I have two guests with me this week, they are Ron Oren and Yotam Gil who are two of the three co-founders of the company ImagenAI which is based in Tel-Aviv, Israel.
On their website, ImagenAI is described as “Your personalized photo editing assistant”.
ImagenAI never stops learning every parameter of your personal editing style. This is not just a preset that gives your photos a certain look. It learns YOUR style and processes your images the way you would. The benefit – time – you save tons of time and even if you shoot for fun – time is money or the opportunity to do something that you love – instead of laboring through image processing.
Transcript | TOGCHAT Resources
Episode Links
Website URL
https://www.imagen-ai.com
ImagenAI Talents
https://www.imagen-ai.com/talents
ImagenAI Knowledge Center
https://www.imagen-ai.com/knowledge-center
Instagram URL
https://www.instagram.com/imagen.ai
YouTube URL
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8GIKmPICR62kD1dpAp8_Xg
Facebook URL
https://www.facebook.com/imagen.ai.software
Transcript
ImagenAI – AI-powered Photo Editing Software Learns Your Editing Style and Does The Edits For You
Joe: [00:00:00]
AI in your cameras, AI in your software, heck you probably have AI in your home and you definitely have it in your smartphone. Like it or not, AI is here to stay. And I have two gentlemen with me for this episode who have developed an AI powered photo editing platform called ImagenAI. And in my opinion, this one’s a game changer.
Before you click away, I know some of you are tired of hearing about AI and some of you just don’t understand it. Do yourself a favor, grab a cup of coffee, or if you’re like me a soda and have a listen to this episode, there is a good chance that AI isn’t right for you yet, but it will be. And this conversation will definitely give you a better understanding of what it is, how it works and how it can help you. If not today. Definitely in the near future, stay tuned.
DJ: [00:00:58]
You’re listening to the TOGCHAT Photography Podcast, the only podcast dedicated to the HOWS and WHYS, behind creating consistently great photographs. Here’s your host, Joe Edelman.
Joe: [00:01:16]
Hey gang. Welcome to the TOGCHAT Photography Podcast. I am your host, Joe Edelman, and my mission, is to help photographers like you to develop a better understanding of the HOWS and WHYS behind great photography.
My thought this week, I read an article recently that outlined the five easiest ways to make money as a photographer. It really wasn’t that useful because it just recycled the usual recommendations of shooting weddings or events, yada, yada, yada. My years of experience have taught me that the easiest way to make money as a photographer would be to sell all my gear — for real.
Next up is a TOGCHAT exclusive interview. I have two guests with me this week. They are Ron Oren and Yotam Gill who are two of the three co-founders of the company ImagenAI, which is based in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Full disclosure, ImagenAI is not paying me to be the subject for this podcast. And they did not ask to be the subject of this podcast. After sitting in on a consultation call with them, I invited them to join me because of their passion and knowledge about AI. And because I really do think that they are onto a super cool concept. I also want to note that these guys were kind enough to record this interview. The day after the rockets started landing in Tel Aviv at the beginning of the recent conflict.
On their website, ImagenAI is described as “Your personalized photo editing assistant”. Currently, the software only works with Lightroom, but plans are in the works to change that status. ImagenAI never stops learning every parameter of your personal editing style. This is not just a preset that gives your photos a certain look, it learns your style and processes your images, the way you would, the benefit — time — you save tons of time.
And even if you shoot for fun, time is money or the opportunity to do something that you love instead of laboring through image processing. So instead of me telling you about it, Let’s turn to the experts and dig in.
Yotam, Ron, thank you guys for joining me today all the way from Tel Aviv, Israel. Thank you for being here.
Yotam and Ron: [00:03:59]
Thank you for having us, Joe. It’s such a pleasure. Yeah.
Joe: [00:04:03]
It is my pleasure. And I’ll tell you, I’m looking forward to kind of geeking out a little bit here with your technology, but I have to ask, first of all, I hope that everything is okay with you guys. We’re seeing some really crazy news over there, so I hope that you’re both staying safe?
Yotam and Ron: [00:04:16]
Yes. So yeah, we are staying safe. It’s a strange situation here, but we were kind of used to it already. And. No things are not as bad as they look on TV. Yeah.
Joe: [00:04:26]
I’m very glad to hear that. I realize sometimes we only, we only see the really crazy stuff on television.
Yotam and Ron: [00:04:31]
True.
Joe: [00:04:31]
Stay safe.
Yotam and Ron: [00:04:32]
And we just hope, we just hope everything will be peaceful for both sides and just wanting to be over.
Joe: [00:04:39]
I’m definitely glad to hear that. Alright so gentlemen, I want to dive right in with, obviously we’re going to talk about your software because I think your software is kind of cool, but I want to start with something that I think will maybe help a lot of photographers. I’m finding that a lot of the photographers that I speak with as I travel and I do presentations, or when I’m doing my YouTube live streams, I find that a lot of photographers are somewhat techno phobic.
