up to your own creativity.
This is a very insightful post, Matt. Great food for thought. I understand film is making comeback. Maybe some photographers will feel more creative in that genre. Who knows.
Thanks Matt for laying it out in plain English. Well said..
When I’m working in my kitchen I use any gadget and gizmo that I own to make my job faster easier & smoother, but they can not on their own make my meal taste good if I don’t know how to do that myself.
I see working on my photos ,editing shouldn’t be approached any differently, why not use all or any of the tools I can have on hand to make my work a little faster ,easier and maybe less time consuming . If I do it right a pleasant photo to view.
Well said, Matt!
Absolutely right on Matt! I mostly tune out the people who want to complain about these new tools and them feeling like they can’t believe any photograph anymore. The reality is, in that sense, they never could “believe” any photograph because of how the camera sees, how the photographer develops it and how the printer prints it. Every step changes something about the view of that image, whether it be on film and a wet darkroom or digital and computer post-processing. Sometimes however, I just want to tell those people to stop or as you say “mind your own business!” I for one enjoy the capabilities of most of the AI tools I have at my disposal and since I’m working to create art, will use whatever I can to produce the vision I have for a given image.
Thank you for diving in!!
I like to ask: “What would Ansel do?” After reading his book “Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs”, I am convinced that he would have grabbed Lr/Ps with both hands. The story of “Moonrise, Hernando, New Mexico” is particularly telling. He reprocessed the negative later to try and reduce the contrast and burned and dodged extensively during printing.
Ps/Lr and AI are just tools, like a hammer and a saw, and they can build either a beautiful house or an ugly one, depending on the skill of the one wielding them.
Thank you, as always, for just telling it like it is.
Yes it’s helping. I’d be foolish to say anything else. Eg I’ve never been great at using the brush tool probably colored outside the lines in kindergarten
But AI makes selecting an fixing things so much easier
I also think we need to be up front about our processing Own it
So true!
Well said Matt! I like seeing other people’s masterpieces, no matter how they’ve been created.
I use the selection tools all the time, and the Auto button in LR sometimes, but only as a starting point to see what LR thinks looks better. Sometimes I agree, often I tweak the image a bit more, or a bit less. (I didn’t realise PS Curves has an auto button, must check that out, thanks)
Die-hards will always exist, just take no notice!
I have used, and I have been advising AI solutions for over 50 years, no kidding. The last iterations for photography are great. If used well, it will give more time for creativity, better results for the average user and spectacular results for the pro’s, the artist that master the limits.
As an amateur, I experienced the value of the recent additions to Lightroom when I returned from a trip to Venice. I received the selection updates in April as I started to cull my pictures, and it helped me so much to make my pictures look like I remembered the scene. My estimation is that I saved over 50 percent of the time to get there.
I recently saw imaginary creation, applying AI, that make my head spin in awe.
With the advent of Word programs, everybody could make flyers and that did not result in top quality. But it empowered so many people. At the end, although now with AI, Photoshop, Publisher there is a lot of improvement, it takes a skilled editor with artistic gift to make a stunning flyer.
With the advent of the new programs, everybody can make a website. Despite all the AI, it takes artistic skill to make a real beautiful website. AI tools in the hand of a master help to create a masterpiece.
The AI tools in the smartphones did not kill photography. Artist are not hindered by the tool. They apply the new tools to create art unseen before.
AI helps so many people to produce a better result now than what they could do 30 or 10 years ago. AI did not kill the art from the artistic people. Those artists in their field use all the AI available to produce better results than they could have done without.
I do not think that painters must grind their own lapis azuli and add some egg and oil to create their own genuine blue paint. Or that they must grind some coccinela to have their splendid red paints. The current paints are off the shelf and some paint are very expensive, others affordable. They use brushes and spatula no renaissance painter could dream of. They buy the paint, just as photographers use AI in their camera and in post-processing to create paintings that would have been hated one hundred years ago.
AI for photography is still in its infant stage. The feeling that AI kills the art is about feeling, feelings are facts, we should show respect, and vice versa. I love to see what some people are doing with all the new technology. I loved to work in the darkroom, but I could not make my own color pictures despite the equipment I bought. But now I see a whole new art being created beyond my imagination, based on the current technology, including AI.
Referring to an old comparison. The adventure of cars did not kill the horses. Riding horse is still fun. And horse racing still exists. But now, cars are driven by wire, although it is still fun to drive a vintage car. To get somewhere fast, a current model is more comfortable, despite the lost nostalgia.
Where it should go?
I would like to see the sky replacements to really ‘understand’ which of my replacements fit the picture. A morning picture with a bright midday sky should get a compatibility warning. Suggestions for intelligent cutting would be nice. Getting distractions out of the way should be AI driven, I tend to overlook some. Color grading should be way easier. Tagging should be way better, if I take a picture in Venice as so may pictures have been taken before, why do I not get a suggestion for a tag. AI should qualify my pictures for subject sharpness (blurriness). The AI should give me a warning for over sharpening…
Other people have other ideas, brother insight. This needs out of the box thinking. Brainstorming.
Please come one with more AI and keep it user-friendly.
Hello Matt…some of us sales people around the globe use a bit more caution with our amazing photographers as now seeing them more in a salesman roll than all the skills that have stood out through the entrance in to truly professionals, and accomplished photographers. Now some of us that still live in the world automatically raising our eyebrows when an item is introduced to make new sales. Aside from all of my inner workings of hesitancy choosing to err on the side caution….. this amazing article about a very well understandable reality in our photograph world.. My appreciation of Matt just scaled up the mountain side higher than ever before. To me this is truly a seriously involved issue of which we will always like to ponder as all the changes continue to open up, and become more of this same conversation for all the years ahead of us. How more balanced can one be than how Matt has truly looked within, and also listened to many others in his field of success…. to then speak out from all sides knowing that we all will be rightly considering as much of a balance as we can with our desire to move forward to improve our photograph, and enjoy it as fully as possible in light of all these challenges he did speak about. Right on Matt K… I’ve enjoyed what you presented to us, and I believe you drew us all in with your seeing this from varied opinions clearly bringing to light the different concerns for which are usually always involved when times are changing. Having been aware of all sides, and most of the issues involved. We all move on with or without our AI journeys, and other personal creative skills I’m still inclined to try to learn more from all of you that obviously know more than I do about professional photography, but I’ll be keeping up with Matt as I try to move forward! Thanks Matt K.. I appreciate you more than ever as you were speaking clear enough that I think we all may have benefited from you sharing your perspective spoken through these variations of different points of view. Which clearly reveals the open options we have as individuals! Keep on everyone! Make the choices that suit you best!
Some people say one shouldn’t use presets or plugins or …. Some people say photos aren’t “creative” if everything in post isn’t done manually. IMHO it makes no difference how one post-processes “their” photographs. The bottom line is that the end result is what the photographer envisions.
My struggle is in the field, getting the shot I want in the light I want. I don’t like spending hours on the computer, and I especially dislike the selection tools and the work required. I use them sparingly and try desperately to get it right “in camera.”
I love the new AI selection tools in Light Room and have used them often to help rescue some otherwise bad photos. Not that I have made them great, but I have made them satisfactory – good enough – for the story I am trying to tell.
I agree with your comments about it being a tool to eliminate grunt work. Why dig a large hole with a shovel when you can use and excavator?
By reading what you’ve written I perceived all your passion into photography.
I completely agree with what you said.
EF
Not at all, It’s called progress. Who ever they are, they should get a life
You said it all in a short and Factual let’s move on and welcome A1 technology that speeds up raw image processing. It saves me time and made a world of difference to my bird photography and more time for creativity. I use L/R P/S and use some topaz and luminar functions and it improved and speed up my work process. ?love A1
I remember reading some years ago that Ansel Adams used to spend days in the darkroom producing his prints and my own father teaching me dodging and burning in the darkroom way before AI. I think you’re right, it’s personal choice, but we all like our work to look it’s best, so I know which direction I will go.
I agree with you, Matt 100%! There will always be naysayers but science will prevail. Thanks for your great instruction and I’ll continue to do things the way I want just as you recommend we all do.
Well said! To answer your question I use it when I want.
Same issues with AI we saw in the 90’s and “auto focus”… many complained that anyone could now call themselves a photographer because they didn’t have to learn the fine art of focus. Blah, blah, blah.
My position then is the same as now with AI, if you want to lug around an 8×10 field camera with glass plates and develop your own images to be able to tell yourself you are a photographer, no one is stoping you. But please don’t tell the rest of the world that because they adopt newer tech they are any less. AI in all its flavors has allowed me to producer higher quality and vastly improved images to my clients, and none of them ask me if I used AI…
Great point about clients not asking.
Plus! The frame rate of the 8×10 is not that good for wildlife 🙂
………… Gary
……………………AU
Remember the days of getting information from encyclopedias? . . . and the days where engineers did calculations using slide rules? I’d venture to guess most wouldn’t want to return to those times.
Perhaps those that want others to do things the way they once did are looking for validation of their own life, rather having others embrace opportunities to learn and grow using other available options.
Time would be better spent by concentrating on continued growth and learning of any sort, while being thankful that others can do the same in their own way.
I’m glad Matt you brought this subject up. I’m also happy that you realize that change happens in every aspect of life and so so is our technology. If people want to drive stick shift so be it.
I thank you for your support of new technology that’s helping amateurs like me crate good photos .
Best regards.
Rama
Accurate and well said!! Thank you for saying it so clearly. We all have more choices than we realize and not just in photography and photo editing.
Started photography 60 years ago and suffered through doing everything the long hard way. The improved technology allows me to accomplish things faster without the tedious multiple steps to get basically the same results.
Your insight, common sense, and encouragement is what has kept me following you for years. You consistently keep me out of the weeds of whatever the current “my way is the perfect and best way” to…..fill in the blank. You help me to continue to grow in spite of myself and for that I thank you!!
I agree. Use what you want when you want how you want and don’t worry about what everyone else is doing. Pursue photography for your own enjoyment.
Hi, I liked your article.
In my case, AI is helping me getting the images I wish for when I don’t have the best gear for the job.
For example, a few weeks ago, I took pictures of the moon with my nikon d7200 and my sigma 150-600 mounted on a cheap tripod I got a long time ago that just wasn’t stabil enough under the weight of the lens to give me the sharpness and detail I was looking for. Thanks to topaz Ai sharpen , I could clean up the pictures where I could see smal crters if the moon and feel proud about my photo.
Many years ago, I used to develop pictures in a dark room and even then we had certain techniques to enhance the end result, it was just a different time… Think of old old portraits where photographers used a special pencil to bring out details around the eye etc.
I think AI has helped my photography/photo editing tremendously. I love Ai! Anything that makes post-processing easier and quicker is a tremendous help to me. But I’m still the one that has to take a good photo to begin with, or no amount of AI is going to fix it. AI is a tool just like any other tool used to speed things up. Does anyone want to go back to grocery shopping without barcode scanners? Where the cashier had to manually punch in the price of every item in the cash register? Like barcode scanners, AI is a tool. By the way, you said “AI is being used to sort through photos, and find ones with closed eyes, blurry, etc… so people can quickly weed out the bad shots.” I have been looking everywhere for software that will identify all the blurry shots in a collection of photos. What software does this?
