Are we thinking WRONG about AI Editing?

My last two videos had ChatGPT editing my photographs, first in Lightroom, where it went through a folder of my own edited pictures, worked out my style and then edited a raw file the way I would, and then in Photoshop, where it used Photoshop's own tools to remove a colour cast, add a long exposure effect to a sky and do a cutout, hair included.

In both of them it didn't generate a new picture. It moved the same sliders and used the same tools that you and I would, and every one of those adjustments was still there to change afterwards.

The comments on those videos have been brilliant and they've really made me think, but one kept coming up in different words, and the gist of it was this: so now every picture is going to look like yours.

When you watch what ChatGPT is doing in those videos, it's an understandable thing to think. I just don't think it's right, so rather than argue about it, I decided to test it, and the video above is the result.

Putting it to the test

I gave ChatGPT a folder of my portraits, with my edits on them, and asked it to work out how I edit. Then I gave it the raw file of a portrait I'd already edited myself and asked it to edit that in my style.

I'm not going to go through what I did to mine; the two results are side by side in the video, so have a look and see if you can tell which is which before I give it away.

Here's the thing, though. Whichever one you prefer, they both look like one of my portraits, and that's not because of the edit, it's because I took the picture. Everything that makes it look like one of mine happened before the shutter was pressed, and ChatGPT had none of that to work with; it just had my raw file.

The edit is the icing on the cake

The edit is the part of the process we can see on screen, so it's easy to think that's what makes a picture yours, but it's only one part of a much bigger process. I really enjoy editing, and it gives a picture its final look, but for me it's the icing on the cake.

The big part is what goes on between my ears: how I think about a picture before I take it and how I compose it. With a portrait, it's how the person looks in front of the camera and whether they're relaxed or not. With a seascape, it's what goes in the frame and what doesn't.

None of that is in the edit, so even if somebody had the exact colouring, contrast and tonality I use, their pictures still wouldn't look like mine. They'd look like theirs, with my colouring on them.

We can all buy the same kit, spend the same money on the same camera and lens, stand in exactly the same spot and point it at the same thing, and the pictures still won't look the same. There'll be something in each one that's uniquely yours, because of what you like and what you don't, how you were brought up and everything you've looked at over the years. All of that goes into a photograph, and none of it comes out of an edit.

An opinion, or a misunderstanding?

People have their own opinions about AI, and that's a good thing; having an opinion is part of being human, not something artificial. Sometimes an opinion just isn't right, though, and I know that sounds a strange thing to say. The idea that everybody's pictures are going to end up looking the same isn't really an opinion at all. It's a misunderstanding of what photography is.

Using the software, not replacing the picture

That's also why the way ChatGPT did those edits interests me so much. There's a difference between asking an AI to generate a new version of your picture and having it use the same software you and I would. When a picture's generated, you hand it over and get a new one back. When the AI works the sliders and the masks itself, you get your own raw file back at full quality, with every adjustment still there to change.

It's a bit like the difference between someone redrawing your picture and someone sitting next to you showing you what they did with it. Both have their place, but they're very different things.

Two very different photographers

Where it gets interesting is who all of this is for, because there are definitely two different audiences. Take Adobe as an example. On one side they've got working photographers, people with clients and deadlines, editing a shoot with hundreds of pictures that all need the same look. On the other they've got enthusiasts, people who take pictures because they just love doing it.

For the working photographer, imagine being able to hand an AI an actual part of your process. I don't mean something that makes a new picture; I mean something that applies the same look to a whole set of images inside the software, moving the sliders and making the masks without touching the originals, so you can go in and change whatever you want afterwards. That could be a massive time saver.

The hobbyist is a different story, because for them editing isn't a job to get through. They go out and take their pictures because they enjoy it, then come home and edit them with no rush at all, sitting in a room with a bit of music on and maybe a nice glass of something. For them the editing is part of the thing they love, and a one-click fix isn't for them.

However, some of what AI brings is. The Remove Tool in Photoshop has been a massive benefit; jobs that used to take an age now take moments. Anything that helps with selections, hair and fine cutouts especially, is going to be a huge help as well. None of that takes the enjoyment away. It takes away the tedious bits and leaves more time for the parts you actually enjoy.

How I use it

I use AI every single day, for the admin, the research and the writing that goes with running everything on my own. I'm a one-man band, so that's a lot of work it takes off my desk, and I'm not worried in the slightest that other people's pictures are going to look like mine.

What it gives me is time, and that matters to me more than anything, because I absolutely love doing what I do. I got into this creative world because I love being creative, and I love the freedom of it and the escapism it gives me. I don't want anything to replace that. If anything I want more of it, which is exactly how I'm using AI; it takes care of the jobs I'd rather not be doing and gives me back more time with a camera in my hand.