And when they hear this term, AI, they’re a little bit intimidated and honestly, sometimes even threatened by the concept. So where I’d like to start, I want to talk about. Kind of an AI for dummies in terms of what it really is, and then better yet. What are the potential benefits or technologies that AI can bring to photography?
Yotam and Ron: [00:05:32]
I just want to tell my personal, personal story that, uh, about five or six years ago, um, I started hearing, you know, things about, about AI, um, and it turned, it turned out that AI and machine learning. Uh, has been here for many years, actually, the first initial thought about the machine learns by itself, came up in the 1960, 60.
Uh, but it took a very long time for computers to evolve and to be able to process in a way that’s fast enough in order to actually show some artificial intelligence in about 2012, it started to show up and started to gain popularity. And I first heard about, heard about it that about 2015. I was working in a tech company, which is not related to AI at all.
And I heard about it and I saw some applications and I said, men, I have to be part of that because this is really amazing. This is something that’s going to change the world. So at that point I left my job. I went back to the university and started diving in and understanding this technology and this amazing things you could do.
And it was really mind-blowing. You know, it’s in so many domains and so many different fields of technology. It really changes the world. So basically what’s, what’s artificial intelligence. So what’s machine learning. The big difference between AI technologies and other technologies is that AI can actually learn from examples.
So if in the past you had to code something and you had to figure out that you want to, you want it to recognize a cat in a photo. So you had to write a card saying that, know if you see 2.2 years and if you see like a mustache, then that’s probably a cat, but you have to really teach him. What’s a cat with AI.
You can simply show him examples of many, many cats and tell him this is a cat, and he can actually understand. And. Teach yourself, lots of kids and what’s a dog. So this is kind of general, but you see it in many, many applications. This operation I just described is called classification where you classify photos to different classes, but you also have like segmentation.
When you actually say, where is the cat in the photo? And you have other AI tasks and also applies not only for photos, but only also for texts and many, many other domains where AI can be very beneficial. Especially in cases where you have a lot of data and it’s very hard for a human being to process all this data in a relevant, reasonable timeframe.
And the computer could definitely have there. So again, the main difference is you don’t have to teach him how to work, but instead you just give it examples and do expect the AI to learn for itself.
Joe: [00:08:24]
There’s already different examples of this being used. Obviously your software is a great example. There are pieces of software that use AI technology actually to use your phrase classification, to help with the culling process.
The Olympus cameras that I use are using AI to enhance and advance auto-focus by categories. There’s a birding AI and a train and a plane and a car AI that speeds up and it creates more accurate auto-focus. From your perspective, since you guys are obviously very immersed in this technology, what other potential uses are there in photography?
And I realize we probably haven’t even found all of them yet. If you’re going to dream big for a minute, how else might this AI be put to use?
Yotam and Ron: [00:09:15]
First, I want to say that I think it’s going to revolutionize the entire domain of photography because photos are the first field or the first way that computers can actually improve things.
If I dream for a second, do you know, in the future. So, so I think an AI can actually help you become a better photographer, so it can help you understand the scenery better. It can help you in real time find the best lighting condition. I don’t think that it will completely replace anyone. Because still needs the human touch and photography and specific is something that creativity is highly important.
So I don’t believe for anyone concerned that it might be replaced by an AI in the future. So it’s not going to happen anytime soon. I think it’s going to be helping in many, many ways. So let’s face it everyone. And also U.S. scared about the opportunity or the option that it will replace. U.S. or the artistic or the creative experience.
But if we’re talking about what we wish everything to become too, is that it will not replace. It’s actually will be my best partner. Yotam, Yotam is my partner, for example. And I wish that in our partnership, he will definitely understand me. He can understand when I’m stressed, when I’m happy, when I’m hungry, when I’m, when I’m sad and kind of be a friend and just assist me to go, you know, to face all the challenges and in our vision, we built AI to learn you just to be the best assistant.
For you in your journey. So the idea is actually to optimize your operation, not replace your creativity, you do the creative work, and we will take care of the rest just because you focus on what you actually love. This is the long run vision I would say, because in the future, when I say learning, it can be actually someone that learn help you recommend what is best as Yotam mentioned, and really trying to level up.
You all the time and, and this is what you wished for. If you don’t want to be, learn or teach anyone, you’re stuck, that’s your choice, but you can take it anyway with a human partner or with an AI, but in AI, it’s just faster. Want to add one last point? I mean, the possibilities that AI is opening are the fact that it can be personalized.
So if in the past, like programmers had to write a code, which was generic for all the users. In this case, we can actually get your examples, your way of using the product and find a personalized experience for you specifically. And this is really life-changing.
Joe: [00:12:00]
One last question about AI in general, and you’ve kind of put this to rest already, but I want to phrase it a little differently. One of the, shall we say, complaints that I hear from the photographers that are a little afraid of this technology is that these AI driven pieces that we’re using, whether it’s calling or processing or the autofocus features. That they’re taking control away from the photographer. I’m sure I haven’t heard too many people and I completely understand some people are going to think, oh my God, they’re trying to replace me.