Hi Matt, I agree with you 100%. It is purely down to a matter of choice whether or not to take advantage of AI when editing. I use AI features that help me to speed up my work flow. I don’t see that as cheating or indeed spoiling photography in any way.
My thinking is to have a plan. The plan is to have in my minds eye what I want end up with as a fine art print. So what does this mean? Simple: location, light and composition. I do primarily landscape and wildlife photography, including birds in flight. The latter is less easy to plan, as you know yourself.
The bottom line is that I use certain aspects of so called AI to enable me to achieve the image I had envisaged – and not to over do it, Over-doing it it such a common problem such as with HDR photography, resulting in a colour bloated mess.
Come on guys, embrace it. Use AI properly, or not at all if you so choose. It is very much up to you how you edit in post processing.
Seems to me technology advances have only served to improved photography for well over 150 years. Wooden camera housings weighing 20+ pounds have been replaced by plastic-based housings weighing a pound or less; heavy wooden tripods have been replaced with those made of aluminum or carbon fiber; flash has migrated from trays filled with magnesium powder to single use flash bulbs filled with zirconium to multiuse flashes containing a xenon filled tube. Technology enabled migration of capturing images from chemically treated glass plates to film and then to a computer chip. With technology advances, post processing evolved from soaking glass plates and film in trays of chemicals to being able to sit at a computer screen and use a variety of available software. The list goes on and on. Technology advances have not changed what I think is the most important aspect to photography, and that is to compose and capture an image that makes the soul of the photographer, and perhaps others, sing.
I agree and would like to expand your thinking to include
AI programs that create images from text prompts
There are some who feel. It is not your work
I say Then neither are images made with the photoshop artistic filters
Matt,
I 100% completely agree with you!
I recently gave up playing golf for various reasons. The golf industry has spent billions developing clubs & balls that by new technology (including AI) that enable us (apparently) to hit the ball ball into the next county.
AI is now becoming a part of modern life. Personally I welcome anything that makes my life easier and saves me time in this fast moving world.
Thanks
Agree on the golf… I now MISHIT my new Rogue driver, further than I ever hit my 15-20 year old driver on my best day.
DEFINITELY HELPING MY PHOTOGRAPHY. PICTURE TAKEN MUST ALSO BE RIGHT. PERSPECTIVE AND COMPOSITIONS.
WHAT YOU DO WITH POST PROCESSING – A1 -JUST MAKES IT LOOK SO MUCH BETTER. YOU CANNOT ALWAYS TAKE THE
PERFECT PICTURE BUT WITH A1 YOU CAN MAKE IT LOOK GOOD. I WAS ALSO ONE FOR SAYING NO TO POST PROCESSING
BUT AFTER GIVING IT A TRY, I AM FOR IT.
ESTELLE
First of all, congratulations for all your work Matt and please continue in the same direction.
As far as AI is concerned, nobody is “forced”. to use it. As you say, it’s just another tool that can make our edition easier, in some cases and only if we decide to use it. We ALL have been using it for years in Photoshop, Camera Raw and Lightroom through the auto buttons even though it was not called this way but that’s exactly it and look, photography did not die.
If photography dies, it will not be because of AI I can assure you. We have a popular saying in Spanish: “It’s not the arrow that matters, it’s the bowman…”
I find that AI and presets take away from one’s creativity. There is usually a reason one takes a particular photo, especially landscape photos. The photographer should try to convey his thoughts in his post process.
Manual Portrait processing is easy to do in lightroom or Photoshop. One does not need Portrait AI. When I was a tester for a Lightroom Course I was taught how to fix faces. I believe manually fixing portrait is better quality than using Potrait AI.
From a very long time photographer who started on fully manual cameras, hand processed B&W negative film and making silver halide prints under the orange glow of safelights in trays of smelly chemicals, this whole argument sounds like the ones I heard when auto-exposure cameras hit the market. The one constant in our life besides death and taxes is change… roll with it.
I’m all for anything that makes my life easier. Sometimes AI doesn’t work, and then it’s nice to know how to get what I’m after manually. Auto used to be washed out and over exposed. Now that it gets close to the right settings, why waste time doing it all myself? That said, I usually do tweak the auto settings.
The new adaptive presets are terrific, especially since there’s now a way to adjust the amount.
Matt, I completely agree with you. I use AI but in the end usually tweak it to my own likes. On another note I also own a Sony A1 and wondered if you might consider sharing your settings for birds in flight. I’m just starting to work with that. If you don’t want to share, that’s OK too. Have a wonderful week.
Matt,
I would respectfully submit the bulk of ‘those’ whom think “AI is ruining photography” either just have a bone to pick (with anything in general), unhappy, or unfulfilled with most anything else in their lives. Good grief. I been doing this ‘photography’ thing since 1974. Its not changed all that much, other than cameras have no film, little to no waiting for results (pretty much) and corrections are easier than ever to virtually any image recorded today. Period. End of story. Remember to enjoy the journey AND its destination! You do fine by the way; I just don’t purchase too much of your stuff (full disclosure). Stay the Course.
AI, like you said, is another name for auto and makes editing easier. I think it’s helping my editing.
First, I’ve noticed you’re not doing anything with On1 anymore ☹️. I started with them several years ago and just never changed. To the subject at hand. Recently got On1 2023 which has a lot of new AI features. I had a photo I really liked, but it was a little soft, ran it through AI Tack Sharp and voila. Loved your article, totally agree.
Thanks Roger. I stopped using it years ago and still did training on it but it felt odd to teach people to use something that I didn’t use. Best!
Matt
Your attitude is refreshing. Keep it up.
Matt, I have followed you for years and really appreciate all of the tips you’ve given away and your presets are great! I’m a senior and amateur photographer that loves macro and landscape photography. I have struggled with outlining images forever. I never mastered the pen tool. Thank goodness, i don’t have to anymore! I recently did a photshoot with my niece for her graduation pictures and the new AI tools in PS and LR have saved me enormous amounts of time. I’ve heard so many professional photographers over the years complaining about “not making any money retouching” and it seems like every photographer has brought out their own collections of presets and i’ve bought a lot of them. I welcome the time saving help and I welcome AI. Now I can fix skin blemishes, yellow teeth, bloodshot eyes and more in minutes!
I’m all in for progress. Any tool that makes editing easier and better I’m all in for that too. I have a friend that still uses film cameras. He says it’s better photography. Good for him. Go for it. I don’t care what other people do. Matt, I love your videos and tutorials. Keep up the good work for all of us that love Lightroom and Photoshop.
Matt, thank you! You said it all beautifully. I am 85 years young and a photographer hobbyist who loves nature, landscape and seascape photography and have learned so much from your tutorials, you are one of the best. I love the fact that AI is getting better and easier to work with. It helps me to be more creative because of all the options available. I enjoy editing especially with your blending program. It is one of the best programs available. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and my photo editings only have to please me.
Perfect comment!
IMHO, it’s digital art! All we have is shades of grey. It is all programming. Film was chemical programming, they called it a recipe.
So pre-streched canvas, modern paints, brushes, … Are ruining art.
Get over it!
I really appreciate your point of view and you taking the time to clarify what AI is and how we have been using it forever. I think one of the topics of debate, for me anyhow, in using AI, are when we talk about these other programs that are now out there that use AI… there’s one, forgive me, I don’t know the name, that you can type in words and the AI will generate an image for you. That’s totally fake; that’s the AI that I don’t like and prefer not to use. I definitely use presets in LR and Photoshop and again, appreciate your clarification of what’s what.
I know what tool you’re talking about but it’s not really relevant here because it doesn’t create a photo. It creates more of a painting. I’m sure we’ll get to a point where a photo can be made that way (or maybe we already are), but I think that type of AI is extreme and I think people will self govern that degree of AI on their own. It’s the more subtle versions of AI, where the editing or certain types of grunt work are done for you that I think are the biggest topics of discussion these days.
100% agree. Even Topaz Sharpen AI, DeNoise AI and Adjust AI are likely derivations of their old Detail, DeNoise, and Adjust 5 but not necessarily better. The AI programs simply identify regions within the image to which the adjustments are made. These are time savers for me. I have to spend less time selectively masking the adjustments.
As both a photo contest judge and a contest manager, I’m concerned about images that were created without a camera, i.e., DALL-E etc. That flavor of AI goes too far, IMO for our current contests. But our contest rules are quite liberal… if it looks natural, it’s OK. Replace the sky, remove the distraction, soften the skin. Whatever, if it started as a digital photograph, OK, let’s see it. Now, we have creative categories, where anything goes (but it still needs to have your own photo elements in it) and and black and white, which some might argue is a modification of reality.
Besides, Matt, you didn’t even mention Apple and Samsung and all those phone cameras that people buy because of all the AI.
So, I’m with you, Matt.
Contests should indeed have a separate category for images that add elements not photographed. “Digital Photo Art” could be such a title. Also, “Composites” or “Collages,” and “Dramatically Digitally Enhanced” could be categories. This is little different from what happened in the BW to Color photo contests. Many of the contests 55 y ago considered BW photos only.
Mahlon – I see your point but I’d argue we’re not even close to that being a problem. Maybe in a painting contest but we don’t have AI photos yet. We don’t have a problem of some one using AI to make their photo.
Joseph – True… but contests and comps are also so far behind in general. In so many cases you can’t even remove a branch from a photo of a bird in a tree. AI Noise Reduction isn’t allowed, even though it’s just noise reduction. I could go on, but in general I think most contest rules are created by people that don’t even understand the technology themselves and not a balanced group from all walks and genres of photography.
Matt, I know you probably receive hundreds, if not more, e-Mails a day. I just wanted to take a minute and tell you how much I enjoyed reading your blurb on AI. Frankly, I’ve found Topaz AI Softwares to be troubling in some ways. Firstly, they either work, or they don’t. There’s little room for middle ground. Even so, they do sometimes work magic. However, I find myself often using the DeNoise in Photoshop and Lightroom, or the Free Google version of the Nik Collection (Define 2). It’s just quicker and quite often does just as good a job. But . . . I digress. I’m writing to tell you how much I enjoyed you comments, “Happiness is a choice”, and “Choose to be happy”. We often forget that. Many of us struggle with that choice and let things we have no control over rule our lives. Also, I was pleased to see someone else voice, “Mind your own business.” There are far too many ‘uninvited’ critics or self proclaimed experts out three. I never criticize other folks work unless I’m asked. Never. There are many folks who need to step back and take a lesson. Anyway . . . Keep up the good work. (as an aside: I’ve enjoyed the Courses I’ve purchased from you. Thanks.)
Well said, Matt. I’m one of those 10,000-hour people with Photoshop, and I can make selections with the best of them. But you are so correct: making selections is the tedious part. I want to be a creator. AI lets me get to my creations quicker.
There will always be those who think the only thing better than the way things are is the way things used to be. I wonder if those who dislike how AI makes things “too easy” are cheesed off because others can now do easily what it took them a lot of time and effort to master the hard way. That said, you can always put lipstick on a pig, it’s just becoming easier. AI won’t turn a mundane photograph into a prize winner.
Very well said Matt 🙂
LOVE IT!!!! MYOB! Beautifully put Matt. At my age, I hate grunt work. My eyes are not as good as they use to be, and my hands are not as steady. I need all the help I can get.
Right on! Thank you!