The mood of the moment

When I gave ChatGPT my Lightroom and Photoshop to use, it didn't edit my pictures exactly the way I would. It can pick up the things I tend to do, but when I'm editing I'm very much in the mood of the moment, chopping and changing as I go, and that freedom of just going with it is a big part of why I enjoy editing at all. AI doesn't know the mood or the feeling I want to give a particular picture, and creating that is what I've always loved.

The Photoshop side was different, because those were tasks. The colour cast, the sky and the hair cutout were jobs where I knew what the finished result needed to be, and what I found really interesting was the thought of handing those kinds of tasks to an AI to do by hand, using the software the same way I would, so I've got more time for the creative side. It was an experiment, but it's certainly one that's got me thinking.

ChatGPT Can Now ACTUALLY Use Photoshop, and It's Impressive

ChatGPT can now take control of your computer, moving the mouse, clicking and typing its way through a job the way you would, and the question I've been asked the most about it is whether it can use Photoshop. I've been testing it, and yes, it can.

What makes it interesting is that it isn't generating a new picture. It's working inside Photoshop with the same tools you and I use, which means everything it does is left as layers and masks you can go back into and adjust yourself, at full quality.

To see how far it could go, I gave it three jobs on three different pictures: fixing a colour cast, creating a long exposure sky, and cutting out hair, which is the thing I get asked about more than anything else in Photoshop.

How it works

I'm using ChatGPT 6 Astra on the high setting, in the Work section of the app. I type out what I want in plain language, send it, and it replies with what it intends to do. The first time it needs to use the computer it asks for permission, I click allow, and from then on it's hands off; I just sit back and watch it work.

With each job I asked it to keep everything non-destructive and editable, and not to save the file, just leave it as layers. You can see everything it does as it does it, and you can stop it at any point.

Fixing a colour cast

The first picture was a portrait of a biker with a definite colour cast, a slightly green and magenta look to it. I asked ChatGPT to look at the image, decide for itself which tools to use, and give me a neutral result.

It added a Curves adjustment layer, worked on the individual red, green and blue channels, and set the layer's blend mode to Color so that it only changed the colour and left the brightness and contrast alone, which is a genuinely sensible way to do it. The original background layer was untouched.

Turning the layer off and on, the cast was gone. It's not too bad at all, and I was quite impressed with that.

A long exposure sky

For the second one I wanted to step it up and see whether it could create an effect rather than make a correction. The picture was of my car on a very wet, stormy day, and I asked for the look of a ten second long exposure, with fast moving clouds coming over the top of us.

What really caught my attention was that it used the same technique I use for this myself. It selected the sky, put it onto its own layer, then converted that layer to a Smart Object before applying a Radial Blur, so the filter stays editable afterwards, which I thought was really clever.

Better still, it moved the centre of the blur. By default a Radial Blur spreads out from the middle of the picture, but ChatGPT pulled that point right down to the bottom, so the blur looks as if it's coming from the horizon and the clouds are streaming towards you. That's exactly the thinking you'd want.

I did have to stop it at the very end, because it was trying to save the file, but the effect itself was done.

Cutting out hair

The last job was the hardest, and the one I was most intrigued by. It's a picture of my friend Simon from a Viking shoot, on a grey background, but with lots of fine, loose flyaway hairs and fur cuffs on what he's wearing. I asked for the best cutout it could manage, body, hair and everything as one, output as a layer mask so it stays editable.

Watching this one was fascinating. It went into Select and Mask and used the Refine Edge Brush around the hair, and it kept switching the view mode to check its own work. At one point it reported that the fine strands were coming through, but that the black preview was showing grey left between the looser locks, so it went back to work on those and the fur before checking the final mask. Right at the end it even renamed the layer, which is maybe something all of us could learn from.

The result is a pretty good job. It picked up a lot of the fine hairs, it's a little smudgy in places, and there's some transparency through the fur. To judge it properly I put a solid colour fill layer behind Simon, a sky blue rather than anything too different from the grey he was photographed against.

The transparency in the fur is easily fixed. Duplicate the layer with its mask (Command or Ctrl + J) and the density builds up, then brush out any areas where the background starts to show through.

Doing the heavy lifting

It isn't perfect, and I don't expect this to be the end point, but as a way of doing the heavy lifting so you can go in and do the fine tuning yourself, it's pretty impressive. The colour correction was very good, the long exposure was really well done, and the hair cutout, the hardest of the three by some distance, was far better than I expected.

This is also the worst and the slowest it's ever going to be, given how quickly all of this is moving. I'll be doing a lot more testing, and one of the things I want to try is whether it can write down the steps it takes and grab screenshots as it goes, so you could almost create your own tutorials from it.

I Let ChatGPT Edit My Photos in Lightroom

The photograph in the video above was edited from start to finish in Lightroom, and I didn't make a single one of the adjustments. ChatGPT did. It used my Lightroom, moved the sliders, made the masks and took the picture from a slightly underexposed raw file to a finished edit, in my style.