But I have run into people that feel like, well, if they use this technology, They don’t have the same kind of control. And we all know that as photographers, success is in the details, right? It’s those little details that often are the things that kind of put your image over the top too, to make it stand out, to make it a scroll stopper, you know, on social media.
I think I know how you’re going to answer that, but I want to hear it in your words, what do you say to, to those photographers that are afraid of losing that control over their creative process?
Yotam and Ron: [00:13:02]
My previous work, it was in AI obviously, and it was about climate action. We try to actually use AI to come up with novel ideas for, you know, to fight climate change.
And we always had the chat. If this idea is a solution or actually they’re going to create the opposite. It will actually create some sort of a snowball that will create more war scenario in the down the road. And the solution that we took was crowdsourcing in a way. So all the time there is a human interaction that actually, you know, like, uh, observing and, and defining if it’s right or not, if it’s human or not, if it’s something that’s from our history and experience, we will choose with that, our back to our technology.
And I will say that. In our product, there is the option of fine tune. Send us your final results so you can download the edits and then just tweak it in the editor if it’s Lightroom or different currently only in Adobe Lightroom. And the reason we kept that is that we want to make sure that you still have a control.
You still QA in your results. These are your edits and you actually just making sure that’s imagine AI learn your style. If it’s not your style, teach it again. So send us your final result, but we kept the human interaction out of the process. And that was one of the reasons when we just started, we started interviewing photographers and understand their pain and why they cannot use existing products.
And one of the things that they said that to the existing product, you give a photo and you get an output and you lose control. So you can’t really control anything. So I think the most important things, when the thing, when building our technology was, do not ruin anything, do not do anything that’s not reversible.
So what we decided is to actually find the edits that we think you’re going to apply to this photo, but give it to you as parameters in Lightroom, that can be, everything can be reversed. Everything can be fine, tuned. Everything can be changed. It will evolve with time with your changes. But nothing is permanent.
Nothing is doing any damage to the picture and you keep in total control. And the way we see today is that ImagenAI is not going to replace the editing completely. At any point, it will just give you a very good baseline to start from, which is kind of what you did so far or what the history of your edits.
And then you take it from there and put your creativity inside. So you actually have more time to invest in the small details. You have more time to, you know, think how specific photo should be enhanced. So we’re not aiming to replace the editor or the photographer at any point, or just to save him a lot of time in the part of the work, which is.
No repeating and tedious.
DJ: [00:16:00]
Enjoying the show? Please take a moment and share it with your friends on social media.
Joe: [00:16:04]
That I think is a really important point for people to understand that you’re not promoting or creating a product that replaces the whole editing workflow. You’re creating a product that speeds up the editing workflow.
So obviously we’re here to talk about, ImagenAI, let’s dive into that, but I’m a bit of a nerd. I find stories about how things happen to be fascinating. So. I know there’s three of you that started this. How did it get started? Because at least you two have backgrounds in AI, but it sounds like some, you know, differences in those backgrounds.
How did this software come about?
Yotam and Ron: [00:16:40]
Yotam has the most interesting angle in this question, but I will just mention that first of all, your time, and I know each other for. Many years. We are well best friends from, since I remember myself, we literally grew next to each other. ImagenAI, for us, it’s a dream come through as a friendship.
We’re actually living what we dreamed of when we were kids. I’m coming from creative marketing data, visual visualization, Yotam and our third partner Yoav. They are actually, the AI experts and Yotam, maybe you can just share that angle. Actually, Yoav started ImagenAI, and he got married about two and a half years ago.
He had a beautiful wedding. I know because I was not in the wedding because I didn’t know him by then, but I saw his pictures many times by now, after he got married. You know it was expecting to get the photos from the wedding, and he had to wait apparently for three months to get the photos. It was a fairly long time.
He was studying at the time for his Master’s in specifically in deep learning and enhancing photos. And, you know, three months in terms of computers is eternity. So he was trying to understand why it takes so long, you know, because as a customer who knows nothing about photography. So you’ll say, you know, a photographer is coming to the wedding, shoot some photos and can just, you know, send it over the next day.
So why it takes a long. So he started speaking with his photographer and realized that editing is really, really time-consuming. You know, since then we know that on average editing full wedding takes about 14 hours. Which is a lot, uh, you know, customers are not aware of this time, so it’s a lot of time and it’s also very underestimated by the customers.
So it was starting to work with his photographer who was luckily very tech-savvy. So he was very enthusiastic about you know the option to work and to develop something with, with Yoav. He started to work on it and about three months later, I joined the team. I was studying together with Yoav with the same supervisor, but I was kind of researching for different domain, but then he told me about it. I said, Sounds amazing. I must join. So I just joined the team, and we started working on the technology. It was about a year and a half before we had a solid technology that we can actually, you know, give people to test and get the results. Then Ron joined about a year ago, as you mentioned we were friends from the age of six.