I second Mr. Roomets comments. My hero in the old days was Jerry Uelsmann. But I wouldn’t go back to chemicals and multiple enlargers vs PS Layers if you paid me.
Thanks for your frank and well balanced opinion. I totally agree with you when it comes to LR/ACR/PS. Photographers have always had to develop their images and these new tools just give much more control.
However, you didn’t really go into another change AI is responsible for, and that is certain AI apps (Canva being one, but there are many others) that will create an image based on text. Maybe it’s creative to type the right things and get artificially created results? But imo it’s fake like auto-tune, when in the wrong hands. I guess there’s a place for it though?
But the point I get from what you’re saying is that there are so many talented photographers, more than ever due to available technology, and the vision to make good photographs and beautiful art with them is something that will never be replaced, only aided, by technology.
But they don’t create photos yet so not totally relevant to the discussion.
Thank you, Matt, for a great post. AI is definitely helping me with workflow by guiding me through the workflow process and reducing the time it takes to select key areas to edit. This, in turn, allows more time and the freedom to make edits to those selections. Thank you for posting your AI comments.
You are right on, Matt! I started in photography over 60 years ago doing my own black and white processing in the darkroom. That was hard, time-consuming, smelly and more like driving a Model-T than even a four-on -the-floor. All I can say is that I appreciate every technical advance since then. Digital photography changed the world for me. I gave away my enlarger, my cameras and all my darkroom gear to the local art school and picked up my first digital camera around 1995. Since then, my ability to use Photoshop and then Lightroom has freed up my creative vision and expression a hundred-fold. None of my creative decisions have been improved by all the “AI” features developed over the years – they are still the basic ones that make images better or worse. The automation, like you say, has made the grunt work easier and faster, but making an image better happens only behind the eyes.
I shoot with micro four thirds cameras, so I love how AI helps reduce noise and sharpen. I use Topaz software for this. Luminar Aurora makes what took me ages in manually producing different exposure settings to produce a tone compression of a single photo into something that now takes seconds. It is brilliant.
I love AI! I have struggled with PS for years and it overwhelmed me. I use LR and have used most of the features but I really love the new version that came out last week. Now I can do use content aware removal of distractions in LR. I actually think is does a better job than PS with content aware replacement.
Keep hitting the nail on the head with you comments.
Well said Matt! I see the technological advances on our cameras, lenses and software as tools; people can choose to use them or not. Photography is both art and science and as tools evolve, every photographer is free to create the art they see in their mind and frame it, share it, or sell it. Some value the ‘as you saw it’ art and others, the creativity of options art. Contest organizers are free to establish submission guidelines reflecting their perspectives on tool use and we hope those who do submit images respect and honor them. I believe that as photographers, we should appreciate all of the ‘gray’ between the black and the white.
Before AI you would appreciate something because you understood the skill and effort that had gone into the final result. Now anyone can produce a similar result without much effort, I think it devalues everything.
AI is here to stay, it’s where it#s going that really concerns me.
Well said. Agree with you Matt and if you don’t like the result you can always use the back button.
I really appreciate your frankness and a tinge of humor! I certainly agree with you and really appreciate the way you share your talent! Thank you, Matt!
“Grunt work” isn’t that to which I object. It’s side-stepping the creative work, and winning prizes and jobs on the backs of really creative artists. (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-artists.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare). I didn’t know there was an “auto” button in Lr/Ps. I agree that tools are simply tools; it’s how we use them that’s craftsman-like. And if we can steer our brain and tools toward an idea or vision, we might make some art. “Good” will NOT always prevail. Einstein said there IS conservation of energy in the universe, but entropy is ever increasing. NPR had an interesting interview with a creator of a robot (an AI) that claimed to be able to create art, a trait supposedly reserved for humans. (https://www.npr.org/2019/05/10/719564511/steve-engels-can-robots-be-creative-too). Thanks.
Short, somewhat sweet and more important – went right to the point. I agree with your conclusions entirely and especially your final harsh advice. – Thanks!
My best friend, who is a photographer, believes that you photograph what you see, when you were there. To my knowledge, he does no post processing except, perhaps, some cropping. We often travel hundreds, perhaps a thousand miles to photograph. What if you are too early or too late for the fall colors? What about a blank sky? What if someone or something is infringing on your photo and needs to be removed? What if the light is not perfect? We’ve spent hundreds, even thousands of dollars to be at a particular location. What you see is what you get. Photographers who live close to these locations or wildlife habitat have numerous opportunities to get to the locations at a premium time. Post processing {AI} is all that we have in order optimize our images. I have no reservations about doing so.
Yeah, you hear that all the time. It’s a choice between realism/photojournalism and fine art photography. Both have their place and both have their fans. The problem with that argument that we should be talented enough to take everything in camera and leave it that way to get what we saw while we were there is that the camera doesn’t see what you see. Its sensors are not as good at adjusting to the contrast between bright and dark. The angles and zoom are different. It doesn’t pick up color as well and the colors it does see are different. In order to get something that looks the way you saw it, you have to edit it in post. And with digital cameras, it’s a choice between AI editing in camera or you making those creative decisions yourself in post. One way or another, it always gets edited. The question is by whom and how much.
I agree with Brandy. It’s a difference in the type of photography you wish to produce. The realism/photojournalism category will edit to make up for a cameras lack of ability to produce accurately what the photographer saw when he was there. The fine art photography category edits to create something imagined and impactful. The difference is in using select sky to adjust the sky’s misrepresentation due to the inaccuracy of the cameras capabilities; and using select sky to perform a complete sky replacement, which is creative and impactful, but not a part of the original scene. Both or AI and both methods are valid…just different.
Very good response to the AI criticism. This is why I enjoy your approach to teaching, practical and down to earth!
I totally concur. AI is there use it if you want, your choice. For those folks who want to bring back the Stick Shift are those folks who never sat in heavy traffic with a manual transmission.
Matt, I agree with your take on the subject. I have always loved photography and the processing. I basically love the process and whatever tools make it easier, I’m a fan. I do all of this for myself – I’m not a “group” kind of person or a “joiner” (not saying that’s good, but just who I am). I also LOVE the learning processing. I’ve been doing this since the mid 70’s and still get excited to learn new techniques. I consider myself pretty good at this hobby, but fully realize I still have tons more to learn & that’s what makes it fun. I love your common sense approach & have followed you since your “Photoshop Guys” days. Keep up the great work – most appreciated!
For years photographers fought to have photography considered “Art”. The problem was, artists created something using a blank canvas and brushed on paint, they needed to have a certain amount of skill to produce a work of “Art”; all the photographer had to do was push a button. It was a long hard fought battle but photographers finally broke the barrier and today the works of great photographers are recognized as art and they as artists. In some ways, the painter had an advantage over the photographer, they didn’t have to paint the dead tree in front of the beautifuls pastoral scene. The photographer had to move around (perhaps to a less desireable position) so as not to include the dead tree. Well, technology moved ahead and today, photographers can do everything the painters could always do and now, even more than the painter/artist. A photograph used to be considered a representation of what was there, while a painting was recognized as the artists interpretation of what was there. With todays technology a photographer can produce composites – things that look like they could be real but actually are not and isn’t that what painters always had the ability to do? I find it interesting and somewhat ironic that there exists an art catagory called Hyperrealism; the painter/artist creating works that look like photographs! The bottom line is … I believe that if Ansel Adams were alive today, he would be teaching Photoshop classes.
Well said. Thank you
Not everyone is a Lightroom/Photoshop expert. I think quite a few people tend to give up the hobby because they can’t get their images to have that ‘wow’ factor. Surely anything that helps or guides them in their early days can only be good for them and the hobby. It is 2022, how many of us drive cars that make most of the important decisions without any input from the driver. AI should be seen as a benefit to work in conjunction with, not something that is trying to take the decision making process away from us.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on AI and I totally agree. LR and AI have been a game changer for me (still learning Photoshop). Although AI has simplified some mechanics of editing, knowing what to do next is even more important. That is where your teaching comes in. Time spent on your classes, webinars and recently the LR Summit have made the major difference for me. Thank you for all the time and effort you expend to help us on the photography journey.
Couldn’t have said it better Matt. A great article!
Amen. This applies to a lot more than photography.
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Matt, I am so with you on this one. As you say, if you don’t like it, don’t use it. I always battled with selections so basically never used them much until masking was introduced. I don’t like overworked pictures, so I use AI to do the grunt work and then make subtle changes.
I am old school according to my age, but I embrace these new changes and I love the way you share that information with us.
I agree 100% with you that the AI in photoshop and LR isn’t a problem. The thing that makes AI a game changer and may kill photography in the end is the ability to create totally new images without photography, with Dall-e, midjourney, etc. If prompts fed to a computer can generate images we couldn’t have dreamed to take with a camera, where does that leave photography?
I personally like AI in noise reduction and sharpening. You can’t always capture the image you want, in camera because of prevailing conditions and light, but you can often still get a great shot with a little post…..
Way back in the “good old days” Ansel Adams said that a photograph was only partly made in the camera. Like a music score, the negative needed to be interpreted – and Adams wrote whole books on his zonal process, printing and stuff – no-one (well, with any sense) ever said he was falsifying an image, that dodging, burning, toning and so on made things unacceptable.
So what’s new or different now? The dark room, used properly, was always the Photoshop of its day. No picture was ever “made in the camera” (“in camera”, different cameras produce different jpeg results, so which is ever right?)
Software tools are just tools, like the camera is – everything in the end comes down to the individual photographer using what is available to realise their vision, and the better the tools to produce that vision can only help us all.
Loved the article, Matt, like all your stuff!
An excellent post, Matt!
It is almost a default action for many, if not most, to oppose change in almost all walks of life. Thirty years ago I experience such opposition when assisting to introduce computerisation in my work environment.
I have enjoyed my photography as an amateur since the age of 9 years old and I can assure you that, at the age of 74, I will take all the assistance that I can get! If AI is the answer, bring it on! It saves me much time if only as a starting point.
Having said that, as well as shooting digitally, I am still something of a hybrid photographer, who still shoots film but embraces digital post-processing. My computer has saved many an otherwise unusable image that started life either as an analogue negative or digital image.
I just wish that the incredible software improvements aren’t bring about the need to update my hardware! 🙂
Excellently put Matt, I totally agree AI is there but I am still in charge
Hi Matt, thanks for your post, very well said, I agree but your comparison with stick shift may be right in the US, here in Switzerland and I think all over Europe most of the cars still use manual gear change!
I just used your AI portrait system and I love it, saves me tons of time. Wish you an awesome Sunday.
Way to go Matt!
I absolutely agree with you
Technology has arrived to improve one’s life
You can embrace it or go back to the horse and buggy approach if you want to
Those complaining are probably technologically retarded!
Yep, I agree. In the case of photo editing I see AI as just a refinement of the math behind the automation. Sometimes useful as a starter and sometimes pretty damn good. I usually start with the Preset “Linear” and Profile “Camera Neutral”. I sometimes use styles and presents when I have an image that I like but just can’t find a satisfying solution.
I like the stick shift analogy. That said, I got tired of shifting between 1st and 2nd and getting a cramp in my left leg while creeping through traffic. I bought a BMW 3 series c/w a 6-speed auto-box that can be set to shift at higher RPM. With paddle shifters I still work my way up and down the gears when on twisty mountain pass roads.
