Canon has announced it will soon be releasing a new AI-powered plugin for Adobe Lightroom Classic that will be able to cull through images and sort them based on image quality.
The ‘Photo Culling’ plugin, as it’s so aptly named, uses Canon’s Computer Vision AI engine and ‘technical models’ to select images for ‘sharpness, noise, exposure, contrast, closed eyes, and red eyes.’ As the plugin analyzes images, it will flag the photos with different colored flags within Lightroom Classic for easier curation.
Canon says the settings will be customizable so photographers can ‘remain in complete control,’ but doesn’t elaborate on how exactly the parameters will be controlled. There’s no mention of whether or not this plugin will work with images captured with other cameras, but we’ve contacted Canon for clarification and will update this article accordingly when we hear back.
The Photo Culling plugin will be available exclusively on the Adobe Exchange App Marketplace in Q1 2020 for a monthly subscription.
The idea that any photographer would turn over any decision making to AI software seems incredibly ridiculous... let alone paying a monthly fee to do it. Can you have it just click the auto adjustments too?
I hope Canon didn't pay much for the music on this promo. Someone should have culled that out for them.
If this works, is reliable and accurate, it would be a good feature. However, I think that with the costly monthly subscriptions, Adobe should be providing this as an included feature and not a third party.
Of course I can sift through and tag any obvious miss-shots (for whatever cause) using the arrow keys and X, but often it is hard to tell whether shots are genuinely out of focus as LR can take many seconds before images pop into focus, that's with a fairly good PC (4GHz, 8 core, 16 threads, 32GB RAM, good graphics card, etc).
I've tagging shots on numerous occasions only to have them suddenly pop into focus afterwards, then I have to un-tag them again. So I sit and watch, wondering, will it? won't it? on a loop. That's very time consuming/frustrating.
Anything that helps reduce this without additional fuss, is welcome.
try out fast raw viewer, it's pretty cheap, and it's great for culling. it shows you a rendering of the RAW, you see directly the raw histogram. on my computer it takes 0.15s to change between pictures. it's really great.
Try importing photos with smart previews enabled. When you review your photos, they’ll render in blindly fast speed. It’s built into Lightroom, so no extra cost.
Automation of the photo culling can’t be for everyone taste neither fits all needs. But it can certainly save time and ease the life of many photographers. My company (https://camerafutura.com) has just released a new software with similar goals only few weeks ago. It is not a plugin and it is not linked to Lightroom. And whereas I admit humbly "it is just the beginning", new or improved features will be added in the next months. I will certainly follow what Canon will release. It is good not to feel alone anymore !
Why is it not available in Canon's DPP? This is a new bussiness model for a Camera manufacturer to make money out of software. The software they provide, sould be a complement for those who buy their hardware product.
No! Technically good photos are not always the best photos. Why would I want a machine to think for me?
One one forum there is post dedicated out of focus photos or shots blurred by camera or subject movement. Most of the photos submitted are good with a few outstanding. If you don't review them yourself, you might miss a diamond in the rough.
Most of us have 20x the photos we actually need. Even that may be conservative. The algorithm may bin some good photos yes, but as long as the ones it keeps are the ones you like....more often than not....just roll with it. The time saved will be so worth it. Spend that time, taking pictures instead of managing your library and don't stress about the potentially 2% better photo in your opinion that it threw away instead of kept. It probably wasn't that good anyway.
I definitely think it has a place, though I'm not sure I appreciate what seems like a purely AI solution. It will also automatically tag photos, too which may or may not be useful...or accurate.
Interesting. I use Excire https://www.excire.com An AI plugin which provides keywording and proved really helpful to me. Runs with Lightroom Classic CC and 6 :)
That is a AI keywording service... not a CULLING service... it is good in its own way - but not helpful to get rid of bad photos which is what this article is about.
Well, the article is both: - about a culling service - about an AI Lightroom plugin Don't assume what readers of the article are interested in. Thanks.
@falconeyes.. It just seemed like you were saying Excire is what you use instead of this new service... but Excire's is totally a difference type of plugin - that was my point. I mean - if you just wanted to share info about Excire - that's great and I may have misunderstood. Enjoy!