ChatGPT has been able to use your computer for a while now. You give it permission and it takes over the mouse and keyboard and works through a job the way you would, opening apps, clicking and typing, and you can see everything it does as it does it and stop it at any point. With the recent update to Astra it's taken a real step up, which got me wondering whether it could actually edit a photograph. I don't mean generate a new picture; I mean sit inside Lightroom and edit a raw file with the same tools I use, and learn to do it the way I would.

Teaching it my style

The first job was getting it to understand how I edit. In Lightroom I set up an album called My Seascape Style with 11 of my images in it. Some still have their adjustments visible, masks included, so it could see exactly what I'd done. Others have the edit baked in, because I'd sent them over to Photoshop for some heavy lifting and brought them back, so there's nothing in the panels to look at, only the finished picture.

I used GPT-6 Astra with the effort level set to high. Day to day I find medium is plenty, but for studying my edits I wanted it to do an extra good job, even though it takes longer.

Then I told it what I wanted, dictated rather than typed because it's quicker. Look at every image in the album, study the adjustments, the masking, the detail and the colour grading, and try to understand not only what I'd done but why. For the images with nothing visible in the panels, study the mood and the atmosphere and the tonality instead, and work out what I'd have done to get there.

As soon as I sent it, ChatGPT asked for permission to use Adobe Lightroom, and I allowed it for that conversation. From then on you can watch it working away on its own, opening images and panels and looking around.

Watching it work

What really interested me was how far it went. It dived into the masking and looked at how I'd masked the rocks in the foreground and the adjustments I'd used to bring them out, which is exactly the kind of fiddly detail I'd half expected it to skip.

It posts updates as it goes, and part way through it had noticed that I recover the highlights and open up the shadows, then bring the depth back with control over the black point and selective detail. It had even picked up that I use one film-style profile for the warmer, pastel pictures and a different one for the cooler surf shots.

The whole thing took 11 minutes and 30 seconds. At the end it said it had reviewed the adjustments across all 11 images, including 27 local masks, saved an image-by-image reference of my style, and, thankfully, left my images unchanged.

Handing it a raw file

For the edit itself I picked an unedited raw file from the Local tab in Lightroom, a seascape that was slightly underexposed, which felt like a fair test. I told it to edit the image in my style using everything available in Lightroom, including the masking, the colour grading and denoise, then sat back with my arms folded to prove I wasn't touching anything.

When it finished, it described what it had done as my pastel seascape treatment: pink and lavender grading, cool water, deep textured rocks and luminous foam. The edit included four separate masks, denoise, selective sharpening, a custom tone curve, subtle grain and a vignette, plus a horizon correction.

What it actually did

Going through the Edit panel, it had chosen a profile and made adjustments right through the Light section. In the curve it had done one of the things I love to do, which is lift the blacks so they aren't a deep zero black, and it did that on a point curve. It used the colour mixer, and in the colour grading it worked on the shadows and midtones as well as the blending and balance. It used denoise too, and it built all those masks.

Hand on heart, that's pretty much how I would have edited it. I wouldn't leave it exactly as it is, I'd go in and tweak a few things, but it got me about 90% of the way there in roughly 10 minutes.

Try it with your own photos

If you'd like to give this a go, the detailed prompt I used is free to download. Head over to the classroom in my free Photography Community on Skool and you'll find it under YouTube download files:

https://www.skool.com/photography-community/about

Where this leaves us

There's been a lot of resistance to letting AI edit our photographs, and for good reason. When it generates the picture for you the quality drops, at the moment anyway, and you can't go back in and adjust what it's done. This is very different; it's using my software to make the same manual adjustments I'd make to my own raw files, at full quality, and every one of them can still be changed.

It's not something I'd do myself, because editing is a big part of how I make a picture mine and I just love the process. However, if you're new to editing and don't know where to start, or you know what you want but not how to get there, this is a bit like having someone who's really good with Lightroom sit next to you and show you what they'd do. You can watch every move it makes and undo any of them, and I think there's real potential in that as a way of learning.

Who is Photoshop for now? 🤷‍♂️ (update 27.10.0)

Here's a question I've been carrying around for a while now, and I still haven't got a tidy answer for it …

Who is Photoshop for now?

For most of the years I've been using it, Photoshop has been the place I go to disappear. I'll open an image with a rough idea of where I want to take it, start working, and the next time I look up properly two hours have gone. That isn't just productivity, it's creative escapism, and I think that deep flow state is why so many of us fell in love with the application in the first place.

Lately though, opening Photoshop feels a bit different. It feels like it wants something from me. It wants me to write a text prompt, it wants me to keep an eye on my generative credit balance, and it seems remarkably keen to show me what it can do without me.

I want to be clear about where I'm coming from. I love Photoshop; it's what I do, it's what I built my career on, and I'm not going anywhere. But when you genuinely care about a tool you pay close attention to the direction it's pointing in, and looking at what's arrived in recent releases like version 27.10.0, I think it's worth having an honest conversation about where things are heading.

