Photography is one of the most fascinating forms of content creation as it’s something that quickly bleeds into the world of art and culture. Moreover, it’s also one of the most rapidly evolving forms of content creation – and the best part is that you have a visual representation of this if you go back through time.
We’ve gone from black and white photography to color photography, and then significant changes in photo quality, and so on. You now have mobile photography as a whole subset of this wider thing – it’s gone from giving you horribly pixelated images to ones that rival a lot of handheld cameras. When you look at photos that are taken today, you question how on earth things can develop even further than this.
And yet, we’re beginning to see the first glimpses of the future of photography.
New technologies are being invented every year to take this form of content creation to completely new heights. At the same time, you have our old friend AI poking its head in and looking to shake things up. But what does this future look like – and is it all good?
The Rise of Computational Photography
Of all the technologies in the photography world, computational photography is probably the most prevalent and discussed. It’s also something most of you interact with, and you don’t even know it. You see, when you take a photo with almost any modern smartphone, it will automatically adjust the image for you. It can brighten low-light scenes, add contrast/dynamic range, blur backgrounds, and so on.
This happens without you clicking any additional buttons; you snap the image, and then it’s there for you to see.
Some photographers see this as a fantastic advancement that brings mobile photography closer to the “real thing.” Others bemoan it for taking some of the creativity and talent out of photography – but also because a lot of computational photos make things worse. This is particularly true when taking pictures of people with darker skin tones; smartphones with computational photography tend to brighten the subject’s complexion because the system recognizes a dark part of the image and wants to brighten it. The same image on a more professional camera will typically produce more natural skin tone results.
As impressive as computational photography is, lots of professional photographers fail to see its purpose, especially when the next trend is just as big.
AI in Photo Editing & Post Production
Artificial intelligence has transformed post-production for photographers everywhere. Anyone in the photography business will know that the editing phase is just as important as the actual photo-taking itself. Good edits can enhance an image and turn it from great to absolutely phenomenal. The growth of several AI tools has now made it easier for anyone to edit their photos and make them look professional.
This has been a significant hit in several industries, especially real estate. Amateur photographers now have access to professional editing for real estate photos, which lets them take an image on their smartphone and transform it into something that looks like it was taken with a much more expensive camera. AI photo editing is great for the common man, but it still serves a use for professional photographers.
Instead of spending hours touching up an image in Photoshop or trying to remove anomalies, photographers can use AI features that do this for them. They can also utilize prompts to tell the editing software what they want to achieve. So, rather than using sliders to try to increase brightness, remove contrast, and bring the subject into focus more, they simply type a prompt, and it’s done for them.
Theoretically, the use of AI in photo editing could help any professional photographer get better at their job and produce more impressive final images. It also solves the issue of computational photography by letting people choose how their images are edited. Instead of taking a photo and seeing automatic computational enhancements, you get the raw image and can then put it through editing software if you wish.
The Fear of Inauthenticity
Both of these big photography trends revolve around the concept of technology altering images in one way or another. Whether this is done automatically or in post-production, it creates one of the biggest concerns for the photography community: inauthenticity.
When does a photo become inauthentic?
Does this happen the moment you use artificial intelligence or computational tech to change how it looks, or is there a line further down? Some photographers fear that people will get too lazy and rely on these new technologies too much. Certainly, computational photography seems to be the biggest concern, purely because it can take a still image and make it look inherently different from what the photographer snapped. This makes it feel inauthentic, and there’s this fear that photography will become saturated with computational imagery that all looks the same.
Funnily enough, AI editing software isn’t seen as that big of a concern – when used correctly. Indeed, it’s one of the better uses of AI because photographers know how they want to alter their photos; the software just lets them do this in less time. The only worry comes when people start using generative AI in photo editing to add things that weren’t there, or to manipulate an image too much by removing things in the background.
What Does The Future Look Like?
It’s obvious that we will continue to see massive developments in AI photo editing and automatic computational enhancements. Are both of those a good thing? That’s up for you to decide. Arguments can be made that computational photography and AI editing lower the barrier for the average person to take photos that they’re proud of, which is a good thing for most people. On the professional side of things, you can expect to see photographers use this technology to push the boundaries of what’s possible. They’ll definitely be on a mission to prove that computational photography still has nothing on real human talent, especially when combined with the power of AI photo editing.