We always had a dream of, you know, starting our own startup. So this was the right moment. I called him in since then we started ImagenAI.
Joe: [00:19:17]
Tell me what ImagenAI is. Start at 50,000 feet and give me the overview of the software. And then I do want to kind of dig in a little bit more into the workflow, because I think the more that we allow people to understand that the more that they’re really going to see the benefits.
Yotam and Ron: [00:19:34]
Realized that editing takes a lot of time but on the same time, keeping your personalized editing style is crucial. So you have to keep your personal style because this is part of your brand part of what you’re selling. Part of the reason customers are coming, especially for you and not to other photographers. So it’s very important to keep the personal style.
It’s very important to be in control of your editing, but you still want to accelerate things and you want to do things faster with that in mind we say, okay, let’s use AI, let the AI see examples of your previous edits, teaching how to handle different lighting conditions, different sceneries, different type of photography.
And let’s hope that when he sees a new picture, they can actually say, okay, I noticed kind of pictures. And I know this specific photographer is going to edit in this specific style. So basically that’s what ImagenAI is all about. We take your edited Lightroom catalogs. We didn’t mention it before, but AI needs a lot of data to learn.
So when about 5,000 of your edited photos, It sounds a lot about, you know, for wedding photographers or for photographers who shoot a lot of photos. So 5,000 is not that bad. We need about 5,000 to get started with, but the more data you send, the more accurate the profile would eventually be. So if you send more photos, you’ll get a more accurate profile.
And once we have all this data, what we actually get is we get the photo, and we get the way that you edited this photo. So. All the set of parameters that you changed in your editing software in Lightroom. So once we have that, we can actually start teaching your personalized AI assistant, how you specifically edit your photos.
So given a specific photo, this is the set of parameters you are going to apply to this photo. This whole process takes time. It takes about a day or two to actually analyze your edits and to understand your style. And then we have something, you know, starting the computer called Joe’s profile or called your profile.
And this profile actually contains some knowledge, a few, some knowledge about the way you edit your photos. So the next time you shoot a wedding, for example, all you need to do is to import the photos to Lightroom. Send us the slides and catalog, and we will automatically apply the edits for you and update your Lightroom catalog.
So the next time you open Lightroom, you will see all your photos edited with your style or with, with your style. As the AI learned. At this point, you go over the photos. The hope is that you only need to review them and do no changes in the photos. But if you do need to do some changes, then I mean, You enlarged them.
We changed nothing. We just applied an initial set of parameters so you can change them, send it over again once, once you finalized. And once you do the fine-tuning of each photo and this profile keeps evolving and keeps changing with time to actually reflect your editing style.
Joe: [00:22:48]
Wow. The idea that number one, this isn’t just like hit auto and it’s processing. Because we all know, every now and then auto works the rest of the time. Not really, this is actually building it based on what you do and what you’ve done in the past, which I think is awesome. And one of my follow-up questions you’ve just answered right at the end. So once I set up an account with you and you’ve done my initial 5,000 images.
And then I’m coming back with a new wedding, you know, every other week or whatever it’s continuing to update. So then in, in theory and correct me if I’m wrong, but in theory, since a lot of photographers over time, their styles will morph or change a little bit. This is going to adapt. With me. I don’t have to, if I decide, you know what, I’m kind of liking a little bit of a lighter skin tone.
I don’t want my skin tones to be as warm. So I’m going to start processing this way. The AI is going to catch up to that. I don’t have to go and come up with another 5,000 images with the lighter skin tone. Is that correct?
Yotam and Ron: [00:23:54]
Exactly. Yeah, this is our premise. I just want to mention a few technical things just to, just to make it very, very clear.
So one, it’s not automatically that after you actually download, we will update your profile based on your, based on your find unit you will need. If you, if you want to retrain your profile. With the changes that, that you did, you actually didn’t need to go to imaginary and hit send final edits. So it’s your choice because sometimes photographers don’t want the prophet to learn what they just did.
Maybe they did it just for the customer or for many reasons. It’s actually reflecting the evolution of your style and you’re super happy with it. And you want the profit to adapt. And to keep on evolving with that style, then you only, you’re going to imagine that and send your final edits. So we thought this is one, two.
We currently, we are applying retraining after you double the original number. If your profile had been trained on 5,000 photos, we will retrain it on 10,000. And then on 20,000, because we want to make sure that it’s effective training process. So you will not see changes if you just train 30 images or 40 images because the baseline was 5,000, but you will definitely see the difference if you, if you double that amount.
Joe: [00:25:16]
Let me just challenge. One thing that I know some photographers are going to raise as an objection or concern, and I kind of get where the challenge is here, but I’m curious to see what your outlook is for a photographer who has maybe just made the plunge and decided I’m going to start doing weddings professionally, and they’re doing well with their business.
They’re building a business, and they’re shooting a relatively good number of weddings every year. But they don’t have a catalog of 5,000 images yet, and it’s going to take them a while to get there. I completely understand that technology, the more data, the better, the quality. And so you’ve hit that bar to establish a high quality in what you’re doing.
