Is Evoto worth it for editing and retouching photos of people?

Evoto is a new software with AI editing capabilities. Its specific area of expertise is retouching and body shaping using an AI engine to deliver quick results. It also has the standard editing tools for developing and color grading that we expect from editing software. The pricing model is unusual for editing software, so let’s dive in: Is Evoto worth it for editing and retouching?

With AI spreading through everything everywhere, another AI editing tool on the market has got some competition to play against. Evoto has a modern, easy-to-use interface that situates it solidly in the space, and there is a lot in here to appeal to wedding photographers and studio photographers in particular.

Pros

• Clean, logical, easy-to-use interface which delivers results quickly
• Modern feel with self-explanatory tools
• The catalog format appeals to me, with photo batches saved in Projects and re-adjustable after editing
• You can save Presets for your retouch settings
• There is a comprehensive History that you can use to go back and make changes
• Color Adjustments are done separately to Portrait Retouching, Background Adjustments and Crop, so you can work logically through your photos from develop to retouch to finishing
• Lens Corrections and Color Calibration are built-in to Color Adjustments, as well as all the expected tools like Basic develop settings, Curves, HSL, Color Grading and Detail
• The Portrait Retouching tools are powerful and adjustable for a realistic, subtle effect
• You can manually match faces to Male, Female, Child or Elderly if Evoto doesn’t detect it (or you want a different look to your retouching)
• Background Adjustments can correct uniform backdrops but also work fine if the backdrop isn’t totally uniform
• Sky replacement is effective — lots of options, plenty of room to adjust for a natural look

Cons

• Crashed (a couple of times) on my computer (which is not super new, but also not super old)
• The pricing model is unusual and may be too expensive for most photographers
• The Portrait Retouching Presets are too heavy-handed out of the box for my tastes
• The Makeup Presets look tacky and very obvious in my opinion
• Evoto adds “Evoto” to title and caption metadata and this can’t be disabled

Starting to work in Evoto

Evoto is a batch-processing tool which creates a catalog of your editing projects. When you first open it up, you’ll need to sign into your Evoto account, and then create your first Project. It has individual image import as well as folder import. I would recommend culling in another app to get your final photos chosen, and then import into Evoto.

You can rate with stars, filter and export based on filters when you are finished editing your photos. A nice touch with exporting is the Export List — you can see the progress of your export and previous exports from here.

I recommend getting your whole batch edited to make sure you’re happy with everything, before exporting, because each export costs you credits.

Is Evoto worth it for studio-style photography?

Let’s start by looking at how Evoto handles photos with a backdrop in a studio-style setting. I don’t have a proper studio: This is a backdrop with speedlights. My backdrop is not as “properly” lit as it could be. But let’s see how Evoto goes with these photos.

I used the Baby & Child Presets for these photos and it did a good job. The results look natural and pleasing.

The Background Adjustment tools also did a good job here. It did not auto-detect the background as a uniform backdrop, but I could still select the option to have the backdrop smoothed. It worked well even with the decorations hanging in front.

For the next photo I found the presets too heavy for my taste, without adjustment. I prefer to retain face skin texture because, well, what’s wrong with freckles?! Also, I don’t like the plasticky, flat look when everything is evened out.

Again, I had to force the backdrop to be smoothed, but that’s just because of how I’ve set up this scene — the lighting is really uneven on the background. If you were working in a proper studio setup I think Evoto would have no trouble auto-detecting the background.

All in all the results look good: Back off the face smoothing a bit and it delivers a lovely result with very little effort.

Trying Evoto out on lifestyle photography

Lifestyle photography is my main forte — birthday parties, outside, kids being kids. Let’s take a look at how Evoto handles these photos.

Again I used the Baby & Child Preset and it looks nice. No smoothing needed on my toddler’s face!

This one was inside in some tricky lighting. At first Evoto washed me right out and turned me into a ghost woman, but I used the Skin Retouching tools in the right hand panel to adjust my Skin Color and bring some saturation back in.

This one I left the Preset as applied out of the box to show you what I mean about the heavy editing: I don’t love how it flattens my face. All the texture is removed, leaving my skin looking plasticky. Adjusting and resaving as a new Preset better suited to realistic results for lifestyle photography would work here.

Is Evoto worth it for wedding photographers?

On my trial batch of wedding photos Evoto did a great job. I did Color Adjustments first and then used the Portrait Retouching tools on these examples.

The effect is realistic and pleasing. There is no manual painting on of masks and filters here — all the face retouching is automatic and done in a few clicks. I synced edits to this example — this is a good timesaver and makes for quick editing.

To this example I still used the Wedding Presets and Evoto does a good job of detecting and maintaining natural skin tones in the Skin Retouching section.

Evoto also has a suite of sky replacement options. After syncing the Color Adjustment and Portrait Retouching options I then went into the Background Adjustments to replace the sky.

The effect is realistic and there’s plenty of control to adjust how the sky sits in there.

This one I really like — there are lots of skies to choose from in different color tones and the blending looks convincing, in my opinion.

Wedding photographers will find lots to love in Evoto. For a 1000+ photo wedding, Evoto pricing is going to fit well into a wedding photographer’s cost of doing business.

Is Evoto worth it for body reshaping?

Now, I don’t hold with body reshaping in my photos generally. I don’t offer it to clients, and I don’t believe in it philosophically. However, I’m going to give it a go in Evoto here to try out how their AI-powered body shaping tools work.

I used the Facial Reshape tools in the right sidebar first. Also, shoutout to how hard it was to find a recent full body photo of myself?! Y’all get to enjoy my messy house as a result.

 The results look fine as long as you don’t go overboard — turning it up to 11 is a surefire way to make yourself into an alien.

With the Full Body Reshape tools the effects again look fine as long as you don’t go crazy. Subtle is the key here and its easy to ruin the effect by going over-the-top.

I like that Evoto lets you save presets of your retouching settings — conceivably, you could run every photo of yourself through the same body reshaping settings. (Again… I don’t believe in body reshaping, but hey. The option’s there. Do with this information what you will.)

Let’s talk about the pricing model

The pricing model of Evoto is where this software is going to lose most people. Evoto charges on an export credit model: Exporting an edited image costs a credit. Credits start at around $0.07USD a photo with discounts for larger packs. This is an unusual model for photography software, which generally are offered on a time-based subscription (annual, etc).

However, it’s not unusual for AI software: Dall-E2, MidJourney, and so on are all priced on a credit/per image basis. This is because the AI engines take a lot of processing power and the pricing reflects GPU hours (basically, processing time) used to run the algorithm. So that in itself is not the deal-breaker and it is probably something we are going to see more of as AI image processing gets into everything and everywhere.

The cost, however, is more prohibitive for most entry to emerging level photographers. Depending on how much you shoot, it could get pricey for Evoto to be your retouching tool of choice. For high volume photographers who work with huge school groups, graduations and so on, the batch processing tools for faces and backdrops will be welcomed.

Like anything, it’ll be a cost of doing business calculation as to whether Evoto makes it into your editing workflow.

Evoto does a good job of retouching, but be careful to avoid looking overdone

All in all Evoto delivers on the promise: AI powered retouching that gets very quick results. No manual masking and selecting required. It will appeal to studio and high-volume photographers who need to apply the same retouching to large batches. Wedding photographers will also get quick results that will please clients without having to manually mask and filter.

It’s easy to let the software do too much and leave the image looking overdone and plasticky. Use your artistic discretion and save your own Presets to tone the editing style down to something more subtle. When used with care, the tools deliver a realistic, appealing result.