Imagen does have Culling! It's in beta still, but it's great. They are also rolling out the ability to start a Lite Personal AI Profile using just a LR Preset and answering a few quick questions. It's incredible!
Ohhhh... and how can I forget the ability to back up your photos seamlessly in your workflow using their Cloud Backups. Peace of mind having another backup.
Thanks for including us (AfterShoot!) bummed to hear you didn’t get to train it on enough photos, but we understand it’s tough! While we don’t have huge funding, we definitely move pretty quick, seeing that our culling and editing is the only that’s out of beta! And the only ai editing functioning in capture one (and just wait a few months for the next big innovation!) Ai culling, that’s a tough one. It’s never really going to be into creative decisions, as one person to the next will choose the same images differently. While it gets more intelligent the more you use it, it always wants to represent a whole shoot so it’s meant to be more of an assistant to speed up the flow than a replacement. But you’ve got my ig! Let us know how we can improve it for you! Thank you again for including us! We will take this all to heart and it’ll be miles ahead soon, and with flat rate pricing, it’ll save a lot of money!
Yeah, your pricing structure is really attractive to so many people. Especially with the founders deal that you have going on! I think you guys are in it for the long-haul so it doesn’t really matter who sprints head first as AI technology keeps getting better and better us photographer are all going to benefit!
i'm currently using your product and to be honest im not a huge fan of your product. the culling options are extremely limited. i cant have more control over how i want AI to treat duplicates or other culling options. it keeps culling duplicates and far too many of them and other junk i dont want. it would be great if we had an option of actually culling to a number in terms of Editing eg cull no more than 1000 photos etc.. also i would like to train AI to edit to my style.. but our biggest issue is...my studio has 3 different styles.... a light bright soft and airy style, an editorial style and a dark and moody style..... and clients can choose. Your software does NOT let me choose albums to train the AI.. instead i have to choose the catalogue and thats frustrating as our catalogues are split by years rather than albums as the volumes of weddings we do makes it near impossible to split by catalogue.... the product in its current state just isnt great and ive abandoned using it. another annoying then is when i do a clean up cull after the AI cuill... if i am in grid view and i and i filter by my set number of stars if i review the images...... and i remove an image from cull.. eg remove the star rating.... even tho i have filtered By the star ratings... it wont Remove it from the grid.... NOR do i have the function to AUTO advance... it makes culling even more tiresome and annoying... in lightroom it has BOTH of these basic features/functions. this software is just TOO lacking And i just dont recommend it... for small shooters who dont shoot a lot of weddings per year.... sure... but for volume studios like us... this is a dreadful software
@@robbyjaiI agree. The other issue I had was getting Lightroom to sync with it and then having to make separate catalogs. I am a one catalog person and I keep everything by date and name inside of one catalog now I have to use multiple catalogs. I found tons of issues with the culling process. I also downloaded about 10 of the AI editing models or presets I guess you could say. Then I forgot what they look like so I don't know because you can't see what it will look like on an image beforehand. So whether if I want to use lemon or ruby red or this or that I kind of have to go back to the website and see what the pictures look like for each and every one so I guess I'll have to make a cheat sheet and write down notes as to how each one edits with the style because if there was just two or three that would be fine but I have about 10 or 12. I also had to spend two days to get it to work with Lightroom and Lightroom classic. Even though it worked with Photoshop off the bat but who wants to open 2000 images in Photoshop😂😂😂. I love the concept I really do I just wished that it was a little more refined especially for $60 a month
Thanks Venessa, Yotam from Imagen here - we’re proud to be selected first! We work hard to keep finding the most advanced models that provide the most accurate results. We have many more time saving features coming up, stay tuned :)
As an event and portrait photographer operating within a small business, Aftershoot has become an indispensable tool in our daily operations. Its robust culling and editing features have significantly empowered me to allocate more time to photographing clients, rather than being tethered to extensive editing sessions at the computer. While I did experiment with Imagen's editing capabilities and found their style more aligned with my preferences compared to Aftershoot's, the deciding factor in favor of Aftershoot was their pricing structure. The concept of a fixed fee for unlimited photo edits is a true blessing for companies like ours, where we have multiple photographers relying on this software to edit thousands of photos a month. If Imagen were to introduce a similar flat-rate pricing model for unlimited edits, I would be strongly inclined to consider making the switch. Thank you again with the comparisons Vanessa! Hopefully you will have a follow up video as companies continue to release new features in the coming year.
Thanks Vanessa, I'm only an amateur doing a few proms and a couple of weddings, have been using Imagen AI for 12 months, just love the consistency and frees me up from editing, what a time saver. Worth the cost to save time.
