Had a moment at a coffee shop in Portland when I saw someone using AI to edit their photos in real time

I was sitting at this little spot in Portland last week, just messing around on my laptop, and this guy next to me was using some AI tool to edit photos while he was taking them. He showed me how it could remove objects and adjust lighting instantly without any manual work. I spent like 20 minutes watching him run through a dozen shots, and it hit me how much time I waste doing that stuff by hand in Photoshop. I usually spend about 45 minutes touching up each photo for my side gig, but this thing did it in under 2 minutes for the whole batch. Has anyone else tried out live AI editing tools for their own work and found a setup that actually saves time?

3 comments

3 Comments

sandragrant11d ago

Oh man, I feel that pain - I spend so long messing with photoshop that I've probably lost a whole year of my life to the clone stamp tool alone!

sam_cooper10d ago

You said "I've probably lost a whole year of my life to the clone stamp tool alone" and I felt that in my bones. For me the game changer was switching to the healing brush for most cleanup work, it blends edges way better so you don't get that repeating pattern look. I also started working on a separate layer for all my cloning so I can paint over mistakes without wrecking the original. Took me way too long to figure that out honestly. Not saying it'll save you a full year but it definitely cut my editing time in half for stuff like removing power lines or fixing skin blemishes.

johnson.eva10d ago

I get what you're saying about live AI editing, but honestly I tried one of those tools and it just felt... off, you know? Like it smoothed out the texture of my skin to where I didn't even look like me anymore. The lighting adjustments were fine, but then it randomly decided my coffee cup was "clutter" and tried to blur it out. Maybe it works better for pro stuff, but for my casual photos it just made everything look fake. I'd rather spend the extra time in Photoshop where I can control exactly what happens.