What do you say to the photographers that don’t have that? And is it a fair assumption that. As technology continues to grow as ImagenAI, the three of you gets smarter from what you’re doing with these AI’s that you’re building that you’re eventually able to make it work as effectively with a smaller sampling. Is that part of the long-term plan?
Yotam and Ron: [00:26:30]
First, I want to say that’s a great question because that’s kind of the same question we dealt with a few months ago when we saw that many professional photographers that worked for a long time and already established their unique style. So the amount of not this number of photos, and they can actually build a profile, but many photographers have just started have not yet collected.
This number of photos, and they’re not yet developed their own style. And they actually are looking for someone who can guide them, someone who can help them build their style and know creating their unique voice. So that’s why we started imagining talents. We partnered up with a few of our favorite photographers.
We really liked their style, and we, we tried to keep, you know, diverse type of styles, and we actually told them, Hey guys, why, why don’t you let other photographers use your kind of editing? You can actually generate some extra revenue for it, and they can actually use your profiles. Use your editing style and start developing their own style.
So today you can actually choose from a set of talents, find which Alec style you like the most sent for anything with this type of style, get the edits back and start developing your own kind of style, your own taste, and with time build your own personal profile. And so the second question about the number of photos.
So that’s totally right, and we keep reducing and decreasing the amount of photos we need for an accurate profile. When we just started, we needed 10,000 photos. So that’s going down with time. You cut that in half in a really very short period of time. It’s not a matter of computing power processing power.
It’s really a matter of just being able to feed. The system enough knowledge, enough information. We, we, we track it by accuracy. You mentioned accuracy before to explain what we mean by accuracy. We mean the time we save you in fine-tuning. So less photos need to be fine tune. So because they are accurate, they actually reflecting how you would edit them.
We are at the point that in 5,000 is the minimum to make sure that it’s actually saving a sufficient amount of time for you. And it’s not just, you know, it’s, it’s okay. Sometimes this is how we measure things. One more thing to, to mention about Talents. Talents is very exciting. One of the things that I really like about Talents is actually our Talents, how they will describe their style.
And every style is different. It’s like a DNA. So it’s amazing. And I really hope to see more and more talents joining. ImagenAI and we definitely have a pipeline of some very interesting names, and I’m not sure if Yotam mentioned it. But profile generation is 24 hours, maybe a day or two, as I mentioned, but editing is one second per photo. Meaning that 1000 photos will be about 20 minutes. So you can edit an entire wedding session in, in, let’s say 20 minutes with talents. You can start today. And in about few minutes from now, you can just see how this talent would edit your photo. If you were sitting next, just next to you. So just in terms of time to value Talents is, is a game changer.
DJ: [00:29:49]
Are you a member of a photography club or meetup group? Did you know that Joe presents virtually to clubs all around the world, follow the presentation, link in the show notes to learn more.
Joe: [00:29:59]
Let’s say I shoot a wedding and I’ve shot 2000 images, and I need to process them since I’m uploading the catalog, you don’t necessarily need to work with the raw image.
Are you working from the previews then in the catalog or do I have to worry about how long is it going to take to upload. 2000 images?
Yotam and Ron: [00:30:15]
We tried to keep it very, very simple for the user. So all you have to do is choose your Lightroom catalog. We know how to extract all the data from it, including the edits, when you teach the profile or just the photos when you send for editing, and we know how to compress them, because each row for you need a lot of time to upload it.
We highly compressed it to get a very low resolution photo. And only this photo is uploaded to the cloud. Don’t worry about uploading time. I mean, it takes time, but it’s not, it’s not done that.
Joe: [00:30:46]
Obviously it works with Lightroom. What are your plans down the road? Is it going to work with other pieces of software they’re out there, like Luminar or DXO or any of those, or is it potentially somehow going to become a standalone piece?
Will, you maybe integrate it with Adobe Bridge for the people that don’t use Lightroom, where do you see this?
Yotam and Ron: [00:31:07]
So today it’s actually a standalone software. It’s something that you download to your computer and it’s a desktop app. And just because, you know, it’s something that people can’t really see. So it’s a very simple application with only four main functions.
The first one is sending photos for teaching the profile. The second one is actually sending for editing. The third one is download the edits and update the profile. And the last one is sending your final edits in order to fine tune the profile. So it’s a very simple application and integrate seamlessly today with Lightroom.
So again, all you have to do is just choose and catalog, and we know how to fetch all the data from it. But to, because it’s a standalone software, we can actually work with any type of editing software. We started up with Lightroom because it’s the most common one, but we are definitely planning to support other editing software down the road.
We might also develop in the future, you know a plugin specifically for Lightroom that’s might take some time.
Joe: [00:32:07]
The Talents that I saw on your website, it seems that the majority of them are wedding photographers. I want to make sure that people are kind of thinking big because obviously the challenge with any creative idea or concept is to connect the dots for the possible uses as the guys that are programming this and fine-tuning it and making it work.