I would like to say that you speak so well on camera. Your edits make thing concise but also with your Joyful flare. Love it. Liked the advice and comparisons so much, as I am late to the culling game but need help so badly. Corporate portraits, family sessions, human events, and commercial work its been a wave of great work but as a one man band its tough to keep up with that and family life. Culling takes longer than I want but I find all those nuances that clients love and editing is relatively quick until its not, each job has its challenges. A little help would be great and your input is gold. Thanks again.
I love Imagen AI and Evoto. I can finish the basic editing and retouching of a senior session in less than an hour and spend more time giving my 8mahes finishing touches and toning. LOVE THEM!
@@miamella1343 I send them through imagen AI first for color correction and exposure. Just your basic editing. Then I’ll do my own editing… color toning and whatever you do to your images. Then final step is Evoto for skin retouching.
I have compared the two that I've used, I have a video on my channel about that (but it is in portuguese). I compared ImagenAI and Aftershoot's editing (not the culling, in terms of AI culling I agree with "IT SUCKS" for the time being). I created an editing profile in each based on the same 11K photos and I edited the same 2 jobs in both. The results were identical, as in the sliders were in practically the same numbers with minute differences, and I liked the results. I was using ImagenAI before the comparison and switched to Aftershoot for the lower cost since I am a wedding photographer and the number of images is an issue. P.S. - the pricing you put on screen for Aftershoot is for culling only but If I'm not mistaken culling+editing is $720/year. And that is way less from what I spent on ImagenAI the in 2022.
Thanks for including us. Evoto just paying for export, not paying for editing. You can edit 1000 photos and export the best 1 photo. Pay for final satisfaction. Choose what you like.
hope you'd make a package where it could be unlimited retouching for a month or annual same as the adobe creative subscription for a monthly or annual fee cause its kind of limited depriving like 500 images only for a month what if 500 photos or images was edited within a week then meaning to say your credit has been maxed out... anyhow it would be really helpful if its a monthly and annual subs.
Yep. Great for sorting let’s just say group photos and you’re trying to make sure everyone has their eyes open, but other than that, I just don’t like it.
Thank you very much for your honest comparison! This is some info for the AI editing companies: For me the most time consuming process is selecting the best photos and color correcting them. But let's say the culling is not there yet. I'd be happy to have just one tool, perhaps a Lightroom plugin or automatic post process idk, that can reliably fix the exposure and whitebalance to a whole of photos in a good way. I think using the metadata of a photo (ISO, shutter speed, etc.) could help with the exposure thing. Lightroom already has that, but it doesn't fix my exposure in 0,2 steps which I found is the more accurate to adjusting a setting inside a camera one step. The whitebalance is more complex, because I don't just want an auto-wb. no. The tool should look for something in the image that is supposed to be white or gray, like a wall in the background and fix it from there. But things get very complex when considering that sometimes I prefer to keep e.g. the overall warm lighting of a room. Fixing that shifts the colors to some very ugly teritory. It's like the WB option inside my camera white priority vs ambience priority. It's also often the case that when I have lets say 5 images taken in the same minute time span, it's very likely that all 5 have been shot at the exact same lighting conditions and thus can share the same whitebalance. In most cases with normal lights and portraits. Not for creative styles and colored lights ofc. Then some AI skin retouching with the option to bring back beauty marks or similar because those should not be removed as they belong to the subject. Fixing uneven skin, dry lips and eye bags, whitening teeth are the things I fix the most often. I can do some of that inside lightroom, but for some others I have to switch to photoshop and use retouch4me (which works great btw). After that I can very easily slap on my own color grading presets, I have my own collection. I don't need more of those. This way I assume I don't need to train the editing AI with hundrets of my edited photos. Keep it easy and simple. If such tool exists and works, I'd be ready to pay 100-200 once.
What would be really cool, is if you could give the ai the brief/style of the shoot and it could choose based on the look you are going for, or even dropping in a moodboard
Great comparison, Vanessa! Thanks for the brief and on point overview. I pretty much came to the same conclusion for myself although I like you mentioned absolutely dislike the per picture cost (especially for non paying projects) which by the way increases to an even higher price per picture if you add cropping and straightening.
As a sports shooter who is right now culling 25,000+ images, culling would be the most useful process for AI to do. It's also the process I would trust AI the least to do, as it's such a case-by-case, subjective process, so I'm not surprised that you found they all suck. I would love to have one that works for culling though!!