I have an acquaintance who is a mathematician and is making a good living in LA producing water and fire scene enhancements for movies and animations for games. He developed improved algorisms and patented them.
Cal
“Mind your own business and don’t worry about what anyone else is doing.” In today’s world of social media trolling, it’s so hard to imagine anybody minding only their own business. Otherwise, I thoroughly agree with you on this subject. Also, your Lightroom Portrait System is great and has already saved me hours of work and gotten me results I would have been hard-pressed to get on my own.
Thanks, very well said… except for the “stick shift” of course 😉 in the UK most of us still use manual gear change!
As long as it simplifies the grunt work and let’s me do the creative bit, I’m all for more AI!
The comments may show confirmation bias since those of us who follow your work and pay attention to what you write are already firmly in your fan corner. Once again you’ve articulated what a lot of us try to explain to the doubters. The darkroom was always where a lot of photo manipulation took place, resulting in beauties like those of Ansel Adams. Our eyes and hearts see more than our cameras. The “new” AI just makes it easier to bring our vision into our photos.
I have been in photography long enough to have started on the dark room developing and printing my own photos. Massive dodging and burning was manipulating our prints on those days. I love the direction that we are headed and the TOOLS we have at our disposal today. At 80 years old I’m still excited about photography and my Ability to take and process images I am proud to show. Plus I don’t have to turn the lights out in the dark room!
I agree that Ai aspects that are tools that help you do the grunt work are marvelous and very helpful. But what about the Ai programs the suddenly have burst on the market that actually create the photo for you based on a few typewritten words that you enter?
You have the option of using them or not right? So don’t use them. No competition you’ll enter will allow them, so simply don’t use them 🙂
Matt,
I think you covered the subject very well. I am 86 and have competed in the PSA internationals heavily until this year winning many awards and having a good time. were it not for the selection tools from the past I would be out of luck as I have developed a pronounced shake in my hands, particularly the right one and I am right handed. I just wish that we had the new features a few years ago. What a help they would have been. The fun is still finding the subject, finding the best view , composing and exposing it and then processing it and “AI” makes it possible to do a better job of processing . Just keep up the good work.
I totally agree with Matt’s well considered comments
I need all the help I can get!
Albert
Your advice was like a breath of Matt K fresh air – bravo! We live in a time of complaining to the point of complaining ourselves out of what we, as artists, can benefit from. Yes, it will take some time to move to embracing ‘change sky’, but no reason to be so binary about it.
Oh, Matt, I enjoy you so much. I love your attitude and the way you present things! Thanks for being you and giving us such excellent information so that we can continue to enjoy this hobby called photography! I love your classes; I love your presets. And you are a joy to watch. I will also look out for your new videos. Keep up the excellent work.
I agree: the new AI-based masking tools make the hard-to-impossible work both possible and fast; they’re game-changers. After fighting for years with hair and trees, I’m pleased with the masking tools. FWIW, I photograph indoor volleyball, now with a Canon R6. I started with film. With the R6 I have eye-detect, an AI-based tool, that allows me to focus on a player, not the volleyball net that’s between us. That makes some photos possible.
Only a month ago I had some one say that AI was cheating and would not be allowed in competitions because it looked for examples of good images on shows that misinformation web and replaced the bad portions of your image with them. I could not convince them otherwise. The issue was raised to our State level judging panel for a decision and I have not heard the result yet.
It shows that misinformation or simply misunderstanding what is published can be very difficult to put right.
Right on Matt … well said!
Agree with you 100% that AI is here to take the grunt work out of post processing. As a hobbyist being in the field and making photos is much better than sitting at a computer doing processing. Any program that assists me in achieving my vision with a minimal amount of work on my part is appreciated. I am not the best in post but embrace all new technology. Thanks for the article.
Thank you for this discussion. I read the article and some of the comments. My take on people that get reluctant to use new technology is somehow biased. I work with robots and due to poor maintenance had to learn lots more than I wanted to as of fixing issues. My approach was always to use what I can get to work faster, smarter and get more insight from technology.
Any software/hardware that makes decisions (AI in various forms) will have its limitations. We should remember its made by people. Over all when I switched from film camera to digital it seemed to me companies tried to imitate film cameras when digital could do so much more.
I would like to see more AI features for example:
Dynamic list of shape recognition – where the camera would add new shapes the photographer takes lots of shots and then have tracking for these shapes.
Stack photos for panning – where the camera identifies the object moving in a different speed than the background and then track the subject.
Exposure compensation by zone, so if I take a photo of a bald eagle I can compensate the body without the head getting over exposed.
In general with most software/ hardware I worked with I found a disconnect between the people that make it and the people who use it. There should be lots more forums like this and camera companies should look and and see what some of us are looking for.
So hope I clear – I love using AI and learning new AI features. Just wish we had lots more 🙂
Great article. I completely agree 100% with your assessment on AI.
Matt – Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing this article. Someone had to say it, and I am glad it came from someone that I respect.
I have no doubts in my mind, NONE, that if Ansel Adams and Edward Weston were alive today both would be taking full advantage of the technology available to them. You and others may disagree with the next statement, but here it goes any way…I tell people all the time that Ansel Adams was an excellent photographer, but he was an AMAZING post-production genius. As such, Adams would have used any tools at his disposal to make his images more compelling.
The argument over AI is the same arguments that people have been making since the beginning of the industrial revolution when people feared that machines were going to replace man in every job. If it were up to some people, there would still be buggy whip companies around because they just can’t fathom the use of a horseless carriage.
AI is a tool that I willingly embrace in my photography. I don’t consider AI “cheating” if the technology can enable me to turn a good photo into a great one, because that once in a lifetime moment I captured was just a tad blurry, and AI enable me to make the photo tack sharp. I look forward to seeing where AI technology goes next in making the world of photography even better.
Amen Brother! When I got my first DSLR the argument was that film cameras were better. To each his/her own! I would have never picked up a camera if it had to be film. It took too long to see what you got and too late to retake it.
I haven’t yet taken THE fantastic shot that wins awards, but I have soooo much fun using AI features in Lightroom and Photoshop to make my photos look more like the vision I saw when I took them!
Matt – You can lead the horse to water but you cannot make him ( no DEI here ) drink !
Well said and agreed to 100%… An infamous individual once said, “Let them eat cake…”
Keep doin’ that which you are doin’ anc create more great, instructive videos.
Totally agree. I use both Photoshop and ON1 Photo Raw 2023. Grunt work is done and I get to use more time on the details.
Matt,
I love the new AI features of Lightroom because now I can actually use masks and selections. Photoshop was very confusing for me so I never learned it (even after buying your Photoshop Tutorial)?.
I love your frankness with people who can’t be satisfied with anything new. Keep up the wonderful instruction.
The one given in life- Change! Were the complainers ever in the film world? Digital was such a tremendous change for the hobby photographer. And, as the digital technology improved and has changed, the cameras and capabilities have greatly changed what we can photograph. Birds in flight, 10 frames a second, nobody complained about that change.
If you want to see what real “AI” is in the picture world, search on “generative AI”. There you just enter a phrase and the software generates a picture for you. You don’t even have to get off your butt or get up early to catch first light.
There are many who are resistant to change and want to go back to the good ole days which really were not that great. As has been stated, you don’t have to use the new technology, you can just be stuck in your old world ways of doing things. Get yourself an old film camera, a 17″ B&W TV, an old car before power steering and power brakes etc….
Agree with comments. Ultimately it boils down to:
I choose to use it MY choice
You choose not to use it YOUR choice
Winner of a competition JUDGE’S choice
That’s life my friend.
Thank you Matt for this discussion. You offered up some sound advice for me personally some years ago. It worked then and I very much appreciated it. Once again, you have hit the nail on the head. At my age (78) even though I have the time, I find all the new stuff in AI very helpful for me. Because there are so many processes available in editing these days I was not using the full potential of the software. With AI, now I can get more out of my software to edit my photos my way. I wholly agree with your sentiments.Thanks again Matt. Oh, just one other note. I did walk to school, uphill… both ways, in the rain, snow and blazing sun all in one day when I was a kid!! I had to cross a couple of rivers too! 🙂
Well, that sure brought out the comments. Matt, you summed it up my saying to the sad sacks, “Mind your own business”. There seem to be too many folks who just get up in the morning so they can be upset about something and then have to complain to us all about it and tell us how things should be done. AI is a great tool to help us beginners deal with the less fun things like selections in order to to get to the stuff that’s important in photography like developing an eye for composition, finding good areas for wildlife and just practicing getting better in the field and in post.. Thanks for being the sane adult in the room. You know how much you’ve helped me with your courses and training so that I can better use the software that is available.
Totally agree – we are in charge of what we do and what we want to use.
I agree with you 100%
Most of us enter competitions, and AI generated images are forbitten. As for the rest- as you say it takes away the grunt work.
Love you work.
Hi Matt, I couldn’t agree with you more on this topic. I use both Lightroom and Photoshop and the new AI features are great. I also get sick and tired of people wanting to complain about things that doesn’t affect them. Your article is straight to the point. I enjoy your videos. They are succinct and I like the way you don’t waffle on.
Keep up the great work. I always recommend you to other photographers whenever I get the chance. Best wishes
Wayne
“Right on the Money” as always Matt.
I like your “learn to drive a stick shifter” comment but even an auto can be driven like a manual, especially when there are shift paddles. Only difference is there is no clutch, so AI is just like an auto gearbox and then there are all the safety features on a car today which you don’t hear people complain about.
I need AI help, selections and layers are difficult for me, as I am Red/Green color deficient and need somewhere to start.
I love the improvements AI brings to my post processing. It saves me time. It helps with accuracy in selections. I don’t use all the tools, but the ones I want. It certainly is not cheating. You are correct in all you say. I thought about my career as a medical technologist. When I started training (in the dark ages) there weren’t even machines (instruments) that did anything automated. We counted cells manually – one at a time Now, with better accuracy that technology has brought us, thousands of tests are done in the time it took us to do one. Advancement! Saving lives, too.
I totally agree with your statement about “You are in charge”, All this new stuff sometimes is overwhelming but you can try it don’t like it? don’t do it! I am sometimes surprised with a photo after doing all the things I can do with it end up liking the original the best! But the options are there.
I think that AI is often misinterpreted. It doesn’t take AI to determine where a sky is, or to locate and perform simple edits to a portrait’s eyes. AI is artificial intelligence – with the emphasis on intelligence. In this capacity, it means looking at a photograph (or a specific part of one), evaluating what is going on, and making logical decisions about what potential changes to make based on past experience and preference. Some alterations will have wide support. Let’s say someone has dark circles beneath their eyes – a “perfect portrait” will get rid of those. But what if the circles actually are the embodiment of the subject, and photoshopping them away changes the tenor of the photo utterly?
I feel that a photographer could potentially create their own favorite presets to manage groups of photos, but to think that an AI system is going to be so responsive (certainly at this point) is dreaming. and why would any artist want to be able to upload a set of photographs, hit the “AI” button, and have the results all come out “perfect” (according to one interpretation)? Even when I have a good idea of the photos I took and the result I’m looking for, I may still spend a lot of time exploring different lighting or other effects. Because I like exploring. I don’t want my photo editing program to do that exploring for me. If it is all automatic, we’ve left the artistic decisions to … what? Not ourselves.
