Use artificial intelligence. The robots are not the enemy. Now, I was just as scared from “Terminator” as a kid, as many of you probably were (or perhaps some of the sequels). But AI is amazing. It’s great for saving time. So many of the tools we use for photography and video and design benefit from AI.

via GIPHY

Companies doing cool things with AI

  • Skylum – I do a lot of work right now with a company called Skylum, and they really impressed me with what they’re doing. I help work on Luminar, one of their software products for photographers, and it’s incredible what the team comes up with. It offers substantial time savings.
  • Digital Anarchy – Companies like Digital Anarchy can do great things to really save you time by recognizing and doing speech translations. Their product Beauty Box is also quite interesting for skin and portrait enhancement for both photos and videos.
  • Adobe – Adobe has a bunch of AI. Photoshop has seen the most benefit with improved selections and content-aware fill and scale.
  • Lumberjack Systems – Lumberjack systems are another tool offering video assistance with AI.

What AI is good for

There are so many different options here where AI comes together.

  • Image awareness – Now, what I like about AI is image awareness. It can look at the image and make recommendations much more than an auto button.
  • Masking – The software can generate masks for transparency or compositing.
  • Selective adjustments without manual selections – selective adjustments mean powerful changes throughout the entire image that are localized.
  • Suggested values – Analyze the image and make recommendations based on content.
  • Simplified user interfaces – Fewer sliders are needed for effective controls.

Watch AI in action

AI is amazing. Let me show you real quick. There’s a lot of great AI tools out there, but one of the ones I love is this one in Photoshop. For object selection, you draw around the object that you want, and it’s going to automatically figure it out. It uses AI to try to detect, and then you can click the select and mask option and very quickly use a smart radius to refine things, and you’re done. 

Photoshop offers other great AI tools, but I’m more familiar with and love the ones that Skylum has made. For example, the ability to quickly fix the exposure. AI Accent can adjust color and tone, enhance a sky or add detail with AI Structure. 

The ability to find the sky that might be a little bit boring and automatically replace it with a new sky, and you can load on your own here as well. And not only does it replace the sky, but maps that color to the scene, so it looks believable.

If working with portraits, the ability to find things and intelligently pick up blemishes in the skin with one click. To go through and find any unwanted blemishes and remove them.  Or to see the eyes and whiten them, enhance them. 

The fact that you don’t have to paint or make a selection here is just incredible. It really knows how to find things with the power of AI, and that translates to faster working. I’m still in control of things, but I don’t have to rework. Want to fill in the light on the face. It’s just a slider. These sorts of controls are fantastic.

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