I tried Imagen but wasn't sure I liked the outcome initially. But I forgot to turn it off and the monthly payments continued. Recently, I did two jobs and remembered that I had previously uploaded more than 5,000 edits to train Imagen and that it was ready to use. I ran the entire batch through Imagen and the results were amazing! I was even able to get skin softening. Quite impressive.
Love Narrative Select for culling and I need to give Imagen another shot. Realized that any flagged image I pulled into Photoshop doesn’t retain my LR edits so my personal profile still needs tweaking. Great comparison video! Thanks!
We appreciate being included (FilterPixel) in this discussion. As of now, our AI editing has progressed significantly since the video was made 5 months ago, transitioning out of beta and into a stable version. The latest update focuses on enhancing our AI culling capabilities with contextual and emotional understanding. With the continued use of FilterPixel, the system will develop a deeper understanding of context and emotions, thereby improving its performance over time. Despite not having the huge funding, we pride ourselves on our continuous innovation. FilterPixel remains the most cost-effective option available in the market.
Already on Imagine AI, 10 000 edited photos uploaded and the AI edits (most of the time) me better than real me. True story. And the white balance is just crazy good. You speak very well, I can see an honest and kind person in you :)
Thanks Vanessa for this comparison ! For me and my workflow neurapix is the best ai editing software. Cut my editing time in a half :)! Instant editing directly in Lightroom is a game changer and sooo quick and fast. Love it!
Thanks for doing all the work to compare these Vanessa! One you should totally look at next is "Impossible Things" from SLR Lounge and Pye Jirsa! It's also a LRC plugin, and also takes advantage of AI masking. Best of all, it can work with ANY presets you've built or bought, no need to train anything!
I use Luminar ai when a started photography 3 years ago now a use luminar neo and a must say it makes my life easy on editing sow a cane focus more on my craft working with the camera
Shout out to Impossible Things AI software, which I use for my edits. It works in Lightroom (no need to leave the software), can use a person's native presets, and is pretty speedy.
Nice!! Since I recorded this video imagine has the light version where you basically can upload a preset you’re using and it will create an air profile based on that. It’s pretty cool and stuff is happening and popping up so fast there’s no way no one’s gonna be able to keep up with it!
Nice save at the end to keep all windows open for sponsorship. Is it a coincidence your favorite is the company with the deepest pockets????? 😏🤔 Such the shrewd businesswoman! All the best for Christmas and the coming New Year! 🎄🎅🎁🙏
Money for a tech company is a big factor in the longevity and innovation of a company. It’s not a small point to be ignored. But that’s independent of my opinion of which one has the best editing capabilities.
Luminar is $149, not $249 as far as I have seen. Evoto seems similar to Portrait Professional or Portraiture. They both don't list AI, but the edits are smarter than brushes. So call it whatever name you like. Also, you can use either without a subscription. Things like frequency separation and face detection are forms of "AI," though perhaps not as sophisticated as some of the fancier stuff. I want to be able to edit photos after the zombie apocalypse (you know those zombies will need retouching), so I hate subscriptions. I also had a very bad experience early in the Adobe Creative Cloud era. Finally, remember when Digital Railroad just closed up shop with one day's notice? Imagine if something happened to any of these online offerings, and you lose your cloud images and AI training. Ouch. Like you, I agree, a computer doesn't get to do the culling for me. I would have to double check everything, which kind of defeats the point. But, I kind of feel the same way about edits. I don't click the little magic wand edit in Apple Photos, Google Photos or whatever. This seems like a more advanced version of that, but it still doesn't mean I wouldn't want to double check everything.
This was a very good video. Thanks for not having foul language (I don't enjoy it, and I can't recommend your work to anyone else if it contains foul language) and for being so excited about the software. I'd just watched a video by Rocky Mountain School of Photography on Imagen. I've resubscribed!
Thank-you, Vanessa! SUCH a helpful video on this all-important transformation going on in assisted AI editing. Quick question for those of us with a smaller "load" of family & portrait sessions, do you still recommend Imagen for the quality and "pay as you go" option? I'm guessing that my cost would be for the $7/month plus the .04 or .05 or .06 per image cost. Imagen your #1 choice for those of us not doing wedding photography? I have now watched a slew of additional videos (after YOURS, of course!) and am deeply leaning toward Imagen as "overall best!" Your info is SO helpful! I'm looking forward to getting more time with my family & golden retriever :) !!
