Episode 57: Photoshop and Artificial Intelligence Artwork

After Dark Photography Podcast

The amount of detail modern digital cameras can capture of the night sky is AMAZING. But what exactly goes into creating nightscape images? Listen in as Kristine Richer, artist, mother, educator, and CEO takes you on a journey into the dark with your camera. As a new mom Kristine found herself without a creative outlet, gone were the laid-back weekends of chasing waterfalls and sunsets with her dog and camera. So she did what any totally sane new mom would do and stayed up all night photographing the stars instead of sleeping. Now Kristine has taught over ten thousand students how to photograph the Milky Way and has created a dedicated community of slightly crazy, night-obsessed photographers just like her. In the After Dark Photography podcast Kristine brings together the artistic right brain and technical left brain by exploring creativity, art, and inspiration in photography, as well as the technique, gear, and strategy necessary to elevate your craft and get started in night photography. Step into the dark with her and find a world filled with awe and wonder just waiting for your camera to capture it.

All Episodes

After Dark Photography Podcast

Episode 57: Photoshop and Artificial Intelligence

October 28, 2024 • Kristine Richer • Episode 57

In today's episode, I'm diving deep into a topic that's been coming up constantly in my photography communities - artificial intelligence and its role in night photography. Whether you're excited about AI's potential or concerned about its impact on our craft, I'll help you understand what's really happening with AI in our Photoshop workflows and why I believe it won't replace the magic of capturing the night sky.

Key Takeaways:

Let's Talk About AI in Photoshop

I'll explain when you can stick with RAW editing and when you need Photoshop
We'll explore the difference between those flashy generative AI tools and the helpful AI features already in our workflows
I'll share some of my favorite time-saving AI tools like Select Sky (with a cool trick for reflections!)
You'll learn how AI is making our selection and masking work so much faster

Why AI Won't Replace Night Photographers (Yet!)

The truth about AI's struggles with accurate star patterns
Why local conditions like light pollution and atmospheric effects matter
How seasonal changes and latitude affect our night sky shots
The importance of maintaining astronomical accuracy in our edits

Navigating the Ethics of AI

My thoughts on AI using our images for training
How to balance sharing our work while protecting our creative rights
Why we need better transparency from companies
The importance of staying flexible as technology evolves

Where I Think We're Heading

Why I believe our core workflow won't disappear
How AI will complement (not replace) our existing skills
The exciting potential for new creative tools
Ways AI might actually give us more time to shoot

The Human Touch in Photography

Why being in the field can't be replicated by AI
The importance of sharing our complete creative journey
How we connect with our audience beyond just the final image
What makes our role as photographers truly special

What You'll Get From This Episode: I'm sharing my real-world perspective on AI as someone who's been teaching Photoshop since 2008. You'll learn how to think about AI tools in your workflow, understand what they can (and can't) do for your night photography, and feel more confident about embracing helpful AI features while maintaining your artistic integrity. Whether you're worried about AI taking over or just curious about how to use these new tools effectively, this episode will help you navigate the changing landscape of photography while staying true to your creative vision.

I've aimed to give you practical insights while exploring the bigger questions about AI's role in our photographic future. Most importantly, I hope this episode helps you feel excited about the possibilities while understanding why your unique perspective and experience as a photographer will always be valuable.

Is artificial intelligence coming for your night sky photos? Questions about AI, how it impacts us as photographers. These are ones that are coming up all the time inside of my communities. And today's episode is about Photoshop and AI and it's where we're going to explore Photoshop's role in Milky Way photography. So we're going to cover traditional editing workflows, the impact and limitations of the new AI tools, ethical considerations around using AI in night photography, and really just looking at some common concerns that as Milky Way photographers, night photographers, astrophotographers, we have around using AI in our workflow.

Hi, I'm Kristine Richer, an artist and mentor to photographers around the world. Consider me your interstellar guide on the path to being a better Nightscape photographer. In this podcast, we will bring together our artistic right brain and technical left brain by exploring creativity, art and inspiration in photography, as well as diving into technique, gear and strategy necessary to elevate your craft and photographic practice. I am so happy to be a part of your Milky Way journey.

This is the After Dark Photography podcast. Hello, welcome. It's lovely to have you back here on the podcast with me today is, yes, Photoshop and AI. Now, I am not going to be using our episode today to dive off the deep end into AI in general, AI within the creative industries. All of that we could have like a 10 part episode on that today specifically is about AI and Milky Way photography from the perspective of us editing.

So using Photoshop to edit our images. So we're going to start today's episode with a little bit of a foundation because I don't want to just jump into. Here are the new things that AI lets us do. If we're at a point where it's like, well, we don't actually yet know, we don't necessarily know how we edit our images or we're just starting out. And I will just give a quick side note here that if you want more of an in depth look at how do we edit our images, what is the thought process behind the editing and then what is the actual process inside of using, let's say Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw?

For that, I do have two other episodes on the podcast. So if you go back to episode 19 and episode 20, they are a part one and a part two episode where I talk about editing our night images. So highly recommend you listen to those. We're going to start with our foundations here in today's episode, but I do go significantly more in depth into those, into the actual editing process there.