Two interfaces and a bit of an identity crisis

There are a few significant shifts in the interface in the newer updates.

The contextual taskbar now has a dedicated Prompt to Edit button, so instead of making a careful selection first, you can prompt changes right across an entire image using various AI models.

Then there's the AI Assisted Editor workspace, which you can enable from the menus. Switch to it and Photoshop strips away your layers, your familiar tools and your adjustments, and replaces the lot with a prompt driven layout that looks and behaves like Adobe Firefly sitting inside Photoshop.

There's also the Pro Editor label. The workspace you and I have used for decades, with its layer stacks, blend modes, masks and smart objects, is now officially labelled the Pro Editor to tell it apart from the AI Assisted mode. Photoshop never used to need a qualifier; it was just Photoshop.

I do understand the logic from Adobe's side. The full Photoshop interface is intimidating for beginners and a simplified prompt box lowers the barrier to entry, but turning the whole canvas into a prompt box disables the very foundation that makes Photoshop worth learning in the first place, which is non destructive layers, precise pixel control, and being able to unpick your creative decisions months down the line.

If someone purely wants to generate an image from text, they've already got dedicated web tools and mobile apps for that. What they don't need is desktop Photoshop with its core strengths stripped out.

Resolution and control

Beyond the workflow philosophy there are some practical hiccups when you lean on whole image generative edits.

Run a full prompt, asking the software to add weather effects say, and it generates an entirely new flattened layer. Even with the recent improvements to generation resolution, the output is often softer and lower in detail than your original camera file.

If you then try to mask through to recover the original sharpness on your subject's face, you run into problems fairly quickly. Perspective shifts, subtle facial alterations and mismatched lighting mean the generated background no longer lines up cleanly with the original capture, so you end up spending extra time fixing blend modes, manually aligning shifted anatomy and correcting colour mismatches, just to make the composite work.

The credit counter

There's another subtle shift that changes how the software feels to use, and that's the generative credit counter.

Adobe have made the right decision by being transparent and showing you exactly what a generation will cost before you press the button; hiding the cost would be far worse. But seeing that meter tick down does introduce a psychological hesitation.

You pause before generating. You wonder whether this variation is worth spending a credit on or whether you ought to save it, and if the result comes back slightly off, you've then got to decide whether a second roll of the dice is worth the cost.

In twenty years of editing I've never opened a Curves adjustment and wondered whether I could afford it. I've never dodged and burned a portrait with a bill running in the corner of the screen. Creativity thrives when you're free to experiment, fail and try again without an active meter running.

The quiet lane and the loud lane

I don't want any of this to sound like a complaint about modern features. In recent updates to Camera Raw, Adobe introduced a new Glow adjustment covering diffusion, bloom and halation. It doesn't need a prompt. It's practical, it's well engineered, and it's built directly for photographers and retouchers, which is Adobe at their absolute best.

Historically Photoshop has moved forward in two lanes at the same time. There's the loud lane, the flashy headline grabbing features that generate all the excitement, and there's the quiet lane, the foundational unglamorous refinements to core tools, performance, selections and menus that quietly save you ten minutes on every job for the next five years.

My concern isn't that generative AI exists in Photoshop. My concern is that the quiet lane slows down because all the engineering focus goes into the loud one. We need generative tools when they genuinely speed up complex retouching work, but we also need the core engine to keep advancing, and we shouldn't have to choose between modern AI assistance and the deep precise craft of manual image making.

I'd be interested to know where you've landed on it, whether the generative tools have changed the way you work, or whether you're staying firmly in the layer stack.

Photoshop's NEW On-Device AI Remove Tool

Adobe shipped Photoshop 27.7 on the 19thMay 2026, and tucked inside it is one of the more genuinely useful quality-of-life features I've seen in years: the ability to run the Remove tool's generative AI model entirely on your own hardware.

For photographers and retouchers, that means object removal that's faster, works offline, and keeps sensitive client work on your own machine.

What the Remove Tool Actually Does

The Remove tool sits alongside the Healing and Clone tools as Photoshop's go-to way of erasing distractions. You paint over something you don't want, a stray tourist, a power cable, a logo, a blemish, and Photoshop fills the area with believable pixels sampled and synthesised from the surroundings.

In the current version there are effectively three flavours of Remove.

Standard Remove (Generative AI off)

Uses content-aware style algorithms, processed locally. It works well on simple, repeating backgrounds, but it can struggle with complex textures and edges.

Cloud Generative Remove (Generative AI on, Cloud)

Sends your selection to Adobe's servers, where a Firefly-class model generates new pixels to fill the gap. It generally performs better on complex scenes with fine detail, like foliage, hair and signage.

On-device Generative Remove (Generative AI on, Device)

New in Photoshop 27.7. A generative model is downloaded to your computer so the Remove tool can do that heavy lifting locally instead of relying on the cloud.

Functionally, on-device mode aims to give you cloud-quality results with the reliability of local processing.

Why Bother With On-Device Remove?

