Using AI to Cull and Edit Wedding Photos
Our review of Aftershoot
For our current photo culling and editing workflow, check out the video above. Our previous workflow utilised both Aftershoot and Imagen, but we have since moved to using one platform, this being Aftershoot. If you would like to try Aftershoot, you can sign up for a free 30 day trial using our affiliate link here and if you decide it’s a good fit for your workflow, you can get 10% off a subscription using the code “TRENTANDJESSIE”. Read on for our previous workflow.
As wedding photographers, our workflow involves not only capturing beautiful images but also looking through hundreds of image files and editing them. In the past, we spent countless hours sifting through photos, making sure to choose the best shots for our couples then editing these images. This process can be time consuming and tedious.
Recently, however, technology has made it possible to streamline this process with the help of Artificial Intelligence (Ai). This is something we’ve been experimenting with, to see if Ai really can streamline and speed up our workflow from a wedding day to photo delivery. By using Ai-based software like Aftershoot and Imagen AI, we can drastically reduce the time spent on photo selection and editing. Not only does this give us back time to work on other aspects of our business, but it can also lead to an improved end product.
For example, Aftershoot, can quickly scan through large volumes of photos and separate out those that are worth keeping from those that should be discarded based on a pre-defined criteria that you set. This saves a huge amount of time when compared with manual assessment of each photo individually. Aftershoot uses facial recognition technology to quickly locate the best images from a given set. This makes it easier to make selections based on emotion or expressions in addition to technical elements such as exposure or focus. Probably, our favourite use case of this feature is being able to (hopefully) find that one golden family or group photo where everyone has their eyes open, IYKYK ;)
We’ve previously used Narrative Select for wedding photo culling, which has similar functionality, but Aftershoot takes it a step further by selecting what it believes are the best images in a set of similar shots. We're still trialing this software, but in our experience, Aftershoot is eliminating 50-60% of the images, meaning we still need to do a second pass, bringing down the image count to our preferred number of images. We actually don’t mind this, as we are still making the final judgement and retain creative control over what is selected. It’s also easy to do this second pass in Aftershoot and simply swap or add photos as you go. Aftershoot reduces the overwhelm and in general is picking the images we would also pick.
Imagen AI helps us further streamline our workflow by completing the initial edit of our photos with just a few clicks. This is the one that really blew our minds. For the most part we’ve done our own photo editing, but we’ve also tried outsourcing to editing companies and using Batch ai. Nothing has got us as close to our editing preference as Imagen AI. Using their powerful algorithms, Imagen AI can apply our personalised editing style - adjusting colours, white balance and exposure similar to how we would. We still spend time checking the edit of each image but overall Imagen has got it very close. In fact, if we weren’t doing some minor retouching and cropping, we’d be just about ready to export once Imagen had done it’s thing. For an additional cost, Imagen can crop and straighten images, however we don’t crop or straighten every image and when we do, we’re quite particular, so for the moment this is not a feature we have continued to utilise.
We’ve saved a lot of time thanks to these Ai-based tools and found that we have more capacity to fine tune and enhance shots, because our brains are a little fresher and more focused, as we are spending less time staring at a screen for prolonged periods doing repetitive tasks. So, not only does using AI save us time but it also helps produce better results in less time than traditional methods.
Artificial Intelligence is rapidly changing the way many photographers work – including us. We are reaping the benefits of faster post-production workflow times combined with improved results for our clients, yet still maintaining creative control. While we’re not quite ready to hand the reigns completely over to Ai, we are grateful for the helping hand and the ability to utilise Ai as a tool. We even used Ai to help us write this blog post - just wild!
You can try Aftershoot free for 30 days using the link below and if you decide it’s a good fit for your workflow, you can get 10% off a subscription using the code “TRENTANDJESSIE”.
Full transparency - the links in this article are affiliate links. We would never promote something that we weren’t actually using or wouldn’t personally recommend - we truly are finding Aftershoot extremely beneficial for our business.
Love,
