Artificial Intelligence. It’s everywhere – and you’ll find plenty of AI-powered tools in photo editing software. These highly sophisticated algorithms help streamline design workflows and improve productivity, while letting photographers do what they do best: create.
We’ve tested a whole range of the best photo editors packed with AI photo editing features – and now we’re looking at the 7 ways you can use these tools to help boost your productivity using top creative apps like CyberLink PhotoDirector.
AI photo editing: Auto-enhance your images
Now it’s likely most of you might not see this as belonging to the realm of “Artificial Intelligence”, probably because it’s been quietly making our photo editing lives easier for ages, without shouting about the fact it’s actually pretty darn clever: rather than you having to manually tweak and improve your shots from scratch, one little button can auto-enhance your photo in a split second.
Of course, the results may not be perfect for all your shots, but then again, which AI tool gives you a perfect result each and every time? Exactly. This is a great timesaver and more often than not, a very good starting point. Further, once you’ve manually tweaked these initial AI results to get that exact look you’re after, some software packages let you batch copy the changes to all the photos you took in that same session, saving you potentially hours of work.
AI photo editing: Auto-Selection
Now, if you were not that impressed with the first example, how about auto-selection? This requires a few additional cleverer algorithms, but software bundled with your computer has been able to recognise faces for years – making it so easy to find all the photos of ‘Susan’ you’ve taken over time, especially if you’re not great at manually organising your photos using keywords, folders, etc.
But these days, modern versions can do a lot more than that, such as knowing the difference between a person and a lamppost, telling a dog from a cat, recognising objects, and selecting them automatically for you.
Gone are the hours struggling to select an item from the rest of your image. These days, “AI” can do it for you in seconds, allowing you to alter that object independently from the rest of the photo. What you might’ve given up on trying to achieve because it just took too long for you to do, is now effortless, thanks to AI.
AI photo editing: Fix pictures
Being able to identify items within a picture is one thing, but these AI algorithms can do wonders when it comes to improving your photos.
Before AI, we had these clever cloning and repair tools which allowed us to remove unwanted items, like a blemish, a stray hair, a cable, a dog, a person… you name it, it could be removed digitally, but it wasn’t always the easiest thing to do; if your background was busy, you could end up noticing the “repair”, especially if you overused the cloning tool. AI is making this incredibly easy.
Most software allows you to highlight the offending item, and after a few seconds, not only will it have been removed from your shot, but the background will have been stitched in, all while preserving the existing lights, shadows and colours. You can also do the opposite, and select an area for AI to add something to. It can be quite impressive. The cloning and repair tools are still there for fine tuning, but AI can speed up the process remarkably.
AI photo editing: Background removal
Selecting objects on your image is one thing, but what about the opposite? Can AI seamlessly remove your background, leaving your foreground intact? Mostly.
Sometimes the result is impressive, and it’s all done in seconds, but more often than not, you need to tweak the results manually, often relying on a layer you duplicated prior to getting AI involved. But even those tweaks are minor compared to the amount of work you would have had to do before, manually selecting parts with the lasso tool, or the magic wand… it could have taken you hours, compared to the few minutes to polish what AI accomplished.
Once properly selected, this allows you to effortlessly work on different parts of your image, like applying colour correction or adding specific filters in an area, leaving the rest untouched.
AI photo editing: Expand the borders
It’s time to delve into Generative AI. This is likely the feature people associate most with ‘Artificial Intelligence’: letting the computer create something from “scratch”, as it’s “inspired” by all the work humans have posted online. But using such complex algorithms to create an artificial photo should be beyond the scope of what is traditionally viewed as “image editing”. However, you can use this capability to build upon a photo you actually took.
Imagine for instance the almost perfect shot, but it’s sadly not framed right. Cropping it would lose the essence of what the photo was about… what are you to do? Well these days, you can make use of what is being referred to as ‘generative expand’. Using software that supports this feature, expanding an image’s canvas beyond its original dimension will reveal a ‘generate’ button. Click on it, and after a few seconds, you’ll be offered a handful of results which you can select from, depending on how well one of those generated versions match what you’re after.
AI photo editing: Text Prompts
Generative AI, even one that expands beyond the original boundaries of an image as we explored just above, can only do so much on its own. Now it’s fair to say you could be very happy with the results, but the algorithm can do so much more with a little nudge from its flesh and blood user, via the text prompt.
This is where you can let your creativity run wild, and the more precise you can be in your description, the more likely this ‘generative AI’ will offer what you’re after. You can type a regular sentence, or just a series of keywords; either will work, and should help you get what you’re after. Although it might take a while to familiarise yourself with the specific algorithm you’re using, in order for you to feed it the right words, in the correct order, which will lead to the desired results.
AI photo editing: Beef up your specs
As you might expect, any AI-based action will be very power hungry. And although some features require the request to be sent online for massive servers to process, a lot of it is actually done through your own computer. Now of course, an older machine will still be able to handle the load, it’ll just take longer for it to do so.
However, if you can afford to upgrade your system, you’ll notice an increase in performance. Usually the CPU (Central Processing Unit) doesn’t play a big role in AI. Instead, AI primarily makes use of the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), and of course, RAM. The more RAM, the better, which should be the cheapest and easiest part of your computer to upgrade. 32-64GB of RAM is usually recommended, but if you can give it more, do so.
If time is of the essence, then max out your computer as much as you can. But if you’re more on a budget, just enjoy the few extra seconds it’ll take AI to deliver your request, safe in the knowledge Sarah Connor is safe… for now.
Looking to do more with artificial intelligence? We reviewed the best AI tools you can get right now.
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