I think you have hit the nail on the head with your AI article. I enjoy taking pictures. Unfortunately I’m not an artist in previewing the settings I should be using to cut down on my workload of processing a photo, so I edit what I did shoot and enjoy the act of actually making a photo that I can enjoy. I enjoy using AI features to help me actually achieve a decent photo without getting frustrated over the hours that it use to take. I am looking forward to trying AI on the 100’s of slides my father took to help preserve our history as well as having a good laugh at our own expense. Believe me it is a daunting task to start scanning and fixing the old photos and it is sure nice to be able to fix things in batches than individually. Time to stop rambling and go fix some photos.
❤
Very well said Matt 100% agree
Good commentary!
While “There is no fun and creativity in making complex selections.”, there may be value in doing so. If using automated tools stops you from improving your photographs, they are a problem. (If you want your photography to improve.)
If we take the time to understand what using the automatic/AI features of our equipment does, it can help us progress as photographers. If we neither take the time, nor make the effort, to do so, we lose a great opportunity to improve as photographers.
I read with great interest you article on AI photo editing. I’ve been teaching “Basic Photo Editing” in a small Midwest town. This conversation is not new to me. What’s cheating and what’s not. Should I use sky replacement etc…. Bottom line with me, if it improves your photo and you like it better than the original shot, GO FOR IT! If you can’t do basic photo editing, you are driving a stick shift. I got into Photoshop in the 90’s and I ain’t looked back since. Editing is so much easier now. Excellent article!
Matt, I agree 100% — especially about the creative aspects of photography and post-processing vs. the grunt work. To extend your stick shift analogy: 100 years ago to get a driver’s license you had to show the mechanical ability to get under the hood, to not be stranded in the middle of nowhere — most drivers today rarely (if ever) pop the hood. When PCs and MS-DOS hit the market 35-40 years ago you had to be part programmer to deal with rudimentary applications and manage things like memory (all 640K of it) — today it’s point and click on an application and go to work. And, yes, I’ve owned my allotment of manual transmission vehicles but sitting in traffic with aging knees I sure won’t give up my automatic transmission — although I do have shift paddles on the steering wheel for times when a bit of fun is called for.
Well said as AI does help fix small areas, but you need to have the light right in first place. Thank you for this!
Matt, you made so many great points! Agree wholeheartedly.
For me the challenge is always the photography/the capture, and editing never makes a so-so image great. But skilled editing can make a good or great shot better. Thanks for all your good work — and for writing this!
You’re absolutely right. We have choices, and what we do with those choices is up to each individual. It’s what works for you!
I love that you have taken this on. When I first used the Auto feature in LR i felt guilty. Now I use it as just one of many tools. (And, when I hate what it does, which does happen a decent amount, I reset and start from scratch.) Do I think that those who have never started from scratch might be missing out on some skills/concepts? Perhaps. But that is for them to find out and deal with.
As a person with the eyesight of the elderly, I love that the masking saves me from meticulous masking with a brush. So I am very grateful for all of it. I use it when I like and don’t use it if I don’t like what it does. And I will be continuously learning how to use all of these tools faster/better to develop my input as the person who has an idea of what I want to say with the photo I took.
Thank you for your comments and for your wonderful courses.
You nailed it Matt. AI is here to stay and it makes editing so much easier much of the time.
You are spot on Matt.
I have lived with this kind of mentality all my life. I am an Architect by profession and in the late 1970’s to Early 1980’s have had to fight the battle of using Computer Aided Design & Drafting. Many said it took away the art of drawing and ruin the creativity of building design. What it did was take over those boring tasks that all Architects, or most, hated giving us more time to create, to perfect our building designs making them better.
I see AI in Photography the same.
Well said, Matt!
AI does not ruin photography. Photographers ruin photography by abusing AI. It’s a tool, nothing more. It is not the camera that takes poor photos, it’s the photographer. It is like a new paint color on an artist’s palette. It is there to use. If you don’t appreciate its contribution to the hobby/profession, do not disparage it, and do not use it. Move on!
Well said…and I agree with you.
Matt, this is the best thought out and most honest take on the “AI Revolution” that I’ve seen. Thanks for keeping your head as all others lose theirs.
This was fun. Enjoyed it. Main test for me is do I like the final result of my photos. That and do they keep improving. Hey, even robots are photographers now.
When I first went to a school to learn photography, we were handed a camera and told to go out and be creative. I rebelled. I had a solid year of photo-journalism behind me. I went back to school to learn the basics… because I was convinced that the true creative master was the person who could master the basics. And boy oh boy, I knew, I had no concept of the basics even though I had remarkable success as a news photographer.
To me if you master the basics… then you control the photographic process… it no longer controls you. As I learned more and more about photography I was able to transition from Large Format to 35mm and be even more competitive. I even had a boss tell me he had a complaint that I was using a 35mm instead of a 4×5 speed graphic and it wasn’t very professional. (Spot news was outsourced at that time to our “professional” studio.) My reply was simple… I’m not sure our customer sees it that way, in the last two weeks of the 12 days of front page photos… 11 were taken on my personal 35mm. His response? …. Keep on shooting!
Creative photographers master the basic tools. AI is a basic tool that needs to be mastered, because in the end it is all about the image not AI! To paraphrase a 20th century communication philosopher …Marshall McLuhen’s “The Medium is the Message” today’s photographers need to recognize that “The IMAGE is the message.” Your camera is only a tool! The camera and it’s AI ability play a very small role in the creative process.
I agree Matt AI takes care of the tedious tasks that slow me down in reaching the creativity point of editing. I can safely say all the AI masking has unleashed my creativity while speeding the process u considerably. I now do those detailed tweaks that avoided in the past due to the time sync and frustration and in return my photos are transitioning towards art pieces IMHO
Thanks for a great article. My love of photography is in the taking of the photo. Enjoying the great outdoors or another person is what helps take a great photograph/ I have gone from film to digital. From almost crying for not taking a good picture of a good scene to realizing the best capture happens with great lighting and knowing your camera. I use Photoshop,but do not do a lot of editing. What editing I do is to make the picture better. If I want to be creative i will experiment. I enjoy life and photography-I have been doingit for almost 60 years and I continue to learn.
Well said. I agree. Now “let’s keep moving forward.” (Walt Disney)
Yes, AI is making things even more easy for the photographer to produce images, that were not doable in the past.
But weren’t the invention of AF and digital photography incl. digital black room similar quantum leaps?
Would anyone like to waive these benefits and go back to the age of film and manual focusing?
While some of us do that for certain reasons, I believe the majority is appreciating technical progress and related capabilities.
If it comes to publishing images that include AI generated parts, I ususally reveal this fact in the description, comment etc.
Agree—once you open photo editing software you are no longer a “purest” and lose the option of whining about about features one is at choice to use or not use. Personally, I find AI a great starting point.
Well… yes and no… You refer to AI as the improvements in LR and PS. I am 100% in agreement with you on those. The tools in those apps make editing easier and faster, and I do use them a lot. I love each new improvement as it comes out.
However… I do think “AI is killing photography.” The AI I refer to those are the new tools that allow you to write a line of text, and have the AI create the complete image for you. Or the AI that allows you to describe a person and it gives you a full blown, complete headshot portrait (a company was recently outed for doing that for a dozen “executive management people” to make the company appear larger than it was).
That is the AI I refer to when I say “AI is killing photography,” and it is not referred to all in your discussion above.
Well stated!! Totally agree!!
https://tenor.com/view/forrest-gump-thats-all-i-have-to-say-tom-hanks-gif-13962423
I absolutely agree with you!
Great article Matt, well written and you didn’t hold back.It’s like the old scenario if you don’t like the movie that’s on don’t watch it no one is forcing you
Photography has moved from ‘capturing reality’ (the camera never lies days?!). Thankfully. It’s an artistic, subjective and personal, creative process. Machine Learning and the more recent and rarer AI speed up the process and, thereby, give the user the chance to choose the tools they will use for their personal choice of finished image. Human creativity has an assistant to help it expand its horizons. Bring it on – if you want to.
This is an old debate and dates back to the 1950 when after WWII, someone suggested that landscape photographers not be tied to reality but express themselves as artist do in other mediums like painters, sculptors or what have you.
But there was always those who argued that photographers should limit themselves to description of a scene.
In the film days, they argued that once an exposure was taken, that was it: everything should be developped and printed without what they called artifice.
Then came digital photography; Photoshop was cheating and not real photography.
And now we have AI. Same debate today as some seventy years ago.
Hi Matt, I am an enthusiastic amateur photographer who has consistently struggled with the complexities of Photoshop and still haven’t mastered it. For me this was the most frustrating and tedious side of the hobby and I didn’t get any enjoyment from the process.
I’m more than happy that the advances in AI technology have started to make my post processing enjoyable.
As you rightly say, I still decide how I want the finished photograph to look and have full artistic control.
AI has, for me, been a breath of fresh air and has really freed my creativity and increased my enjoyment.
I am embracing AI, as it has made my photography a pleasure once again.
I love the new AI stuff. I do photography as a hobby and I would not or am not going to take the time to do complex selections. I also like restoring old photos and some not so old. Sometimes Topaz photo AI works, sometimes the new Neural filter in photoshop works and sometimes they don’t. If they work I use it, if not, I don’t and take the long way home. AI is just another tool in the photography tool belt.
I was a little amused to read your suggestion that Luminar is leading the AI field. To an extent, I’d agree. Neo’s feature set is pretty awesome. However, I can’t imagine it being a pro’s tool of choice. It’s clunky, slow, buggy and Skylum has compromised its business model into a subscription-based one that nickel-and-dimes its customers through selling plug-ins, plug-ins that should be either a feature enhancement or already in the software package. $70 to add a HDR plug-in that doesn’t have any adjustable parameters? A sharpener? Seriously. Pfft.
I purchased Neo in the first instance because it has, for my purposes, one killer AI-based feature: a sensor spot removal tool. As a construction/industrial timelapse photographer who on occasions needs to spot 100s of files at a time, that tool had the potential to save me many hours of tedious drudgery. Except it can only treat one file discretely at a time. There’s no way to batch a folder of images. When I lodged a feature request, I was told it was not possible to sync a set of images with this tool. It took me some time to explain I didn’t want to sync a set of images, I wanted an automated workflow that does exactly what I do as a human – open first file, apply spotting tool, save, open next file, apply spotting tool, save, rinse and repeat until the last file in the folder is saved. I even explained they could probably attract 100s of new customers who do timelapse and would highly value such a feature. It still staggers me that I never heard any further feedback and, certainly, the workflow feature never appeared. It seems their devs are too busy figuring out new cash cow plug-ins or how to make their creaky software run better.
I was on the verge of hiring an independent software programmer to write me a workflow. (I tried it myself but writing/testing scripts ain’t my strength.) However, a turn in health has forced me into retirement so it’s all moot now. Anyway, the point of this rather long-winded response is to support the main assertion of your op-ed. AI might well save time and tedium but it will always be limited to how it’s implemented as a tool, and that takes talented humans – both on the programming side and the user side.
Hi Chris. It’s definitely not the “pros tool of choice”. Find me a pro that you admire their photos and I can pretty much bet they’re not using Neo 🙂
But oddly enough, people want to achieve the results of the pros, yet they use the tools that no pro would really use. Eh well… if you like a software and it makes you happy, go for it.