What other genres do you think that this is best suited for and then obviously as a result of your thoughts. What other types of photographers might we wind up seeing show up in the Talents section soon to expand on, on those uses
Yotam and Ron: [00:32:46]
I will try to divide it, maybe two, two different way of thinking. And I would just speak freely and honestly, about how we see.
Wonder is, you know, um, different styles, different photographers, different styles. So, you know, keep it basic, you know, color versus black and white. This is one. So we try to add more versatile in this. And two is domains. So events is currently most of our Talents, all events, wedding documentary, if you see.
But we also, we know that our technology is helping mainly with batch editing. So when you edit a large number of photos, so I will say you need, you know, one perfect shot. If it’s fashion, let’s say, or a macro, maybe ImagenAI is not the best solution for you, but other domains is real estate. For example, real estate photography.
This is something that we definitely have some photographer that working with our solution and very happy about it. And this is something that we investing in also for food photography. Food photography. Also, there is a lot of volume that you need to edit. Time is critical. And style is very, I will say that the way you edit it’s very, par t of your brand and you care about it.
So you should see more real estate profiles soon. You should see more food profiles soon, events and wedding obviously. More than that, Portrait. I know that Joe, obviously, with the respect for your expertise, Portrait is something that we are researching quite hard. And we are trying to make sure that we are in a very good quality.
Retouching is a big part, and this is a different challenge. We are looking for these types of domains, but there are some technical challenges that’s, let’s see when we will meet the quality that we feel comfortable enough to release it. I just want to add to that. When we initially started, we set in mind that we want to help photographers to accelerate their editing process.
But with time we understood that we actually have more than that. In our technology. So it can actually help the photographer, keep his editing style consistent, which is kind of a challenge for especially new or mature photographers. And even for professional and photographers with many years of experience, it’s really challenging to keep.
Being consistent and keep reflecting your editing style in your photos. So this is really helpful for them. Not only that, but with our technology, you can actually accelerate the turnaround time. So not only the editing is becomes much faster, but if you know, time is crucial for your kind of photography.
For example, if you’re shooting editorial or you’re shooting sports and you want your photo to actually go straight away to publishing, so you can actually skip an entire editing process, you don’t have to go home. You know, edit your photos and only then publish them. You can actually do it on the way and publish it right away.
Sports is a major, major domain. Thank you for mentioning Sports is definitely something that involve with volume and the editing process.
Joe: [00:35:42]
I’m assuming is both Mac and windows compatible.
Yotam and Ron: [00:35:45]
Yeah, definitely.
Joe: [00:35:47]
I got to tell you guys from my perspective, I think this is brilliant and I think it’s more brilliant now than when I first saw it.
Now that I’m even understanding, a little bit more about it. One of the things that I frequently talk to photographers about is presets. Presets became a really big deal. Presets became a way for a lazy photographer to click a button and say,” yeah, that’s kind of cool”. And then of course you have people that spent lots of money buying presets because their favorite YouTuber or their favorite photographer has this preset. And then they wind up really frustrated because their pictures don’t turn out the way that photographer did. And that’s because the presets the same, but they’re not shooting the same way. So it’s not going to turn out. There’s so much different, you know, I relate back to the film days cause unfortunately I’m that old, but you know, one of the jokes we make about the film days is, you took pictures and you sent them out and you waited seven days to find out how much you sucked.
What I love about this actually is its almost kind of like sending your pictures out. But you’re not going to suck because what this is doing is it’s learning from the dark room, work, the digital dark room work, Lightroom work that you do. And it’s doing the dredge work for you. And I think it’s important that photographers understand, depending on your style, depending on what you shoot you very well may be able to upload the images.
And when they come back, they’re good to go save them out of JPEGs and you’re all set, but in all likelihood, if you’re, if you’re a real stickler on details and you really want everything perfect, there are still probably going to be some processing, but the point is it’s saving you tremendous amounts of time.
You were talking about how long it takes to get pictures back. That is always an obstacle as photographers. I’ve never met the photographer, especially not professional photographer that bought a camera for the very first time, because they wanted to sit in front of Photoshop.
I’ve never met that photographer. That’s not why we get hooked on photography and myself, I enjoy the creative process behind processing my images, but still it’s. It’s a drudge and then God forbid, maybe the shoot wasn’t quite what you were hoping, it fell a little short, well then that set of processing is just painful to do. So to me, this is almost kind of like having a photo lab to send my stuff out to, but it’s doing everything the way that I do it, which I got to give you guys a ton of credit. I think that’s brilliant.
Yotam and Ron: [00:38:07]
Thank you so much. Thank you, Joe, and I think that we always say that you work really how to create your own style. You worked hard, like hours on hours to create your own style. You, you sit in a darkroom and you thought about everything and this is the opportunity to capture your style to make sure that is always there for you, that you won’t have. Then you actually create an asset that you can say, this is my style. There is no one else with my style. I’m the only person with that style. And here it is, and here’s your profile. And that’s what we hope that everyone will feel when they will get their profile and understand the value engineering.