Coming soon: The new Canon EOS R2, with the new "Can-cel That" feature, where the camera refuses to take a picture unless the AI thinks it will be a good shot. Unleash your creative freedom 8-(
I would love to see how this works. Don't understand how useful or powerful this is. Half of the items that it uses to choose images seem pointless and have nothing to do with being a good image or not.
It has nothing to do with good or bad. It's about culling LARGE numbers of photos.
Here's an example. A sharp and perfectly exposed photo of a person who blinked (eyes closed) isn't very useful to most event photographers. If this speeds his delivery time—then it's very useful. If it tags photos with red eye, that makes it easier/faster to process—this helps with profit.
Many, maybe most, do NOT need this service—if it's not for you that's OK
you likely can't sell a technically imperfect photo as easy as at technically perfect photo, all things being equal. This is obviously marketed to professional photographers who , yes, care about if the photo is subjectively good, but also require that that subjectively good photo to be technically as prefect as possible if they want to sell it.
gravis92, but if a pro photographer chooses to shoot at a higher ISO, there must be a reason. So what's the point in having a program that will eliminate images with noise? What about contrast? How can a photo be better or worst depending on the contrast?
And if you're not using canon, adjusting exposure isn't a big problem most of the time. Wouldn't you prefer to adjust exposure on a good expression than getting a bad expression with good exposure?
And even sharpness... How will the program know where to look for sharpness? A photo can be sharp on the background but the photographer trying to focus on a person.
For me, that's where it all gets a little hard to understand. Most of those things seem easy for the machine to differentiate, but not something I'd use as a rule to decide if I want to keep a photo or not.
its not that hard to understand, for some people, they just don't have the time. More often than not, this program will get it right. There are tons of photos you don't get because you are not taking pictures at that time, the ones that this program culls that you wouldn't, well, just forget about them and move on and pretend they never happened too. Life will be much easier. Its not like their is a cost to taking any one digital photo. Free yourself from the computer.
gravis92 how do you know the program will get it right more often than not? That's what I don't get. How can the program get it right when it's using noise or contrast to select what a good photo is?
It's not, because you still have to look and see what was the best image. The best image it's not always the sharpest, most contrasty and with lower noise.
@Spectro - many industry photographers these days use spray and pray.... Ice Skating competitions for example... they provide families with the option to purchase... it is completely a "mash the button" business... and they are making a killing selling images because there are great moments captured in the mix of hundreds of bad ones... but, they don't care because they do get the good ones too at 20FPS.
If it does end up exclusive to Canon gear, I predict some enterprising smaller company or coder will take some off-the-shelf neural network engines, train them on a bunch of photos, and put out a free or cheaper version that works for any equipment. :-D
I don't see how it actually works. Is there a video demonstrating it rather than the promotional video showing how wonder it is? Much of my sports pictures are culled based on 1st focus, 2 interest, 3 action. BUT, interest and action could change based upon how it's cropped. Would the AI know that? Would it know the difference between action sports and athlete portraits?
Shhhhhhhh don't tell Csnon we crop photos as sports photographers. They said they made the 1DXMKIII at 20MP's because we don't want or need more..... shhhhhhhhhh
Shhhhhhhh don't tell Csnon we crop photos as sports photographers. They said they made the 1DXMKIII at 20MP's because we don't want or need more..... shhhhhhhhhh
@semajel That is correct. That's the easy one. But how much focus would it be to toss? There are times the focus is a little soft but I'll still keep it. Or, if focus is even on the crowd than the players, would it know the difference?
Give them credit for identifying a problem--that digital cameras create so many images, just the sorting is a major task. Hopefully, other manufacturers will follow.
Creating a lot of images can also be solved in the first place. 20 fps is not needed to get a good one. A good photographer can do the job with less actuations.
Would help me in wildlife photography - BIF stuff, where focus and wing position of a bird can vary wildly. I often sift through lots of out of focus or bad bird shots to get to the good ones.
My guess is that, it cost Canon just pennies to develop it as a plug-in. Al cameras do scene analysis for exposure and more ie;eye detection, blink detection, white balance check, contrast check and so on. They must have reorganised the already available data developed through the years and bundled it as a stand-alone plug-in. Any other camera company could have done it but Canon have thought of it first.