Just to be clear… Neo doesn’t make me happy. 😉
Well said! Hope, by a few more days, the portrait course will still be available Monday as I am away till then. Having bought many previous courses I wish to add portraits to my long list of haves.
I see no issue with AI and do not believe it is killing photography. I used the AI functions a lot, but i still take the photo and decide what to take and how to take it. The AI takes the grunt work (selection etc) and leaves me the artistic side
Take my hockey (and soccer) photos (I am shocked I have photographed hockey long enough to make this comparison). In the past editing 2000 hockey photos was slow but was sped up with pre-sets and syncing across all images, sweet. But editing was just straightening, cropping, global light and colour adjustment. I would almost never edit just a played in a photo and if i did it would just be 1 or 2 very special ones. Portraits I would go into great detail etc. Now, thanks to AI, iI can do what i did in the past AND separate a player or shirt or any other little part and adjust the lighting separately and repeat this (while i make a coffee) over all 2000 images using “previous” “sync” “pre-set” and the most i need to do is sometimes adjust individual selections and maybe some sliders on some images. AI, pre-sets etc doe the heavy lifting and give me a base edit to start from, I then make slight adjustments as needed to some. In situations (like hockey) where lighting is constant I can run pre-sets that incorporate AI masking etc and have a bunch of photos ready in a few minute (well many few minutes) and am able to go into detail I never would have because it would have taken weeks of 8 hour days not less than 1 hour.
I welcome because it eases the burden of what were technically difficult actions. Creativity is in the vision, and in the interpretation of that vision. Ai simply adds tools to simplify the mechanical processes. And by thus simplifying in no way compromises the creative result. Does it really matter for an artist to grind and create his own color paint rather than purchasing what is commercially available? Artistry and creativity are expressed in the final product, not through the mechanisms employed. Tools change with technology, knowledge, and time. Creativity and artistry come from the individual’s
vision, not from the tools employed to manifest that vision.
Thank you, Matt, for your continuing insight and contribution to the photography community. Your mention of the person who learned to make complex selections ten years ago, and wants everyone to go thru the same hellish process today, sums it all up. I’m old enough to remember the introduction of thyristor flash technology. People thought that was cheating because they’d spent a lifetime dividing a guide number by an estimated distance to find an f/stop. Change is, by definition, threatening on many levels and some folks simply have difficulty dealing with it. As you point out, no one is being forced to change if they choose not to. The Magic Wand and Magnetic Lasso tools are still right there in Photoshop.
We’ll said Matt! I’ve been using Photoshop since v.4 when there was only ONE undo! And I still thought Ps was miraculous compared to my wet darkroom. So I’ve gone from “stick shift” to “Tesla self driving” without a murmur. No one complained when Lr and Ps came out with the automated panorama and HDR because it was never called AI.
I can remember when ‘Digital’ heralded the end of Photography.
Thank You Matt for speaking your mind. I totally agree with you. I am a retired Software Development Manager and I embrace new technology making whatever you’re doing easier.
Totally agree with you!
Drawings in mud. Stack the mud and you have 3D Drawings (Whoa). Tools. Carve drawings in Stone (Last forever). Mix colors with bits of stone and plants (Lot easier). Mix bits of stone, plants and oil (Easier still). Film. (Major advancement. Fast but black and white?). Colorize black and white prints with paint. Color film. (A miracle). Computers and software. (Double miracle). Software upgrades. (Continuing Miracles). Glass displays, holograms, etc, etc, etc, onward and upward.
Well said! Too many people just like to complain! We all have choices. Do what makes you happy! I do !
Right on.
AI is just one more tool in the toolbox. It’s the expertise of the person to use all the tools available that makes the difference.
In the 70s, musicians feared the synthesizer would replace musicians. It only helped to enhance new music compositions, and created tones not humanly possible. AI can’t replace the soul of the artist, but will certainly help the artist/photographer create their vision.
I do not think the 1st statement held true for real musicians of the 70’s. You put fourth a whole different debate which I will not endulge. However, I do agree with your last statement.
I love AI, automatic transmissions, microwave ovens, cell phones and can’t wait to see what the next great technology advance will be. I am sorry for those who don’t. Oh, and I am 92. I have plenty of history to look back at, but I feel way more alive looking forward.
Hi Matt, Your comments are right on. Growing up working with sheet film and a wet darkroom , developing by inspection, transitioning into Ps version 2 was a no brainer.The key for me then was the language Adobe used in the menu. Understanding the language was key. Implementing those actions proved to me that I no longer needed razors to cut masks, no more fixer stained fingernails etc. Digital Photography is akin to parallel ski as opposed to telemark skiing. Knowing the history and the implementation of the definition of the terms translates into an efficient use of the tools being used. The technique is different the end result will Stand or fall depending upon the translation and the implementation of the skills learned along the way. As with shorter skis, AI does make for quicker turns with precision. Gracefully? Now there’s your point.
You talk a lot of sense Matt. I love how AI is making editing easier for me. Yes, I have learned how to use the tools but AI just makes it all quicker. Thanks for all your great tutorials.
Photography is like sports. We each have our team(s) … or not. We can be rabid fans … or not. There’s a “too far” line that varies for each of us. As the currently popular saying goes “You Do You”. Let me do me. Enjoy the fun discussions and remember … no one is forcing you to read or see anything. Read or keep on scrolling.
Totally agree MK! You’ve featured one of my photos in No Light No Problem 3 (plus as a standalone video on your YouTube channel). Although I could have tapped the “auto” button, and been presented with an OK result, I would never have been really pleased with the result. The subject was the reason it required further editing – if it had been a crap photo/composition in the first place it would not have been worth editing, AI or not! AI is great for quick edits but, in most cases, is not going to give you the final result…
Having said all that, Topaz Photo AI is very much a photographer’s friend!!!
Hi Matt, I agree with your observation on AI technology software. I was never good at making selections, AI has helped me on that area. So yes, AI has made photography and editing much more enjoyable. In conclusion, use it or don’t use it, that’s your choice.
Well said!
I love the new features in Lightroom, but still drive a stick shift, and have decades of experience with film.
And who out there can do macros at 1:1, get the detail and not use focus stacking (including running “Auto-align” first)?
Thank you for your thoughts on this, it is a great read and for someone in their 70’s who can tell you for as long as you like that “It’s not like it used to be, etc.’ I totally agree with you. Taking pictures for 60+ years I never questioned my ability to focus correctly, but in the last year or so I thought that the focus on my D3 wasn’t as sharp as it should be. Of course the first thought is my age and vision quality, but no there is no problem there, so I wondered if in fact the sensor on the camera was beginning to fail in some way. Bottom line is that I went to a particular AI product out there to address Sharpness and it did a great job on an image and I was in control of what I wanted to be sharpened. I also purchased your portrait package and it is awesome, thank you.
I use my large format 5×4 and very old working darkroom now and not a sign of Ai there what. I do use photos hop with blakes panels both have kept me sain but when a 10×8 paper negative comes out it still blows my mind leon
AI tools do not make someone a good photographer. I’ve a friend that takes special time to take wildlife photographs. It pays off. However, even though he’s well versed in Lightroom and Photoshop, he has no eye for balance, shade, movement, cropping, etc. He is hampered as he’s not very artfully creative and the use of AI can only take him a distance. I have another friend that likes to take pictures of flowers. Great cropping, focus, subject matter, but his pictures suck. There’s no contrast, the pics are dim and anything is done to draw the eye to the center of attention. But, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If they’re happy, with their results, great! That’s what is good about today’s world. The photographer’s landscape is for everyone.
In both cases, a photographer’s eye of an artist is lacking. So, use of AI can only take a photographer so far. AI does NOT make a person a GOOD photographer. A side note, most of the college educated systems engineers were the least creative people I’ve had to work with.
Matt good points. Here is my two cents. Let’s all go back to film for a moment. For many years a photographer had to rely on his or her technical skill alone. You were very limited in what you could do as far as editing. Keep that word in mind. With film you could dodge and burn, color tint or sepia dbbl expose and a few other tricks. All of which in most software used today. My point is, the picture you made was only as good as your skill level. let’s fast forward decades. Digital software is a means of editing digital photography. Nothing more nothing less. I feel as a photographer if you do not like any part of an auto feature aka AI in digital software then don’t use it. Take your jpeg in auto mode with a $3500 DSLR and be satisfied with what you got without any editing. In the end you still have full control if you do not like the results AI provides you. I just don’t see the gripe!
P.S. I think your courses are soe of the best and your teaching style is nothing short of a personnel one on one. Keep up the good work and much success.
I am with you 100%, AI helps but at the end of the day it is all about using your eye and the technology to make the photo look better.
Very thoughtful article. I like the new AI features because of the ease of editing I used to struggle with before, and I’ve been photographing for 40 years. I’m able to have more fun with my images and do things not possible in the past, while still learning how to get a great capture! Thanks Matt!
I’m a 76-year-old retired pro photographer. I was in it when it was really really hard. I’m all for anything that makes it easier to create my pre-visualized images. But you are right. You can’t polish a Turd no matter what tool your using.
Well said! I love being helped by AI. Both while obtaining the photograph as well as in editing. The AI makes it possible to take photos that not so long ago were impossible. But what really makes it work is that I know the birds so well I can be ready for them to do capture the otherwise impossible photograph.
And what I really like is that this essay and the new portrait material are concrete evidence that you are up and running post-Ian. Be safe. Be well! Hello to Diana!
Completely agree!
Photography == Art, technique and practise of capturing light into a durable support. Photography is like you said the knowledge involved in capturing light. AI won’t change that.
Developing a photo, whether digitally through several ways with or without AI, or manually with different types of chemicals, coffee, etc is just the processing of this support, which is highly subjective and a form of art. And it’s not part of the act of photography.
AI (or auto features) just helps people who lack knowledge or time to achieve something (subjectively) likeable.
BUT !!!!
I think the discussion should much more be that AI (or auto features) now reaches a state where it can often compensate the lack of experience, technique, planification or gear required in taking a good photo. And in this way helps more and more people produce photos as good as what only professionals could do before. I think this is what people are referring as “killing photography”.
“I think the discussion should much more be that AI (or auto features) now reaches a state where it can often compensate the lack of experience, technique, planification or gear required in taking a good photo. And in this way helps more and more people produce photos as good as what only professionals could do before.”
… and my answer to this is… absolutely it will help more people produce photos as good as what the pros used to be able to do. And that will elevate photography to be better and force the “pros” to get better. Like I said… suck it up 😉 Thanks!
Amen!
Hear, hear, Matt. And when I see a beautiful photo I don’t really need to know how the sausage is made. And if I take/make a beautiful photo then I’m happy about it. I made it all come together with all the instruction and tutorials and practicing and my eye for it.
from the eye through the heart to the brain, after that it is just moving ones and zeros …
—— Leonard Foonimin
You nailed it, Richard: The eye looks, but the brain sees. And because everyone’s visual perception differs, we all interpret the same scene differently. I think of photography as brain to brain communication, a brain hack.
Amen.
AI is but one component of the forces which have been slowly eroding the sales and popularity of photography. The introduction of high quality and ever present cell phones is perhaps the more influential factor. Currently, DALL-e is limited to 1024 x 1024 images so at this point its ability to supplant photography is not yet realizable. There have been an evolution of everyday tools which in some respect pay homage to AI from perfect erasers to intelligent masking/subject extraction. Technology as you’ve observed continues to advance and the “suck it up buttercup” philosophy carries the day. If for some reason, the grid fails there will always be the need for those who can compose scenes, understand exposure and light, and who can create a photograph.