If Remove already runs in the cloud, why bother with on-device at all? Three reasons.

Speed and responsiveness

In on-device mode, the model runs directly on your GPU rather than making a round trip to Adobe's servers. On powerful machines that means noticeably snappier results, especially on large layered documents or when you're doing lots of small removals across a full shoot.

It works when you're offline

Cloud Remove simply doesn't function without an internet connection. If you're editing on a train, in a remote landscape, in a studio with poor Wi-Fi or at a client office behind a locked-down network, that's a problem. On-device Remove works exactly the same way whether you're online or offline.

Better privacy and data control

Some jobs involve embargoed campaigns, confidential documents or sensitive subjects. In those situations it's often preferable, or contractually required, to keep all processing on your own hardware. On-device Remove keeps the pixels on your machine, which can be an important reassurance for privacy-conscious clients.

The Catch: The Hardware Bar Is High

Running a generative model locally is demanding. Photoshop checks your system automatically, and if it doesn't qualify, the Device option in the Remove tool is simply greyed out.

On Windows, Adobe's current guidance calls for a modern multi-core CPU, a strong GPU, and decent RAM and SSD space:

On top of that, Adobe lists higher VRAM thresholds by GPU family. Current documentation and support posts indicate that many mid-range GPUs, some RTX 30-series cards with 12GB of VRAM for example, still don't unlock the Device option for Remove, even though they run other AI features comfortably.

On Mac, on-device Remove is Apple Silicon only. You'll need an M1 Pro or later (M1 Max, M2 Pro, M2 Max and newer are recommended for smooth use), 24GB of RAM or more, and macOS Tahoe (26.4) or newer. Intel Macs aren't supported for the on-device model.

How to Use the On-Device Remove Tool

Once your hardware qualifies and you're running Photoshop 27.7, it's all controlled from within the Remove tool itself.

1. Select the Remove tool from the toolbar, where it sits with the Spot Healing Brush and Healing Brush.

2. Open the Mode dropdown in the Options bar, where you'll see options such as Auto, GenAI On and GenAI Off.

3. Choose Device for Generative AI processing. Within that panel, find the Generative AI processing setting and switch it from Cloud to Device.

4. Download the on-device model. The first time you select Device, Photoshop prompts you to download it, just under 5GB. Confirm it and let it finish.

5. Paint away distractions. With Device selected, paint over unwanted objects as usual, and Photoshop will use the local model rather than the cloud to generate the replacement pixels.

6. Switch between Cloud and Device whenever you like, from the same Mode dropdown, if you want to compare quality or fall back to the cloud on less powerful hardware.

If the Device option stays dimmed, it usually means either your hardware doesn't meet the minimum spec or GPU acceleration is switched off in Photoshop's Performance preferences.

Who Will Benefit Most?

On-device Remove is particularly valuable for three groups.

Location, travel and event photographers

You often edit in the field or away from reliable internet. On-device Remove keeps your clean-up workflow working exactly the same wherever you are, hotel room, train, remote shoot or studio with spotty Wi-Fi.

High-volume retouchers

If a big chunk of your day goes on removing logos, stray hairs, dust, cables and background clutter, a faster, offline, privacy-friendly Remove tool makes that daily work smoother and more predictable, especially on time-critical jobs.

Commercial and editorial shooters with sensitive work

When you're dealing with unreleased campaigns or sensitive subjects, being able to say all the retouching was done on-device is a genuine advantage with clients and legal teams.

For casual users on modest hardware, the existing standard and cloud Remove modes will carry on doing the job perfectly well. But if your machine meets Adobe's on-device requirements, the new Remove model in Photoshop 27.7 is one of the most meaningful quality-of-life upgrades in the current release, especially if you live in the Remove tool all day and want its full power without always depending on the cloud.

Lightroom AI - You're using it in the WRONG ORDER

In Lightroom Classic, Desktop, and Camera Raw, a yellow warning icon often appears in the AI Edit Status panel. This happens when you perform edits out of the recommended "order of operations," signaling that certain AI-generated layers need to be updated or rerendered.

While you can still edit in any order, jumping around can lead to unpredictable results. For example, applying an adaptive color profile and then using the "Denoise" or "Remove" tool might cause the colors and highlights to shift once the AI is forced to update.

The Recommended Workflow: Prepare, Repair, Finesse

To maintain total control over how your image looks, it is best to follow this three-step sequence:

1. Prepare: Start with edits that affect the entire image, such as Denoise, Raw Details, Super Resolution, or HDR. This is the foundation of your edit.

2. Repair: Next, clean up the image by removing distractions. Use the Remove tool (with Generative AI) or Distraction Removal for things like reflections, dust spots, or unwanted objects.

3. Finesse (or Finish): Once the image is prepped and repaired, move on to creative adjustments, such as Adaptive Color Profiles or intricate masking.

Handling the AI Edit Status Warning

If the yellow icon appears, it is a reminder that your AI edits may no longer be perfectly synced with the current state of the image.