Why is Canon doing this for an Adobe product, and not incorporating it in its own DPP product? Much better if Canon would work with Adobe so that profiles for new cameras, such as the EOS M6II, become available in Lightroom (Lightroom does not recognise any of the Canon profiles for the M6II, so you have to use more generic Adobe profiles).
Strictly speaking, it is not made available for free to anyone, it is for Canon owners who can prove they own a supported Canon camera. You have to enter the serial number of a supported Canon camera in order to download it. If you own a Canon camera (or can find a serial number from some source), it is free to download, but clearly the intention is to limit it to Canon owners. But I guess that if you do not have a Canon camera on which you shoot RAW images, you would not want it anyway :).
My point was slightly different. Canon is using Lightroom as a platform for something it can monetise, but it is unwilling to make things easier for Canon users of Lightroom where it cannot monetise allowing Adobe to create Canon profiles for new Canon image formats. Canon could include it in DPP, but because this is not subscription based and they cannot charge for it, they are not doing it. Smacks of double standards on Canon’s part to me.
Yes, in the sense that the details of the M6 II CR3 files are proprietary and Canon will not provide the details to Adobe to enable Adobe to make the profiles available. They will probably become available in due course once Adobe works out how to reverse engineer them or whatever it is they have to do, but this will be despite Canon, not with Canon’s cooperation, even though the only people adversely affected are those who are relatively early adopters of Canon’s latest technology.
I agree. Many of us cull in Canon's sofware and also convert RAW's to TIFF because Canon's color conversion is excellent. Much faster then viewing in LR or Bridge.
yes, Canon should improve their DPP software and offer a "pro" version in addition to the free "basic" one.
I would gladly pay a sensible price for a permanent license of "DPP pro" - consistibg of excellent Canon RAW engine plus ingest functionality like Photo Mechanic with additional "AI" culling flags and auto-keyword tagging plus image efiting functionality exactly like LR classic's develop module and a single, intuitive user interface. one workflow app to handle any Canon raw file all the way to final image (jpg and HEIC!).
no bloated database and no messy plugins please.
since i only use Canon cameras (as probably vast majority of all Canon customers) it is all i'd need. would pay up to € 199 for permanent license plus € 99 for significant update every 2 years.
It's not for me, but it should be good for some photographers. As far as costs, if you already have an Adobe Cloud Account, this should be no-big-deal.
The goal of a good AI is not to replace humans... it is to augment/aid them. If this software can do the job reasonably well it will save tons of time for people.
E.g. only filtering out images were people have their eyes closed (especially in group portraits is already a huge time-saver. And the way color flags are applied should mean that it is very easy to verify the algorithms work.
If I would pay for it is another story... Apple does something similar in how they select what they think is the best photo in a burst scene.
I'm not trying to be "sour" when I say that I honestly just can't get into the mindset of trying to avoid looking at photographs I took.
"Let someone (or something) else choose your 'best' photographs" sounds, to me, too much like "let someone (or something) else just take them in the first place."
I'm sure other people see it differently, which is fine. But personally, I got into photography to actually *do* it. The whole thing. To have ideas, to plan, to shoot, to cull, to edit, to deliver, to look at what I did. Again: no judgments, but personally I have a hard time being interested in any technologies that push *me* out of *my* art.
Also, I'm skeptical that someone just blitzing through a take in Photomechanic or even a Capture One session wouldn't end up getting a faster final cull than the person who imports to Lightroom, generates previews, engages this system, and then reviews-approves-or-denies its various selections. Perhaps it will prove me wrong?
One drawback for me is that quite often large group photos will contain someone blinking, talking, looking the wrong way. If I’m lucky I’ll take 6 shots to get one where all are perfect.
If I’m on a tripod and the subjects haven’t moved significantly, then it’s easy enough to swap a few heads around.
I’d like to see an AI program that identified the blinkers etc, and then replaced them with better shots from a batch I selected. An AI auto head swapping app, that auto transforms, layers and blends the replacement heads in place.
..but I have to say it’s only really a problem with very large groups if they only have patience for half a dozen shots
Yes because most photographers love to spend hours and hours culling thousands of photos instead of being out and about shooting, spending time with family, earning money or whatever else is on your list.
