A gift or a curse?
Key Takeaways
Artificial Intelligence is the hot thing in photography right now.
Its making photography amazing, and its also ruining it.
Skylum
Or that the background is beautifully blurred?
Or that all your photos are perfectly exposed?
But the next wave of AI editing is here, and it promises to make your photos look amazing.
But will it also make them look like everybody elses pictures?
What Can AI Do?
Then, it uses this training on your photos.
Then theres auto-cropping, and other basic edits.
Pixelmator Photo 2.0, for example, has a machine-learning-powered “enhance” tool.
But then things get murkier.
For instance, Skylums upcoming Luminar AI can analyze a portrait, then retouch it automatically.
Taken alone, these seem like minor problems.
Or maybe you love the sound of an automatic beauty filter.
But what happens when almost all images have been tweaked like this?
We worry about “photoshopping” in commercial photography.
Ads with slimmed down bodies and perfect skin that we can aspire to but never attain.
Instagram is probably the place where most photos are shared.
What happens when our AI-enhanced selfies take it over?
Its what people want, I think.
So many people seem desperate to look like each otherapparently inspired by fish faces.
“People have been editing practically since the beginning of photography.
This stuff makes it easier, then great.”
Thats what we mean by “attractive,” after all.
Homogenization
Its not all just moral outrage and body-image issues.
AI photo enhancement has another downside: it makes all photos look the same.
Thats just how it works.
It wont just be me-too subject matter, but me-too edits.
Perhaps, though, this is exactly the point.
“Its what people want, I think,” says Gill.
“So many people seem desperate to look like each otherapparently inspired by fish faces.”
AI for Good
AI can also be a very useful tool.
Usually, I have to tweak the lightness of the image manually.
What if an AI tool could learn how I apply these edits and do it for me.
Is that a valid time-saver, or does it make all my future photos look like the previous ones?
Experienced editors exercise more control, selectively applying AI tools as they edit their images."
And for what, really?
Youre not making your photos better.
Youre making them similar.