• Click to Update: Always click the icon and select "Update" before finishing your edit.

• Reassess: After updating, look closely at your image. Because the AI is rerendering, the results might look slightly different than before.

• Don't Just Export: If you try to export while the icon is yellow, a popup will warn you. Instead of clicking "Export" anyway, it is safer to cancel, update the edits manually, and ensure you are happy with the changes before saving the final file.

By following the Prepare, Repair, Finesse order, you ensure your editing remains predictable and that the final export looks exactly as you intended.

AI and Photography: It's Not the End of the World

There is a conversation happening in photography right now, and chances are you’ve heard it. Whether it is in comment sections, Facebook groups, or at events, the same question keeps coming up: is AI going to kill photography?

I get it. When generative AI started producing photorealistic images from a text prompt, the alarm bells rang, and not entirely without reason. If a computer can conjure a dramatic seascape or a perfectly lit portrait from a few typed words, where does that leave those of us who actually pick up a camera?

So here’s what I believe: I don’t think it’s the threat people fear it is. Of course for some areas of Professional / Paid Photography but certainly not for enthusiasts; not for anyone who shoots because they genuinely love it.

We’ve Been Here Before

Photography has always had to adapt. Digital replaced film, and people said it would ruin photography. Smartphones put a camera in everyone's pocket, and people said that would ruin it too. It didn’t. If anything, more people are shooting now than ever before. Accoridng to CIPA shipment data with 2025 market reports, the hobbyist camera market made up well over two thirds of all digital camera sales, and the number of photography workshops and online courses has grown by more than 30 percent in recent years. People are not falling out of love with photography. They are falling deeper into it.

AI is the latest chapter in that same story. It’s a new tool arriving in an industry that has always evolved alongside new tools.

What AI Actually Is, and Is Not

Here’s the thing that often gets lost in the noise. AI, in the context of most photographers' day-to-day lives, is not generating fake images to replace yours; it’s quietly working inside the software you are already using.

Take Lightroom and Photoshop. Both are packed with AI-powered features now. Masking that would have taken me the best part of an hour a few years ago takes seconds. Removing a distracting element from the background of a portrait, reducing noise in a high ISO shot, selecting a subject with precision. These are the kinds of tasks that used to eat into your editing time without giving anything creative back. They were just tedious.

That is where I have found AI genuinely useful. Not as something that replaces my decisions, but as something that handles the mechanical stuff so I can focus on what I actually enjoy, developing the image, getting the look I had in my head when I pressed the shutter, making it feel the way I want it to feel. The creative part is still mine. AI just means I am not spending forty minutes (and more) doing fiddly selections to get there.

Yes, There Will Be Casualties

It would be dishonest to say AI has no impact on photography as a profession, because it does. Certain areas are already feeling it. Product photography is one. Generic stock imagery is another, and headshot photography is shifting too, with a growing number of AI applications now capable of producing professional-looking results at a fraction of the cost of hiring a photographer.

Will some people choose those options? Of course. But then, every industry has customers who will always gravitate towards the cheapest available option. Photography is not immune to that, and it never has been. There have always been clients who want results without paying for expertise. AI simply gives that segment of the market a new way to do what they were always going to do.

The clients worth having though, tend to think differently. They understand the difference between a generated image and a photograph made by someone who knows what they are doing. They value the professionalism, the experience of working with a skilled photographer, and ultimately an image that could not have come from a prompt box. That market is not shrinking. If anything, as AI imagery becomes more widespread, it is becoming more discerning.

The Authenticity Factor

There is something interesting happening on the other side of the AI conversation. As AI-generated imagery has flooded the internet, audiences have started to crave the opposite. The photography trends emerging in 2026 are centred around authenticity, real moments, real imperfections, real emotion. The slightly overcooked, hyperpolished aesthetic is losing its appeal. People want to see images that feel genuinely human.

That is actually great news for photographers, because the one thing AI cannot do, no matter how sophisticated it becomes, is be there. It cannot stand on a cold beach at six in the morning, read the light, time the wave, feel the composition before it happens. It cannot build a relationship with a portrait subject and find the moment where they forget the camera is there. It can produce images that look impressive on a screen, but impressive and meaningful are not the same thing.

Photography Is Not Just About the End Product

This is the point that gets missed entirely in the AI debate. When people talk about whether AI can replace photography, they tend to focus on the output. Can it produce a decent image? In some cases, yes. But photography has never really been just about the image at the end of it.

It is about being out in the world with a camera. It is the discipline of learning your craft, understanding light, making decisions in the moment. It is the feeling of nailing a shot you had been visualising for weeks. It is the connection you build with a subject during a portrait session. It is standing somewhere beautiful and choosing how to see it.

No AI can replicate that experience. And for the vast majority of photographers, enthusiast or professional, that experience is the whole point.

So Where Does That Leave You?