There is Ai to make nearly all pictures technically ‘vanilla perfect’ and then there is what you ‘put into it’ to make it art. With that profound statement comes a caveat. Ai or plug-ins or whatever are very valuable in tweaking messed up focus in that one-of-a-kind grabbed on the run picture or enlarging (going all the way back to Genuine Fractals) or click/easy chromatic aberration or other things. Simply – they are tools like a hoe for gardening but they are not the garden.
I’m with you. At the current level AI is a buzz word. Plus in my case the selection capability totally compensates for my lack of skill driving a mouse. But I am the one who decides WHY I am making the selection. I seen many sky replacements where the new sky becomes a dramatic distraction to the real subject of a photo. Just like excessive sharpening makes a photo look like too much caffeine. Not to mention that post processing raw is cheating is pure nonsense. Give me a break.
Matt, I could not agree more. Well said.
I’m with you on this topic. Anything that makes tasks easier, saves time is welcome. I use the Auto feature in Lr’s Develop module as a START point, then adjust further to whatever you like – this is the creative part. The Auto feature has gotten better over time and now it has AI. Great!
Matt —
Thoughtful and well put! My photo friends and I definitely subscribe to the wow-it’s-easier school, both in camera and in post.
In film days, I shot photos, mostly slides, and even had Kodak print some of them, but darkroom work was way too much like chem lab for me. I started playing with post only when photography came to my tech world: digital and software.
The kind of tech you discuss is just more progress along the same path. It brings more tools to creative people without requiring them to become gearheads to use them.
BTW, I agree that “AI” is an abused buzzword. The particular tech underlying today’s version, neural networks (NNs), can do some amazing things, especially where the job is to recognize patterns. It’s also amazingly un-intelligent for planning or when dealing with exceptions. That said, I don’t know to what extent the Auto button or bird-eye focus use NNs; they may just rely on well-tweaked, old-fashioned code that captures lots of human observations.
I’ve certainly seen some ranting about MidJourney and similar AI that generates images from prompts. Having played with MidJourney a little, I found that it’s not easy to prompt it so that anything good comes out, unless you’re looking for unintentional humor. Producing anything personally memorable seems impossible. But it sure is fun to try, just like playing with filters in Ps.
Rambling onward, I’m a member of the Palo Alto Camera Club. We hold monthly competitions, almost all online since 2020 for the obvious reason. Each competition has four categories, Open, two repeating ones such as fauna, landscape, etc., and one special one.
Recently, just for the fun of it, we tried to define the special category Straight Out Of Camera. I contended that the godd old days of SOOC never existed, certainly not for digital cameras: no profile, no photo. However, we could choose some limitations if we wanted to, e.g., no cropping no local adjustments in post. I decided that I would only enter iPhone photos, what some SOOC in a JPG has so much tech baked it. AI never came up. It’s hard to act like a Luddite with today’s photographic tech.
Keep up the good work. I’m enjoying your videos, I’m recommending them to others, and I’ve even bought some of your packages.
Rob
Well Said Matt.
Thank you
Steve Raub
I am reminded of Ansel Adam’s photo … Moonrise, Hernandez … the photo as captured and simply printed as is … is interesting… the photo printed by Adams using darkroom dodging and burning is magnificent .. was Adam’s cheating? … it seems to me he was using the tools available to realize his vision … in painting terms he was an impressionist … not a realist … there is plenty room for both schools of artistic rendering in photography imho …
AI is one of the most misunderstood and over-hyped terminologies in ‘common use’. The vast majority of people, and that includes specifically PR people, who use AI dispargingly or enthusiastically, have no real understanding of AI at all, only their interpretation of it through received ‘knowledge’. They often confuse AI with Machine Learning.
AI can be used to build smart machines, but you need machine learning experts to make them truly intelligent.
No matter how clever the camera you can’t put it on a tripod and say “take the best photo to illustrate some aspect or another”, nor can you put an image into a piece of software and tell it to “create the specular highlights needed to highlight the intensity of this raindrop”.
Educators like Matt K are the bridge between AI (editing software) and Machine (us wannabe editors) Learning Experts. No matter how ‘AI’ Matt becomes there will always be ‘Expert’ failures amonst us, just as there will always be those afraid of change.
Hey Matt, I agree 100% with your comments on the AI subject. Technology can help with our lives in so many ways and we totally accept it. AI is nothing more than a new, advance in what technology can provide for us in our lives. Animated moves are an example of how AI has provided significant strides in movie making and yet no one seems to complain that this is ruining the movie industry. I just finished editing a couple hundred portraits where one of the subjects needed (IMHO) some facial editing and with the new feature I was able to get through all that editing in a couple of hours, whereas, without the new facial recognition, the time would have been significantly longer with most likely less pleasing results. I still needed to determine the adjustments that were needed, but now the facial recognition helped with defining where they needed to be done.
When it comes to worrying about our own world and let others look after themselves, I fully agree with your opinion on this fact. If we all just looked after ourselves and did the right thing for ourselves and let others do likewise (as long as its moral, ethical and legal) the world would have less angst in it.
Great article and you continue to provide great videos, which I look forward to, enjoy and learn from!
Oh Matt , I laughed so much reading this! But in the end I agree with you if you don’t like it don’t use it !
Many thanks for the entertainment.
Owning a hammer and saw doesn’t make you a carpenter. The skill with which you use those tools can make you a carpenter. If you’re an excellent carpenter, then getting a power saw to make your job easier/faster, does not diminish your skill as a carpenter. Our cameras and computers are just tools – extensions of our eyes and brains that help us create images. The camera enables us to capture the image of a scene that we imagine in our mind when seeing it. AI in a camera and post is not a substitute for our ability to visualize a scene in such a way that it will be meaningful and have impact on a viewer. But, that AI makes it faster and easier to recreate our vision without the drugery of, in Matt’s words, the grunt work which, for the most part, isn’t creative. There’s really nothing creative or fun about making a selection. What we do with the selection is the creative part. So, yes, I want all the AI I can get so that my time is spent recreating my vision on the screen/print, and not doing the boring grunt work.
Maybe they should go back several version of Photoshop or Light Room and not be concerned with all the software upgrades.
Right on, Matt. We have enough to fret about in the world today. AI killing photography doesn’t need to be at the top of the list. What’s exciting is that we HAVE new technology and we can discuss it rationally, because that’s what humans do, right?!
Matt … Kudos to you for this article. I have loved photography since I watched my Dad process his own b&w photographs from his press camera in a small darkroom. He was a fish hatchery manager and did it for the joy of it. I earned my first camera by selling seeds in the small community of Dorion on the north west part of Lake Superior on Black Bay. The only metal was the shutter and the rest was plastic. I made my living as a Dentist, (Doctor of Dental Surgery from U of T) in Toronto) which I also enjoyed for 35 years. I participated in Photography until now at age 93 I still love processing but only once in awhile am I able to get out to photograph. I still have numerous photos I never managed to process to keep me busy at this time of my life. I used Lightroom for many years but have switched to ON1 Photo Raw since it is ideal for my purposes and very easy to learn. And allows me to tweak all the new tools they have inserted in their software.
I agree with your article and will continue to follow your articles like this if not the software you teach.
I read the entire article before commenting. I have been a photographer since the early 70s when film was the only medium. I view Lightroom and Photoshop as my darkroom in these digital times. I have not changed the way I do things with the appearance of AI in those programs. My first goal is to get the perfect image by focusing, metering and composing the way I want and usually end up doing small tweaks. Not all images are perfect of course but many are and as it always has been it is the photographer who makes the image.
Matt
Wonderfully written. I tried out your portrait presets and the new LR features. It saved the grunt work and I achieved my intent faster and allowed me to do things at a raw level which before I did in PS. The subtle shift is realizing no more excuses —- get on with the creativity.
For some strange reason I’ll jump in here. When I first started using PS I felt that something was wrong. So I opened a bottle of fixer and turned off the lights in my office. That made it better. Then my wife called me for dinner. I walked away to go eat. Then I helped the kids with homework, watched tv with the wife, went to bed, got up and wen to work, came home and went back to the darkroom. Everything was just as I left it. I didn’t have to dump the chemicals and make them again, I didn’t have to adjust the temperature, it was like I never left. And that’s when I sold the darkroom.
As I worked in PS I developed my own superpowers, especially on making selections. Yes, it took a lot of time but damn was i good! I had papers taped to my wall reminding me how to do the seldom-used tricks. I prided myself on my selections. Then select subject was added to PS. I tried it just to show myself how bad it was. Nope, it was good so I started using it. Then I watched Adobe Max last week. I ripped down the cheat sheets on the wall and accepted that it’s time for a new superpower.
Am I mad? Do I feel cheated? Do I feel IP wasted a lot of time learning stuff that I no longer need? No. Just like I don’t use 90+% of what I learned in college or high school or even grade school. Everything I learn helps in some way. If nothing else it helps me appreciate what people like Adobe programmers do for me, how much time their save, and gives me more time to either do more pictures or shoot more or just enjoy life more.
It’s easier to pound in a nail with a hammer than to use a rock. AI is the same, use it when it helps you work better or faster. But if sometime I don’t have a hammer I know I can always find a rock.
Ah, Matt, yet another bone to pick with you…sigh. You always speak your mind and I…totally appreciate it! Why do I always have to agree with you? Why do I always love the courses I purchase? Why do you keep doing the things that keep me coming back?? Why do you have to really speak to those of us who are in this for the love and not the money?? Damn, Matt!
Just do me a favor, eh? Keep keeping it real! If I have to pick bones, I like picking them this way because it makes me smile and laugh!! 😀
Thanks Jaye! 🙂
You are 200 percent Matt. Nothing more needs to be written.
As a retired software exec, you are 100% correct. Like many computer terms, marketing departments often exaggerate features and apply terms that are inaccurate. What is being done is machine learning where code is used to compare as many images as possible to recognize repetitive factors. Then coded rules are created to apply those rules against your image. It is NOT AI but now everyone is using it. Like most situations like this people will believe something if they are told it enough times (the old 4 million Frenchmen can’t be wrong argument). If and when AI actually is achieved (that a computer is sentient) marketing will have to come up with another term to describe it. Maybe SkyLab? laughs.
I also agree with you that these new features just automate what we have always done manually. And they are not perfect. There are a number of competitive products releasing similar masking functions and you can apply an image against all of them and get different results.
Adobe certainly has certain advantages being the big dog in this field. It does have way more programmers than others, more cash, and has set up a unique way to beta test new features thru the neural filters where in some cases your image is being processed by them and added to the machine learning stack so that it gets better. The accuracy of the latest release shows Adobe is certainly applying what they have learned from more machine learning to their code.
I think the argument shouldn’t be whether ‘AI’ is ruining photography but rather modifying images running photography. The ease with which you can change a sky bothers me. It could always be done before but it took a lot of work. But I look at it as artistic license as long as someone says it isn’t a composite when it is.
In any case, I love your videos and information. You remain one of my top educators.
AI features are amazing. I love the new selections tools in LR. They save me a lot of time that i can use to work on the details.