DJ: [00:38:46]
Do you know that you can have Joe as your personal photography mentor? I’m talking about direct access to ask him questions and get advice. You can also attend weekly video meetups for members to share and help each other with Joe’s guidance. Be sure to check out the link of the show notes.
Joe: [00:39:02]
People are always worried about security and things like that. So they’re uploading all their images to your cloud. I’m assuming that there are, shall we say safety precautions taken in terms of, after you basically build your AI are you still storing the images or basically just storing the data. How does some of that behind the scenes stuff work?
Yotam and Ron: [00:39:23]
The only use we do with the data is for building your profile, this profile the way we see it is yours, and we can not use it for any other things. So we cannot, you know, sell it to anyone else. No one can use your profile without your consent. Unless of course you become one of our Talents and then you actually get some revenue out of it. So the way we see it is that it’s your IP. It’s only yours to use. And of course we store all the data on highly secured servers. We care a lot about privacy, about security. So, you know, I can reassure that we take care of this part very seriously.
Joe: [00:40:01]
I’m like a kid in the candy shop with this kind of stuff. Cause back in the film days, we never could have imagined that here’s a company that’s in Tel Aviv, Israel that can service the world and do it like that. It’s just, it’s amazing. Technology is so cool. It really is.
Yotam and Ron: [00:40:17]
I agree. Everything today just, just going back to your comment about Tel Aviv and the world. So everything is so connected today. You know, we work on servers from the U.S. Or from Europe, all depending on regulation and where the users at.
So it’s all so connected, everything happens so fast. It’s amazing. And we’re also kind of old already. So we remember, you know, all days I was also taking pictures with film, so I really know how to value the way that we do things now, and it’s really, I’m still amazed, and we are learning. This is important for me to say, like, we will never think that we know everything, and we, we have a learning, and we want to build the best product that actually will bring value.
To everyone, we use it value is a very critical thing. So this is why actually, you know, Yotam, I reached out to Joe and mentioning him, you know, Joe, I just wanted to learn from your experience. Just give me your thoughts about what we do, you know, the best Joe, answer me and just say, and Joe, thank you for this and just share, share your thoughts and your perspective.
And then we said, let’s do a recording and, and this is part of our journey. So our journey is. We build a product from the feedback that we get. We want to make sure that we keep on doing a good job. So please keep on filling us with feedback, ideas, thoughts needs concerns everything. This is, this is why we hear from,
Joe: [00:41:44]
I definitely will do that. And believe me with my community and followers. I mean, we get lots of input in that sense. I do have one last question for you and you may not be able to give me a lot of information about this and that’s completely okay.
I understand. Cause there’s business aspects, but if we go five years down the road, In fact, we’ll make this like the classic interview question, except it’s for ImagenAI not you specifically. Okay. Where do you see? ImagenAI in five years, if you could dream what are going to be the big differences, what are you guys hoping to accomplish with it?
Yotam and Ron: [00:42:17]
Yeah. So that’s a really big question for, for a startup, you know, to imagine five years ahead, because every day, you know, so many things happen in one day. So five years is like dog years is seven years for one year. So for a startup it’s like it turned into five years. Basically. We see, uh, ImagenAI technology inside of your camera.
So you can actually take pictures and get them edited with your style right away. You could also, I guess, call them in your cameras. So all you have to do is just, you know, do the things that you love, which is shooting and be present at the place that you’re shooting. And you don’t need to worry about anything else.
[Any post-production you just need to shoot and do things that you love, and we will automatically do the rest for you. Other than that, we hope to be part of any post-processing, any post-production of any professional editing.Joe: [00:43:14]
It’s a very fair argument that you guys are already way ahead of the curve with this type of technology. Obviously there’s a lot of other AI’s out there in software that are processing photos, but they are kind of auto and this is by no means auto, which I love. I think there is tremendous value to be had in using AI for culling. And certainly there’s some software out there doing it and, you know, Google and Facebook, they have things where they can identify things in pictures, but I mean to really kind of dumb it down.
As a people photographer, a portrait photographer. I am a heavy shooter, especially if I’m not in the studio. If I’m shooting on location or in natural light settings, I’m a very heavy shooter because I am going to. Essentially manipulate my subjects emotionally and push them. I want to create a moment then also when that moment’s happening, I’m going to shoot every second of that moment.
I want to make sure that I’m going to get that optimal image. I want a piece of software when I do that. That I’m going to be able to imagine like a set of check boxes. Okay. Well, it’s a person, it’s just one person in the shot and I want it to be happy and energetic or whatever. And I want full face, not three-quarter face, or I want to be able to go through a set of checklists that would be appropriate for that category.
And if I’ve shot 300 frames, I want it to show me 10 and say that these are the best 10. And so my challenge for you guys, I’ve been saying that for years now, because. We kind of already have the basics of that stuff out there. Right. We even have cameras that won’t let you press the button until the person’s eyes are open or smiling.