If you shoot because you enjoy it, AI changes very little about that. It might make some parts of the process quicker and easier, and used well, that is no bad thing. But it is not going to make the experience of making a photograph redundant.

Yes, the industry will keep changing. Some corners of it will shrink. But photography itself, the act of it, the craft of it, the joy of it, is not going anywhere. Do not be scared of AI; just don’t hand it the wheel either.

Photography is not dying. If anything, the conversation AI has started might just remind people why real photographs matter.

STOP using 10 Apps to Plan your Photography! (Do this instead)

The Problem with "Too Much" Information

We have an incredible amount of data at our fingertips these days. If you are planning a landscape or seascape trip, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of apps available. Honestly, that is part of the issue for me. There is just too much choice, and every day there seems to be a new app hitting the store. I never quite know which one to use for what.

While I still use a dedicated app to check the position of the sun, I have moved everything else over to AI.

How I Use AI as a Location Scout

It doesn't really matter which platform you prefer. I use Google Gemini, but you can do the exact same thing with ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity. The goal is to move away from checking ten different websites and instead have one single place that "scouts" the location for you.

I have set up something called a "Gem" in Gemini (or a Custom GPT if you use ChatGPT). I call it my Seascape Photography Planner. All I have to do is tell it where I am going and when, and it does the rest.

For example, if I tell it I am heading to Godrevy Lighthouse this coming Saturday, within seconds it populates the screen with:

• Weather conditions: Temperature, precipitation, and wind speeds.

• Lighting: Sunrise, sunset, and golden hour times.

• The Ocean: Tide times and tide heights.

• Logistics: Where to park, how to pay (cash or app), and where to find food or fuel nearby.

• Safety: The nearest hospital and contact details for the police.

• Drone Info: Nearest airfield and air traffic control contacts, just in case a drone goes rogue.

Setting It Up Yourself

The process is incredibly simple. You start by asking the AI to find this information for a specific trip. I often use a dictation app called Whisper to just speak my request into the text box.

Once the AI gives you a great result, you ask it one simple question: "Can you now create a system prompt from this so that the next time you can give me all of this information, but all I need to tell you is where I'm going and when?"

The AI will then write a "formula" for itself. It might say something like, "You are an expert photography location scout. Your goal is to provide a comprehensive, data-driven briefing."

You simply copy that text, go into your settings to create a new "Gem" or "Custom GPT," and paste those instructions in. Give it a name, save it, and you are done.

The Real-World Benefit

The best part about this is that it syncs to your phone. On the morning of a shoot, I can quickly check the latest updates while I'm having my coffee. I have even added "road conditions" to my prompt lately so I know if there are any last-minute diversions or roadblocks before I set off.

It is a massive time-saver. Instead of bouncing between weather apps, tide tables, and Google Maps, I get a tailored briefing in one go. It has definitely increased my success rate, but more than that, it has made the whole experience of being out in the field much more relaxed.

🪦 Is Adobe Killing Lightroom with Topaz?

A few days ago I posted a video about the latest Lightroom update, version 9.2, and one of the big headlines was the new generative upscale feature powered by Topaz Gigapixel. A lot of people were excited about it, and honestly, so was I at first. But now that the dust has settled, I've had a chance to really sit with it, and I'll be straight with you: something feels off.

I've been going through your comments and doing a lot of thinking, and there are a few things here that I just can't get past.

Are We Really Going Backwards on Non-Destructive Editing?

The non-destructive workflow is one of the things that makes Lightroom so brilliant. We've reached a point where we can do masking, lighting adjustments, special effects, all without ever leaving the app or touching the original file. It's genuinely impressive how far it's come.

But this Topaz integration throws a spanner in the works. It basically puts a full stop on your edit and spits out a brand new file, which is a destructive process. And here's the thing, we've been here before. Remember when Super Resolution had the same problem? Adobe actually listened back then and sorted it so we weren't drowning in extra DNG files. So why are we going in the opposite direction now?

Innovation or Just Outsourcing?

Adobe is supposed to be leading the way in creative software. They already have Super Resolution, and it works well. So rather than pushing that further, say, allowing a proper 4x upscale, they've decided to hand it off to a third party instead.

That doesn't feel like innovation to me. It feels like taking the easy route. Especially when you consider the price increases we've seen recently. You'd expect that extra revenue to go towards building better, more seamless tools, not just bolting on someone else's technology and calling it a feature.

The Credits Problem

This is the bit that really gets me. The version of Topaz built into Lightroom is incredibly stripped back compared to the standalone app. There's no preview, barely any controls, and it costs you generative credits every single time you use it.

Compare that to the standalone Topaz app, where you get a proper preview, far more control, and unlimited upscales as part of your monthly subscription. In Lightroom, you're essentially guessing and spending credits to find out whether the result is even usable. It makes you wonder whether this is genuinely designed to improve your workflow or whether it's just another way to drive credit sales.

