I love Lightroom and all the possibilities it offers. Photography is not just a matter of framing and setting up the camera. Some photos aren't fully formed until they've gone through the artistic brush in a digital developing program like Lightroom.
Today I would like to introduce you to Image , a program that works in tandem with Lightroom and multiplies its potential to infinity.
IMAGE: THE TRUE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
There is a lot of noise in the press and in the media about this Artificial Intelligence: mobile phones with artificial intelligence, televisions and refrigerators with artificial intelligence….
I have always been a skeptic regarding these issues. Until now, I did not understand what real advances Artificial Intelligence could bring in a field like… photography.
That the camera can automatically detect the face of the subject and focus quickly is fine... but calling that "Artificial Intelligence" seemed too much to me.
However, a few weeks ago I discovered something that I think will change the way we practice photography forever.
It's called Imageand today I'll explain what it's about, but first, let's go back a bit.
THE PROBLEM THAT ALL PHOTOGRAPHERS SUFFER
Until now, when you came home from a long photo session, you knew that another session was waiting for you, just as long or longer than the last one, this time to edit and develop all the RAW (or JPG) files you had shot.
Even if you have a solid workflow, knowing that you need to spend double the time just to develop your photos, one by one, has always worried us photographers, some more, some less, but there it is.
At one point in history, Humanity invented something wonderful called Lightroom Preset. Some very small plugins that allow us to apply presets to one or more photos within Lightroom.
Personally, I have always been a fan of Presets. Not only have I used several, I have even created my own Presets (available right now on BdF MAX) which allow anyone to apply presets to as many photos as they like in one click.
Presets are wonderful, but… they have a problem.
Presets are something pre-made. Pre-packaged. They do not work for all photos.
Each photo is a world and therefore each photo requires a different Preset.
You need to have a wide catalog of Presets, and for each photo go thinking and selecting, manually, which preset suits you.
Even so, sometimes you will apply a Preset to a photograph and realize that the Preset has added a little glitch, like overexposure, over-contrast, etc.
So, all things considered, we're not making much headway either. Presets are still a very useful tool, but…
… And if you didn't have to go around selecting Presets for each photograph?
…And if everything could be done faster?
Come on... already set to fantasize, let's fantasize in a big way: what if the computer itself could look at the way we have to develop the photos, but our personal way, eh?, and the computer itself was taking notes, studying our development style, our small creative decisions, photo by photo, for tens, hundreds, or thousands of photos, and finally the program itself could take control for us and could start editing and developing our photos exactly as if we were doing it ourselves. ?
This is how the idea arose in the brain of the creators of this program, and thus Imagen.IA was born.
IMAGE.IA: THE SOLUTION TO IMPROVE YOUR PHOTOGRAPHIC WORKFLOW
Imagen.IA is a program that complements Lightroom and, what it is for, is to allow the program itself to reveal all the photographs that we indicate from our Lightroom Catalog for us. Image develops the photographs precisely as if it were us.
FOR WHOM IS IMAGE INDICATED?
Before I continue, I would like to touch on a very important question: is it a good thing or a bad thing for an artificial intelligence program to process and develop the photos for us?
Like all technological advances, I think Image itself is positive. It's a tool that can simplify, improve, and speed up the work of one type of photographer (which I'll talk about in a moment, below).
Like all tools, the use we give it will be more or less successful.
Digital development is a very important step in any photographer's workflow. Image is not made to replace the work of the photographer.
Discharge, installing and starting to use this software does not mean that you have to stop developing your photos manually as you did up to now.
The objective of Imagen is to help you as a photographer to "accelerate" your workflow on those occasions when you have that need.
Those photo sessions that leave you with hundreds or thousands of files from which you have to select final photos, and develop them, at a time when you are pressed for time… that is an ideal moment in which to take out the Image tool and advance in your work quickly.
The car was not invented to replace walking.
When you're in a hurry, you ride a car. When you want to enjoy a nice walk, you leave the car keys at home and go out to enjoy that nice ride.
With this, I believe that the public for which Imagen is intended is more or less well defined: Imagen is designed for the professional photographer who has the usual need to develop large amounts of photos in a very short time, either for a client or for own use.
If you are an amateur photographer but you also find yourself with this need, I think Image can also be a wonderful tool that can help you save enormous amounts of time.
WHAT ELSE CAN THIS PHOTO APP DO?
If observing your way of working and replicating it with millimeter precision seems little to you, Imagen also offers what they call Talent Profiles.
This functionality allows you to download profiles of renowned international photographers on the scene for free, and apply their "development profile" to your own photos.
Be careful, this is totally different from a traditional Preset.
A Preset applies the same adjustments to all photos.
With the Talent Profile, artificial intelligence edits each photo in a unique and personalized way, but always following the algorithm of the photographer or talent in question.
It is the closest thing to sending the RAW file to the photographer in question and receiving it back, developed by him.
IMAGE ADVANTAGES
Let's quickly review what are the most important features of Image:
- It analyzes your particular way of developing photos, incorporates it into its algorithm, and starts developing hundreds of photos for you in a matter of seconds, as if you had developed them.
- Image processes photos at a rate of 150 photos per minute.
- It integrates perfectly with Lightroom. You do not need to take the photos from your catalog.
- It allows the use of Talent Profiles, which are weight photographers from different countries. Something very useful if we want to give our images a breath of creativity, or if we want to learn from the developing style of other professionals.
- In the next few days they are going to release their “Culling” functionality. This will allow artificial intelligence to select photos for us. Do you know this situation when you come back with 300 shots from which you have to choose the 20 best photos? If you want, this is already done for you Image (but getting the selection right, that's the point).
DISADVANTAGES OF IMAGE
I think the release of this software is a huge step in artificial intelligence applied to photography. That said, I think there are things that I would like to see improved in the medium term perhaps:
- The program works in English. You don't need to be Shakespeare to use it, it's quite intuitive, but part of the target audience for this software would prefer to have it in Spanish as well.
- Talent Profiles is a feature I love, but I feel like the current selection is relatively small. I understand that it is a starting point and that little by little more "Talents" will be incorporated, but I would like to see Talents from photographic genres such as Landscape or Fashion photography for example.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO DISCOVER FIRST PERSON IMAGE?
If you're curious to try Image, you can usually download it and use it with up to 1,000 photos for free.
However, the Image guys have been kind enough to increase that limit for us so if you download it from this linkYou will be able to use it completely, and for free, up to a total of 1,500 photographs, a more than enough limit to be able to assess the possibilities offered by the program.
If after that limit you think it is still useful for you, you can decide at that time if you want to opt for the payment option.
Ah!, once you have done the download and installation(very fast and easy, by the way), you can follow the steps that I teach in this video on how to use this application for the first time.