So, so all the pieces are there. I’m waiting for somebody to put it all together, but now you guys have made me think a step further. I want all those features, but I want the software to learn from me so that it learns turns what I tend to pick one over the other. So I want it to give me the 10. But I also wanted them to take the one or two that I picked from those 10 and add that back into the database and learn from my selections.
So there, I’ve just given your next project. That’s great. I’ll look forward to that feature.
Yotam and Ron: [00:45:21]
That’s that’s an amazing idea. That’s amazing. We actually have friends in Israel, another startup who is focusing on culling. They do it like, uh, not personalized, but you know, the same culling for everyone, but that’s a really good idea.
I really like it.
Joe: [00:45:35]
I would argue aggressively that your concept of personalization with the AI is the winner. Hands down a big part of number one. I think it’s, it’s better AI. I also think just from a pure business standpoint and dealing with, with evolution, by making it a personalized AI, you are reducing a lot of the barriers to adoption from people that are control freaks.
I don’t say control freaks in a bad way. To be a great photographer, you’ve got to be a control freak. You’ve gotta be into the details of your photograph and paying attention to all those details. To be able to take a tool like that. That’s going to help with the culling, etcetera, but personalize it, have it learn, just like you’re doing with the editing to be able to learn from your style, your choices. And folks that are listening., I hope you’re really understanding that when they’re talking about learning from your choices, if you’re a person that doesn’t use the exposure slider a lot, but you tend to use highlights and shadows and then blacks to be able to really get the contrast feel on that, whatever your technique is. That’s what this software is gonna learn.
So it’s not going to just look at your picture and say, oh, we’re always going to slide the exposure slider up. If you’re never using the exposure slider, it’s going to learn that you never use it and it’s going to use tools the way you use it. So that personalization aspect I do. I think that’s truly brilliant.
I will look forward to that feature for that. I’m going to thank you for your time and say, you guys need, go get to work. I wish you the best of luck. I thank you very much for, for taking the time. And of course, please stay safe with everything that’s going there. Hopefully it is going to turn out with a peaceful resolution.
Yotam and Ron: [00:47:16]
Thank you so much, Joe, for having us. It was a pleasure. I hope we will soon fulfill your wishlist.
Joe: [00:47:22]
Pleasure is mine. Really, thank you very much.
Yotam and Ron: [00:47:24]
Thank you so much, Joe. Joe, thank you so much.
Joe: [00:47:28]
So there you have it gang, for my money this is the kind of AI that I want to see develop. It’s not comparing my images to other photographers. It’s comparing my images to me and the way that I process my own images. And then it saves me a ton of time.
Be sure that you check out their website. If you haven’t already done that. I have the link in the show notes. And you will notice after you upload your initial batch of images to build your own personal AI. They give you your first 1000 edits for free. It really is worth checking out. AI is here to stay and it is only going to get smarter and faster and better. And I’m thrilled that companies like ImagenAI and programmers like Yoav, Ron and Yotam are dedicated to technology that improves our workflow without taking the control away from our desire to create.
Be sure to visit my website, www.joeedelman.com, where you’ll find my portfolio over 300 articles and tutorials to help you improve your photography, as well ASA directory of modeling agencies and makeup artists from all 50 of the United States.
You’ll also find some great advice for models as well as the photographers that photograph them and the website serves as home base for all of my talk chat podcast episodes, as well as the last frame live.
And Hey, please be sure to sign up for my email newsletter to receive updates. Don’t worry. I never sell the list. And I only email when I have something exciting to share no spam from Joe.
I am hoping that you subscribe to my YouTube channel and that you have seen my new series called The LAST FRAME LIVE. The LAST FRAME is a one-hour live stream that happens every Wednesday evening at 6:00 PM. Eastern time in the U S each week.
The LAST FRAME focuses on a different topic. No scripts. No, razzle-dazzle no can presentations. I do my best to give you a lesson or demo or a series of tips. Based strictly on my experience. In other words, how I do it, no rules, no bullet points, no top five ways. I share my ways of doing it so that you can get an insight understanding of how another photographer works. Trust me, this is not your usual YouTube tutorial stuff. I do hope you’ll check it out.
And if you haven’t subscribed to the YouTube channel yet, please do. You can find the link to the LAST FRAME LIVE, my website, my YouTube channel, and all of my social profiles in the show notes.
And last but not least, if you are listening to the show on iTunes or any other platform that allows reviews, please do a guy, a solid and leave a few positive notes to help other photographers find out about the show.
Remember gang photography is not a competition, it is a passion. Let’s share it.
Okay folks, that’s going to do it for this episode of The TOGCHAT Photography Podcast, stay safe, have a great week. And until next time, please remember these words.
Thanks for listening to the TOGCHAT Photography Podcast. Now go pick up that camera and shoot something because your best shot it’s your next shot. So keep learning, keep thinking and keep shooting. Adios.