Let's Not Lose Sight of What Matters

I'm a big fan of AI and what it can do for our editing. It can save time, open up new possibilities, and make certain jobs a lot easier. But it should be a tool that supports your creativity, not a shortcut that sidesteps it.

Lightroom has always been a platform I've championed, and I still believe in what it can be. But moves like this make it harder to recommend with a straight face. I don't want to see it turn into a hub for third-party plugins that slowly bleed you dry with credit charges.

I've built my career on Adobe software and I'll always back it when it deserves it. But I also think it's important to say something when things don't feel right.

So Adobe, if you're paying attention: we know what you're capable of. Give us tools that respect the way we work, rather than features that complicate it. And in the meantime, if I run out of credits, I'll quite happily go back into Photoshop and rely on the traditional skills that have served me well for years. AI is a brilliant tool. But it's not the whole craft.

Reality vs Photoshop - Is Faking It Cheating? 🤷‍♂️

Car photography always looks that little bit more dramatic when there's a wet road reflection underneath the vehicle. But what do you do when the road is bone dry? In this guide, I'll walk you through two ways to fake a puddle reflection in Photoshop -- one traditional, one powered by AI -- and then I'll leave you with a question worth thinking about.

Method One: The Manual Approach

Step 1: Select the Car

Start by grabbing the Object Selection tool from the toolbar. In the options bar at the top of the screen, make sure the mode is set to Cloud for the best possible result, then click Select Subject. Photoshop will do a surprisingly good job of selecting the car in just a moment or two.

Step 2: Copy the Car onto Its Own Layer

With your selection active, press Command + J (Mac) or Control + J (Windows) to copy the car up onto a new layer. If you toggle every other layer off, you should see just the isolated car sitting cleanly on a transparent background.

Step 3: Flip It Upside Down

Go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical. This flips the car layer to create the basis of your reflection. Now grab the Move tool, hold down Shift (to keep movement perfectly vertical) and drag the flipped car downwards until the tyres of both the original and the reflection are just touching.

If things look slightly off-angle, go to Edit > Free Transform, move your cursor just outside the bounding box until you see the rotation cursor, and give it a gentle nudge until it lines up properly.

Step 4: Add a Black Layer Mask

Rename this layer "Reflection" to keep things tidy. Then, holding down Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows), click the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. This adds a black mask that hides the layer entirely -- which is exactly what you want for now.

Step 5: Draw the Puddle Shape

Select the Lasso tool and make sure you click directly on the layer mask thumbnail (you should see a white border appear around it, confirming it's active). Now draw a rough, freehand puddle shape beneath the car's tyres -- it doesn't need to be perfect, natural-looking and irregular is actually better here.

Step 6: Fill with White to Reveal the Reflection

Go to Edit > Fill, set the contents to White, and click OK. The reflection will now appear only within the puddle shape you drew.

Step 7: Soften the Edges

Zoom in and you'll notice the puddle edge looks very sharp and unnatural. To fix that, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and apply just a small amount -- around 3 pixels is usually enough. This softens the boundary and helps the reflection blend into the ground convincingly.

Finally, you can reduce the opacity of the Reflection layer slightly to make the whole thing look a little more subtle and true to life.

Method Two: Using Adobe Firefly's Generative Fill

If you want a quicker and arguably more realistic result, Photoshop's AI tools can do a remarkable job here.

Step 1: Load the Puddle Selection

Hold Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) and click directly on the layer mask from your first reflection layer. This loads the puddle shape back as an active selection, saving you from having to draw it again.

Step 2: Select the Background Layer

Click on the main image layer, so that Generative Fill works on the background rather than the reflection layer.

Step 3: Run Generative Fill

In the contextual taskbar, click Generative Fill and type a prompt along the lines of: a reflection of car in puddle of water. For the AI model, select Firefly (specifically the Firefly Built and Expand model released in January 2026). If you're on a Creative Cloud Pro account, this won't cost you any credits -- whereas models like Flux or Nano Banana can use anywhere between 20 and 30 credits per generation.

Click Generate.

Step 4: Choose Your Favourite Variation

Firefly will produce three variations for you to compare. Have a look through them and pick the one that looks most convincing. You'll likely notice that the AI does something quite clever: it reflects the sky in the puddle on the far side of the car, just as real water would. Achieving that manually in Photoshop would take considerably more time and effort.

Which Method Should You Use?

For a quick, dirty result, the manual method works well and gives you full control. But for something that genuinely looks like a photograph taken on a wet road, the AI approach is hard to argue with -- particularly because of how naturally it handles the environmental reflections in the water.

A Question Worth Thinking About

Here's something to consider. When photographing that car, there were really two options: bring bottles of water to pour around the car and create a real puddle on the dry road, or add the reflection later in post-production, either manually or with AI.

Both approaches result in a reflection that wasn't originally there. The only difference is when in the process you add it.

So what do you think -- is there a meaningful ethical difference between physically creating something on location and digitally adding it afterwards? When it comes to reflections specifically, does it matter?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.