Tips + Techniques


How to Edit in Lightroom Using AI with Photographer Sam Hurd [Free Webinar]

December 6, 2021

By Brienne Walsh

Sam Hurd started his career as a portrait and celebrity photographer before transitioning to shooting weddings full-time in the past few years. While the Washington, D.C.-based photographer loves what he does, he sometimes misses the experience of being a second shooter. “Especially at the end of the wedding, when you just get to give your photos to the primary photographer and they have to dive in to all the post-production stuff later on,” Hurd says during his RF+WPPI webinar, “Using AI in Lightroom for Fast and Consistent Editing,” where he explains how to edit in Lightroom with artificial intelligence. To him, “that’s a really freeing feeling.”

[Read: Fast Photo Workflow—How to Button Up Your Post-Production Process with Sam Hurd]

During the pandemic, Hurd began using photography tools powered by AI in order to streamline his workflow and spend less time editing images for clients. “[It’s] really powerful to be able to expend your mental energy on other things and not the tedious stuff that people always procrastinate on,” he says.

Hurd has saved himself countless hours of work by learning how to edit in Lightroom by adopting a few AI-driven tools, including:

  1. AfterShoot, which edits batches of images to cull out flawed ones
  2. Imagen, which automatically updates the white balance and exposure of images using data learned from your own previous edits

Along with AfterShoot and Imagen, he also works with Adobe Lightroom, and his new MacBook Pro to process images. Instead of a mouse, he uses the 8BitDo Zero 2, a retro-style video-game controller that he has connected to his operating system using Bluetooth and programmed so that it can select or highlight images in Lightroom. “It’s a lot more comfortable,” he says.

[Read: Lightroom June 2021—How to Use Super Resolution & More]

This year, he spent roughly an hour uploading and editing entire batches of 8,000+ images for each gallery he delivered to clients. It added up to roughly 30 hours, or one week, of work. He spent about $1,800 on fees for the AI-driven software, and in some cases, he was able to charge clients for express delivery on galleries that were edited less than two weeks after their weddings.

Sam Hurd explains how to edit in lightroom with ai

Why Editing with AI Does Not Stifle Creativity

Hurd notes that one of the most common things that photographers fear about learning how to edit in Lightroom with AI is that it will stifle creativity. For example, cutting out images of a couple who have specifically been asked to turn their eyes to the ground: Hurd notes that by using information like focal length and exposure, AI can discern whether you are shooting a series of images and choose the best image from that series, even if it has slightly closed eyes or a blurry effect.

[Read: Photography Presets—Solid Tool or Creative Crutch?]

However, Hurd notes that newly professional photographers should be careful about using AI. He suggests that they edit their own photos so that they get a sense of what works—not only in the editing process, but also behind the lens of the camera.

“Culling through thousands and thousands of images really builds an intuitive sense and helps you self-cull when you’re actually making photos with your camera in the moment on the wedding day,” he says.

Thus far, Hurd’s clients have been just as happy with his AI-edited images as they are with the ones he has done by hand.

How to Edit in Lightroom and Work with Other AI Editing Apps

1. Hurd starts by uploading his raw images from a wedding to AfterShoot, which he trusts to choose out the best images from a batch. (He has tested six or seven apps, he says, and he trusts AfterShoot to do the best job editing.)

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To learn to trust the AI, manually edit a batch of images while at the same time running the same batch through AfterShoot to see what the artificial intelligence flags as “keepers” or “rejects.”

Generally, he gives the program the loosest parameters possible for editing images and ends up with roughly 50 percent of his original photographs as keepers.

[Read: Photography Workflow Tips to Streamline, Simplify and Optimize]

2. After looking at the selected images in Lightbox, Hurd uploads the chosen raw files into Imagen.

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To train Imagen to recognize the kinds of images he likes, Hurd initially uploaded 5,000 of his previously edited images to the app. Each photograph edited by Imagen costs roughly 4 cents to process and teaches the AI to capture your personal style. The entire process takes about 30 minutes.

“Even if you don’t love everything that [Imagen’s] done, it gives you a much more elevated starting point to manually go through and work on things,” says Hurd, who has uploaded roughly 10,000 photos to Imagen to date.

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The AI software does best when editing for white balance or light exposure. Other adjustments, such as highlights and shadows, are best done manually. If an image looks terrible after it goes through Imagen, but you like the composition, try applying a black-and-white preset on it before sending it to the client.

[Read: New in Lightroom—Supercharged Masking and More]

3. If you have your own presets, Hurd says you can add them on top of the Imagen edit, although if your preset already edits white balance and exposure, it might look funky after it goes through the algorithm.

Learning how to edit in Lightroom with AI is important because photo applications that use AI are only going to become more prevalent. “And trust me, these apps are only going to get better, they are not going to get worse,” Hurd says. If you don’t want to get left behind, download apps like AfterShoot and Imagen and use them immediately on your own edits.

“Honestly, you should just start playing around, like pictures of your kids or your pets,” he says. “Because at the end of the day, it just gives you a higher, elevated starting point.”