{"id":11470,"date":"2020-01-13T07:22:10","date_gmt":"2020-01-13T15:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/?p=11470"},"modified":"2020-01-13T15:57:14","modified_gmt":"2020-01-13T23:57:14","slug":"canon-promises-ai-assistance-for-lightroom-culls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/13\/canon-promises-ai-assistance-for-lightroom-culls\/","title":{"rendered":"Canon promises AI assistance for Lightroom culls"},"content":{"rendered":"

TL;DR<\/strong>: If this works, I\u2019ll be pleasantly shocked.<\/em><\/p>\n

I left Adobe in early 2014 part due to a mix of fear & excitement about what Google was doing with AI & photography. Normal people generally just want help selecting the best images, making them look good, and maybe<\/em> creating an album\/book\/movie from them. Accordingly,\u00a0in 2013 Google+ launched automatic filtering that attempted to show just one\u2019s best images, along with Auto Enhancement of every image & \u201cAuto Awesomes\u201d (animations, collages, etc.) derived from them. I couldn\u2019t get any of this going at Adobe, and it seemed that Google was on the march (just having bought Nik Software, too), so over I went.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately it\u2019s really\u00a0hard to know what precisely constitutes a \u201cgood\u201d image (think shifting emotional valences vs. technical qualities). For consumers one can de-dupe somewhat (showing just one or two images from a burst) and try to screen out really blurry, badly lit images. Even so, even consumers distrust this kind of filtering & always want to look behind the curtain to ensure that the computer hasn\u2019t missed something. Therefore when G+ Photos transitioned into just Google Photos, the feature was dropped & no one said boo. Automatic curation is still used to suggest things like books & albums, but as you may have seen when it\u2019s applied to your own images, results can be hit or miss.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So will pros trust such tech to help them sort through hundreds of similar images? Well\u2026 maybe? Canon\u2019s prepping a subscription-based plug-in for the job<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The plugin is powered by the Canon Computer Vision AI engine and uses technical models to select photos based on a number of criteria: sharpness, noise, exposure, contrast, closed eyes, and red eyes. These \u201ctechnical models\u201d have customizable settings to give you some ability to control the process.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here it is in action:<\/p>\n