Remember Sonny, a robot that is first Del Spooner’s nemesis and later his ally in the fight against the central computer, VIKI (Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence), in the science fiction film “I, Robot”? That is what people often envision artificial intelligence to be: robots running errands and making life significantly easier for their human “masters.” In the end, though, a supercomputer artificial intelligence villain eventually decides humans are a danger to themselves and starts curtailing their liberties so they don’t annihilate themselves in the long term.
Artificial intelligence is not science fiction anymore. It’s real, and it’s here — today. Of course, it is not as grandiose or dramatic as the movies “I, Robot” or “Terminator” might have you believe, but it is just as real.
What Is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence is a field of study that concerns machines, particularly computer systems, simulating human intelligence. It has wide-ranging applications, from performing complex data analysis to come up with valuable business insights to sorting peaches by size and ripeness.
Of course, an AI future filled with humanoids remains a distinct possibility, but don’t hold your breath. As things stand, AI is already touching many facets of human life. AI systems are responding to customer inquiries, reconciling accounts, writing music, checking grammar, and automating many other tasks that traditionally required human input, including taking pictures.
AI and Photography
Photography is not exempt from the AI revolution. Intelligent camera image processing software is already the default in modern cameras. There is the hardware you can attach to your DSLR camera to convert your camera to an intelligent one. Then, there are cameras that provide advanced, AI-assisted filters and full AI cameras that work on their own.
It doesn’t end there. For photographers who love taking photos but dread what comes next, there is AI-assisted post-processing.
Top 3 AI-Powered Post-Processing Software
Post-processing can be very tedious. Professional photographers have to pore through hundreds of frames to find the best photos their clients would like. Sometimes, a photo would have the best composition but not the best exposure, white balance, contrast, or sharpness. Then, there would be photos that are out of focus, has power lines that ruin the shot, or that would benefit from cropping, masking, a different lighting, or a greater vibrance.
Isn’t it a good thing AI can now help automate and simplify post-processing tasks? Here are three top-rated AI-powered post-processing software for professional photographers.
1. Luminar AI
At the top of the list — probably at the top of anyone’s list when it comes to AI-assisted post-processing — is Luminar AI from Skylum. Three reasons why: It is advanced, fast, and easy to use.
The software provides excellent results and provides a great many options. It does a superb job analyzing photographs, ensuring you will get beautiful pictures at a fraction of the time you would typically need to achieve the same results manually. Even if you need to do more work on Luminar AI-enhanced photos, the software would have already saved you a significant amount of time.
Luminar AI also does quick work of analyzing photos for AI-powered enhancements. No time is wasted waiting around for your changes to take effect.
Luminar AI also has preset options to help you speed up post-processing work. Use them to seamlessly remove obstructions, change the sky, and make other advanced image adjustments.
2. Topaz Studio 2
Topaz Studio 2, from Topaz Labs, is a photo studio that provides you with a suite of creative photo editing tools. Use this to realize the image you have in your head.
Topaz Studio 2 has a robust selection and masking feature that lets you easily and quickly apply selective adjustments to your photographs. Aside from its specific selection and masking feature, Topaz Studio 2 also has preset, ready-to-use advanced filters. With these built-in filters, you can remove noise, improve contrast, provide precision sharpening, illuminate your subject, and experiment with various tones, textures, and other such elements.
Topaz Studio 2 is an advanced layer-based, AI-powered photo editing tool that is extremely good at what it does and provides professional results. However, its narrow focus on creative photo editing can be somewhat limiting for someone who is looking for an all-around tool.
Topaz Labs does provide other powerful AI-powered standalone tools for highly specific tasks:
- Denoise AI: This tool does one thing and one thing only: remove noise. However, it does this exceptionally well.
- Gigapixel AI: Use this tool to enhance details and upscale the resolution of images.
- Sharpen AI: This tool can sharpen even the blurriest of images.
3. ImagenAI
ImagenAI is a bulk photo editing software. It is perhaps the truest AI photo-editing system because, unlike other software, it evolves to mimic your style instead of forcing preset styles on you.
That’s right. This software is a true machine learning system. Feed it catalogs of your old edits, and it will gradually learn how you edit photos. After analyzing your old post-processed photographs, it will start applying your editing style to new photos. Eventually — and with enough pictures to learn from — the software should be able to replicate your photo-editing style. In the end, your photos would look like something you’ve slaved over for hours, but they would have taken the software only minutes to create.
However, the only thing about ImagenAI is that it requires a significant volume of photos to analyze and learn from. ImagenAI has to be fed thousands of old edits to help it learn and master your style. However, once that hurdle’s been overcome, you’ll have a powerful photo-editing assistant to batch process your photos according to your style.
AI and Photo Post-Processing: Perfect Pairing
Tweaking photos to achieve the best results can take hours and even days of a photographer’s time. However, it’s something you can’t skip if you want the best-looking photos for your clients.
That’s where artificial intelligence can help. AI-powered photo editing software takes the tedium away from post-processing. The software applies changes as needed and as its programming and machine learning has taught it to do, and you, the photographer, can take your pick from enhanced photos. You may or may not continue working on them, but much of the essential but crucial fixes would have already been done at this point, so you would have much less to do.
Yes, indeed, AI is perfect for photo post-processing.
AUTHOR BIO
Thomas Olsson is Head of Marketing at Flashy, a photo-tech startup that provides on-demand commercial photography services and photoshoot solutions at scale for businesses and enterprises. Flashy has thousands of high-quality photographers in every GCC country and guarantees delivery of edited content in 24 hours.