I sometimes use 3 fps, are choosey about what you shoot and go out once a week. If you do that for 20 years, you will still have thousands of pictures. This software will be a big timesaver for me.
No. You won't. Not the good ones. (doesnt mean you're not goot, but it's my opinion). A wise man once said: "There stands *one* picture of the wedding on the fireplace. Only one. But a good one.
@vscd - I was referring to the amount of pictures before culling. After culling, you may only have 10% left worth publishing. I have seen wedding photographers work who shoot anywhere from 100 - 2000 pictures before they cull and the bride selects about 10.
When I shoot weddings I normally have about 400-600 pictures. And even that is quite a lot. Make good pictures, not many. Of course you have some fast scenes on throwing flowers etc., but coming home with 5000 pictures and complain about culling is not my taste of photography... But I'm coming from analog times. I know I'm a bad photographer of I only fire without concept. But what I do is culling at the place if I know I missed the shot.
Monthly subscription? really? so we will pay an AI to tell us how bad our photos are? maybe it will even send them to their servers to feed a huge database, like Google Photos?
Call me paranoid, but whenever a corporation states that I willl ‘remain in complete control', I see a big warning sign flashing inside my head.
And photography is standardised enough these days, we do not need machines to tell us how bad or good our pictures are... especially for a monthly fee.
You should do some research in what your camera already "automatically" does for you, even before you press the shutter button.
The only photographers truly in control are ones who shoot analog. The rest of us? Slaves to the algorithms of auto focus, auto exposure, lens corrections, distortion control, vignetting control, color science, demosaicing/debayering and the list goes on.
The majority of commenters here needs to get rid of their superiority complex.
I will use my eos 3 a few days a month for fun, and eye control works for me. Its generally ok most time and considering the year it was released, actually quite usable. I dont understand why it was dropped, if it was now they could likely make it work perfectly.
@ewelch, Stills resolution will steadily increase but how much resolution do you think shooters need for event and sports photography? Right now they use 20MP. 8K offers 32MP stills.
@Horshack, You don't need 8K to do that. You just need someone to implement it. If Reuters or AFP do it, everyone else will too.
@Grapejam The Digital Disk Recorder was used for Instant Replay in 1967. Today's technology is even better. Storage is a short term thing. The Digital Disk Recorder only a 30 second capacity. If they didn't use it for a play, it was erased, and started over. After an Agency Photo Editor reviews the shots, and Picks the Keeper, the rest will be erased. Unlike Photo Enthusiasts, News Organization don't keep everything—they throw away everything that doesn't make them money.
@ewelch These "video jockeys" have been providing the action for World Cup Football, NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA, F1 Auto Racing, etc, etc TV Broadcasts for many Years.
@Horshack - You are quite right about how much resolution one needs for certain purposes (sports). More data pretty much means slowing you down on deadline and that's not a good thing.
It's nice to have but I'm not sure if I should trust machine to do this kind of stuffs. Slightly oof photos, off exposure photos but with good composition and expression are better than perfect technical photos but with bad composition and expression.
It just tag them for you, the final selection is up to you. I think it will be a great tool if the tagging will be as reliable as I think now it will be. :)
@08amczb - I'm not too sure that the tagging will be all that good if you have made an artistic decision which doesn't conform - say for example - 'Dutch' tilt, intentional camera movement (ICM), crushing shadows / blowing highlights, long exposures, star trails and so on - I think your level of confidence is a bit misplaced, no doubt it may work OK'ish for what one may call vanilla or standard situations.
@dabhand For that 50 artistic photo in a session you do not want to use this tool, but for a wedding with 5000 images it will be useful. (Although I think I won't use it nightere.)
All this does is group photos based on criteria e.g. "sharpness", "eyes open/closed", "focus", "noise". This will speed up manual selection. Where does it say it will select your best photos and throw out the rest?
It is an aid for manual culling, not a replacement.
There is a small chance we see adobe picking up the idea and integrating it into lightroom which could have happened a long time ago already. This is used in smartphones since a few years now, sad that the photography market is getting innovative features only very late.
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