Hi Vanessa Can I ask a question? I’m looking at buying a profile so I don’t have to upload 1000’s of images to get started. The question I want to ask is when shooting for your profile to work on our photos do you slightly under exposure in camera or exposé correctly in camera ? Also do you use auto white balance or kelvin? If so what’s the average you use I like to shoot around 6k kelvin in camera. Hope this makes sense Thanks
So it shouldn’t matter how I should because it’s analyzing the outcome - also I trained my profile on how I shoot as well as my associate and second photographers shoot with their various camera systems and methods. But I personally AWB with white priority and expose correctly in camera
Thanks for the info on this video. I used filter pixel for a year or so and I found it to be very glicthy and will never go back. I am curious about evoto software because I never used it. I been using luminar neo and absolutely love that software. Once again thank you for your videos and I love all your work and follow all your social media platforms.
I have taken many photos, but I've never been the one to edit the photos. Now I must edit my people or portrait photos. My biggest questions are: I took pictures at a graduation party. What dpi and how many MB should my photos needs to be for my customer who wants the option to print them out? I hope my question make sense!
We’re so glad that Imagen is your favorite AI editing platform Vanessa!! We will continue to listen to what photographers need for their post-production workflow and continue to improve. (Also we do offer AI culling as well!)
im kind of leaning towards aftershoot cause it works off line but not sure yet, also i was taught to edit in bridge in 10 yrs of shooting ive yet to move over to lightroom so im not sure how any of them are going to work for me yet, thanks for the videos on them so far, really helpful
How do both wildlife and portraits and weddings. So I tried a few of these softwares with both. And I got mixed results as well. I recently been using after shoot and I had a ton of issues with the fact that you're supposed to be able to use it with lightroom. But I found that I had to make a whole separate Lightroom catalog. And then when it came to using regular Lightroom not Lightroom classic which I was just talking about it didn't work at all. With Photoshopped it worked but I don't want to open 800 or 2000 pictures in Photoshop that would just be a nightmare!!! 😂😂 I think in time these things will get better but realistically Adobe has dropped the ball on this because they have AI in the presets.! They should have really developed something that was inside of Lightroom that could do this for us. And of course they're going to charge us extra but still Adobe should have done this
So happy you love them! Though I do have to say I’m not the right person for computer recommendations. For what I have I just buy the latest most updated MacBook Pro that I can and I plug it into an external monitor when I’m at home and take it with me on the road. I always max out all of the memory and anything that I can.
great video yet again Vanessa. i suppose if people would like ride a donkey and not take bike or car then so be it, you keep on knocking it out of the park b/c you are!!!!! I love you light in studio. I am currently doing video so can you recommend the best light for video PLEASE. Thanks so much!
Yeah, I can definitely see that especially with the founders deal that they have going on. I do think imagen has a monthly or yearly option as well. They just don’t advertise it as much.
we looked at imagen and their pricing model is just silly. we shoot over 100 weddings per year delivering about 1600 edited photos to each client. per year we churn through well over 200,000 photos.. Imagen AI pricing would mean we pay well over 30k USD a year. thats $50,000 AUD. that pricing structure is stupid
I think you’re an exception, and I do believe they have a volume studio option if you reach out to them. If not then there are plenty of other options I gave that might have better pricing options for your type of studio ❤️
@_cjmccullough we charge 10k per wedding. Hardly budget. But paying 30k for software is plain stupid regardless how much money we make. 30k pays for a lot of advertising and gear.
I'm sorry but if you're charging 10k per on 100+ per year and the cost is 3% of gross revenue and that's stupid Ummm where can I sign up for your Photography Business Masterclass. 🤦
I don’t see how you are fairly reviewing something if you aren’t entering that programs specifications for training. Lost more faith after giving the #1 spot to the pay per use program and funding amount. Adobe has massive budget, yet they’re playing catch up with these third parties. Something about that piece just really grossed me out.
Huh? I did enter the specifications for each and trained them all on the same raw files. And I don’t mind paying per use, that’s how I pay editors 🤷🏻♀️ no reason to “lose faith”, not that your faith is anything to strive for 😉
@@VanessaJoy How many of their scripts have you bought? Focus CK? Tonality CK? Aurora HDR? Luminar Flex? All of the Luminar since the 2018 version? All of which no longer work!! Only one that still barely works is Photolemur 3, sure next year when operating system updates it will not work. I bought so much from them just to have it all end way to soon!! huge waste of money. One item I bought and the very next month it no longer worked, and they didn't even care. So yes I a basis for why I said. Then to boot, I bought the yearly membership from them, didn't recognize the billing company a year later, stooped payment, then get banned from future purchases. The company should be sending out notices that membership is going to renew and who the company is that's going to charge you!! I am not the only one this happened to. If you use 3rd party to bill, notify people before and remind them.