You are right-on with your AI assessment! It is a buzz word used to generate excitement and win contracts. I am an engineer and work with several experts in the field. It is a catchall term for a collection of large dataset techniques such as Neural nets, Machine Learning, Deep Learning and so forth.
I wonder if they had the argument over enlargers? They could have said “anything but a contact print is impure.”
100% agree Matt. I am a serious and I think pretty darn good “semi pro” photographer. I am good at doing selections and mastered the sliders in LR long ago. But you know what, using features that allow me to spend half the time editing is making post processing way more fun. I have yet to have any “AI” do anything to my photos that I didn’t control and have the ability to override to some extent. I for one am very happy to see these advancements in editing software and for that matter my camera.
The people that are complaining are shooting “digital” right?
Enough said!
Hi Matt,
After reading your article I have to agree with your thoughts.
I suppose what some people are upset about is the AI ability to create an image from words and do a pretty good job of it. I especially used “pretty good” because its just that. Pretty good. It does not (yet) compare to a great photo and that too is your point.
I really, REALLY want to say something about this … but I just can’t stop laughing. Thanks for being the good and caring Dad … lol …
I think your comments are right on target. No problems for me with the availability of AI features.
Bravo!!!
Matt, I’m on your side on this one, and have three brief comments:
1. AI is a cage that locks from the inside. If you want out of it, don’t use it. If AI makes the darkroom look like the good ol’ days, then study that rather than how to make a one click selection.
2. Keep your eye on the prize; a memorable image that fulfills your intentions. How you get there now has more options than ever. Why use a stone tool when bronze and after that iron tools became available?
3. It could be worse. In the world of painting, total and complete images are being made, and sold, using 100% AI. So far, photographers are still in the wheel house. If that ever changes, and you can punch up a gorgeous portrait of your kids or a moonrise over the Statue of Liberty, then it’s game over. But we ain’t there yet, and probably never will be.
It’s funny, I most agree with the counter argument about drivers are better if they know how to use a stick shift! Other than that I don’t believe that AI has ruined photography. I agree that good photography starts with seeing the best scene to photograph, and ends when you press the shutter button. OK, I’ve been taking good and bad photos for 60+ years and have a large supply of bad pictures. No amount of AI is going to make them any better.
I do appreciate and use AI when it comes to doing things that I no longer have the visual acuity to achieve unaided. Selections being the most common. I also like AI when it produces better enlargements, especially when the original was either from a earlier digital low res camera, or scanned from a film original. I would like to see the AI analysis details being more transparent, so I could learn from them to improve my camera and editing work by more traditional means.
Where I find PS hurting photography is seeing people trying to make Arizona Highways photos by pushing the saturation to the limits that make my eyes bleed. But that is personal taste, and I’m not in a position to be the final judge there. I guess when a magazine publishes the photo, that is the “judgement”, which I then use as my judgement on the publication.
Matt, Thanks for a well thought out article. You are bang on with you thoughts about AI. Great images are made with artistic vision and AI just helps me do what I have always done just faster. AI doesn’t create great light and great composition for subjects with high visual impact.
I still run into people who think any alterations that the camera didn’t capture is cheating. I wonder how Ansel Adams thought about that??
Hi Norm,
I know Alan Ross, who used to be Ansel Adams’ assistant (I’ve taken several of Alan’s workshops in Yosemite and my husband and I got to talk to Alan a lot).
He has said that Ansel would have loved today’s technology and would have embraced it whole-heartedly!
I think of A1 as a helpful tool. The new masking in photoshop makes my job simpler. Example you have four people two have shaded faces. You can just click on the two and fix the faces. Before you had to subtract the others before editing. I also use Luminar Neo and love the AI there. The thing to remember you still make the decisions and have control. Thanks for the great videos on the new updates.
Johnny
Over the years I’ve been deterred from trying various things because of the sheer complexity in making the necessary selections. Some of them were simply beyond my ability. In the last two or three years that has changed. I have been able to be so much more capable with my editing simply because I am now able to make better selections. Your courses have been so helpful in teaching me how to use these features. I look forward to continuing to learn more and do more.
?, Matt!
Takes care of the grunt work, you don’t have to use it if you don’t, AI won’t make a bad or okay image great, and overprocessed photos look bad (and are easy to spot) whether AI was used or not. Spend time on what interest you about photography. If someone doesn’t like AI, no problem. They don’t have to use it. But why care about whether someone else does?
Balanced and thorough comments.
I totally agree. It’s like bars that allow smoking. If you don’t like drinking in bars where people smoke, then don’t go in there and STOP complaining about it! If you don’t like the new software and AI cameras then go back to film and darkrooms. See how much fun that is!
Good insight on today’s photo tech. Yes, you need to be creative and get a great shot to get a great image.
Matt: you identified the core points (Thanks!): the photographer must 1) get the shot, and 2) apply creativity. There’s no AI algorithm helping me with those two things…those remain on me AND finally, that’s (still) me on the shoot button.
I shot film. I had a full color darkroom in my house and paid for it and my developing by doing enlargements for other people, mostly pros. I was not an early adopter of digital, I waited until it was good enough to make me happy. I started using Photoshop with version 2 or 3. I shoot Nikon D850s and have all the help turned on. I subscribed to the.cloud version of Adobe within months of its release. The release of the new versions and even some of the updates are like opening presents at Christmas. I would be mirrorless except I upgraded to the 850s a year before the Z9 and need time tonrecover financially from a system wide update.
I look at my old photos and wish I could go back with these new tools. I get images that make me happy with so much less effort. I am technically a better photog than ever. I strive to learn more and more. I push myself into new territory. I don’t want to drive a stick even though I can. My giant TV on the wall is not getting replaced by a 21″ console TV stereo hybrid. If AI “ruins” photography and we can make bad photos great then I will be happy as I will see more great images.
Matt,
100% agree with you. I was wondering what that guy who complained that AI is ruining “HIS” photography is thinking about. I have been editing (actually doing this right now) – thousands of pictures that were taken back in the 1980s – 1990s on film cameras and scanned using Kodak PCD scanners and later – Nikon LS5000 scanner. I am using Photoshop with plugins from Topaz Labs (Denoise AI and Sharpen AI). Without Adobe’s Camera Raw AI mode (the AUTO button) – which I used as a baseline to make my own adjustments – there is no way I can edit thousands of pictures. Just manually adjusting the sliders on Camera Raw’s panel to fix the colours will have taken so much time it is simply not possible to contemplate editing thousands of pictures. So – definitely, I (for one) will definitely vouch for AI based software – the more the merrier.
Cheers,
TS
What a great perspective! I wholeheartedly agree, especially with the sentiment that for the most part, one chooses to be happy or not.
Well thought out position, Matt, and I pretty much agree with you 100%. I’ve always used, or at least sampled the Auto Settings that are available, to get me to a starting point, or just to compare with what I’ve done manually. The AI changes are really no different. There are many times I have NOT used the Topaz, or even the LR or PS AI stuff, if I don’t like the results. In the end, I make the decisions, so for me it hasn’t ruined anything, it just potentially sped things up a bit and given me more options.
Very well stated.
Spot on, Matt! Thanks for putting AI in perspective. I can add that I earned my engineering degree “back when” we did not have a PC, Mac or laptop. I have had to push myself to keep up with the evolving tech in photography, but I love the challenge. Good will always prevail!
I like the help AI gives us it as it cuts down my time! It’s doing something I was going to do manually. It just does it faster. Maybe the people who think AI is killing photography should go back to film and complain the dodging and burning is killing photography!
Adobe Sensei has been around for years without much if any fanfare. I’m not ashamed of using AI features in current software.
The question that remains to be answered is whether AI software systems like Mid journey, which creates images from scratch based upon prompts the user types in, are where “photography” is heading. It could be that simple photos may end up being merely the starting point for an AI app to create a professional piece..
I have always been bad at selecting subjects, the sky etc
The new A1 masking features now allow me to edit my photographs and encourages me to do more as it is very enjoyable and rewarding
Thank you. Enjoyed your comments. Too early for a bourbon though. 🙂
I’ve had the opportunity to be a judge in quite a few photographic competitions. Since photography has both creative and technical components, the technical side of post-processing becomes a factor. If I see unreal colors due to over-saturation, halos due to over-sharpening, or similar issues, points get deducted. But in the end, it is the image, as presented, that matters. I really don’t care how it was done; the final result is what gets judged. If someone can use AI tools to get to that end result faster, then more power to them; I don’t care. If the future holds more AI tools that help make images look better, then let’s have them. But AI that actually generates images from scratch takes things to a place that may be art, but is not photography.
The best way to learn something is to start with the basics and build from there. Learning also is a reward in itself. With Photo-based Ai, you learn to push a button and get better results than you can get on your own. Instead of saying “look at what I shot” we can say “Look at what Adobe did for me.”
I wonder where some of the more noted artists would be if they started with a “Paint by Numbers” paint set.
Matt, A well-balanced and thought-out argument. And argument is probably not the right word. Good reasoning and good thinking! A benefit for all who read and really think about it! Thanks so much for all you do for us!
Love these viewpoints, Matt…. especially te part about minding your own business. Not doing so can suck the pleasure out of any endeavor.
Sensible point of view. I remember all this stuff in 1999 over whether digital cameras would ruin photography!
I 100% agree with you, Matt. AI is definitely helping my editing work, speeding up selections and allowing me to try selections that I wouldn’t normally have attempted. That’s a win as far as I’m concerned. I’m looking forward to further AI developments and to choosing to use them or not.
Spot on Matt. The arguments surrounding manipulation of images (editing) has been going on for years. In the end what we’re trying to achieve is the production of a creative result. What people have been asking for, are simplified tools to achieve results that previously required hours, upon hours of computer time. By making the creative production process more efficient, companies like Adobe are helping people to achieve their goals with reduced effort. And, in my mind, AI is nothing more than algorithms that are doing what we would have done manually anyway. If anything, this automation is allowing us to spend less time on the PC, and more time out in the world expanding our creativity through the making of photos. As it should be.
Matt, I have no problem with using all the AI I can get. Been using PS since version 3.0 and LR since it began. My problem with Adobe is that they don’t have any useful noise reduction (unlike Topaz, DxO). For many of us using small sensor cameras (Olympus) we really, really would like to see much better noise reduction in PS and LR.
I’ve been teaching photography for the past 20+ years and I’ve gone from the one member of my camera club (WPS) using Olympus to now we have over 30 members that have switched to small sensor cameras (mostly Olympus and some Panasonic. We all want better noise reduction from Adobe.
Great essay. My biggest wish for AI is the ability to automatically select messy hair, even against a complex background (think girl with windblown long hair standing in front of a tree). If I can see the hair, why can’t AI?
I live AI so long as I can tweak the results.
From what I am seeing so far in LR AI is helping speed up a lot of work in masking. Which makes me save time editing thus able to get faster to what I like…. take pictures. I have to say it does sometimes gets scarry as if that tech is on the background matching people images from LR with other apps… lets say Amazon Photos and uses that to be like a big brother for marketing or else(whatever else is). An yes I use the AI if I feel it will benefit if not then old fashion masking. Same for autofocus, if my A1 does not focus on the warbler among the branches when there are other options. Thanks for taking the time.
Well said, Matt. Thanks for keeping it sane!