So let's just start at the base here. The foundation of why we use Photoshop for Milky Way photography. We don't always. So that's the first thing is that RAW images, just RAW files, single straight out of camera, RAW file, single. Milky Way doesn't necessarily need to go into Photoshop anymore. It might depending on what we're doing with it, depending on how intricate the touch up work is that we're doing.

But for a lot of our images we can do them right inside of Lightroom or Adobe Camera raw. I personally use Adobe Camera raw. But look, they're, they're the same. They actually have the same processing engine. So there's nothing different between them. If you have taken one single photo of the Milky Way and you don't need to do any intricate selections and masking, you can probably do everything you need right inside of that RAW editing software.

It's when we get to more complex edits. So potentially wanting to get rid of just a certain part in the image. I had a recent Aurora image and it was taken near a dam and so there's some stuff in the water that's part of the dam and it just like does not look good. So I had to take that out. Camera RAW Lightroom just not going to do it, not going to cut it.

If we are taking multiple images for any reason. So if we are doing a blend of any type, if we are light painting with multiple frames, anything like that, once you get to more than one single file, we're going in to Photoshop and we're going to be using Photoshop. So this is the base level foundations of editing single file. You can do that in RAW multiple images. Now we're looking at going in to Photoshop.

We always start with editing our RAW files in the RAW editor. Even if you're going to be bringing them into Photoshop and we're doing our base level adjustments to our files. So our white balance, first and foremost, always get your white balance correct from the RAW file. Don't try and do it in Photoshop. You don't have access to the data anymore. We are also going to be looking at things like our exposure level and contrast.

That is always going to be something that we do inside of Lightroom and Adobe or Adobe Camera rom. When we get into Photoshop, Photoshop lets us take multiple files and blend them together using our layers and then creating selections and masks. Photoshop also lets us do more advanced techniques like if we want to reduce light pollution, if we want to reduce a specific color cast in A specific area of the image.

If we want to remove things like weird things in the water from a dam, lots of very specific things that we can do. We can do things like going in and reducing the size of the stars so we get more of the color in the sky. Lots and lots of options for what we can do inside of Photoshop. And if you want to hear me wax poetic on that, as I'm recording this live, we will be going in into my free Photoshop training that's coming up.

And I do that generally in the fall every year. So if you're listening to this in off season, there should be a waitlist link in the, in the show notes and you can put your name on there and get emailed when it goes live. But generally I do it every October or November of the year. So that's where I. If you, if you really want to hear me talk about this and see more examples and everything in detail, I can do that in there for you.

That's our base level. That's what we're doing for all of our images. Depending on how we shot them, there's always going to be a process of figuring out what exactly do I want to see in this image. How am I going to then use the tools that I have to edit that? When we are now looking at AI and Photoshop together, what AI exists inside Photoshop? What am I actively using inside Photoshop?

What things are AI that I might not know are AI? Photoshop started implementing AI a couple years ago, really in more mainstream tools that we would know about. Now there's more and more that exists. If we were to go to Photoshop's website, there's actually, well, Adobe's website, there is a list of all of the things that are using AI features inside of Photoshop and all of the other Adobe suite.

So if I go and look at this list, so I have it up on my screen here, I see we have generative fill, generative expand, generate similar and generate workspace. Now when I'm recording this, the generate workspaces, beta and generative background. Anything that is generative. Generative AI means that the AI is pulling from a trained database and we're going to talk more on that and some of the ethics around that later.

What I will say is for most of our actual workflow inside of Photoshop, we're not going to be using really much, if any of these generative capacities. We are instead going to be using things that help us alter the pixels that exist in our file as opposed to generating something new. So the generative features are pulling from all of that database that has been trained through Adobe and that they're obviously like, keep on training.

You know, it's an ongoing thing. It's not like, oh, this is not one and done. There is also, however, AI that has been trained and then works with what exists in your image in a more sort of in a more straightforward way. So we have other tools that Photoshop has listed here, like the Spot Healing brush tool. They have the Content Aware fill, they have the distraction removal in the remove tool.

So. Or you could just look at using the actual remove tool. They also have some of their selection tools. So you'll see that Photoshop lists Sky replacement as an AI. But what you might not realize is that the sky selection, which is a part of their sky replacement whole process, that sky selection is also based off of artificial intelligence. You can trick the sky selection. So here's a.

Here's a little hack for anyone who's used sky select in Photoshop. It does a fantastic job with Milky Way images. When we are trying to select that sky and isolate just the sky, if we're blending together, let's say a sky image and a foreground image. But what is a little bit frustrating sometimes is if, let's say you have a reflection, select sky will select the sky very nicely for you, but it will not select the reflection of the sky unless you rotate the image 180 degrees.

Then do select sky again. Now, what's going to happen more often than not, as long as you don't have something in the foreground interrupting your reflection, you are going to hit select sky and it's going to select the reflection as the sky. Why is it doing that? Because it has artificial intelligence in it and it knows that the sky is going to be the thing that is at the top of the frame.

So now we just rotated the frame. Now it's believing that that reflection is our sky. So there are a lot of tools and processes that exist inside Photoshop now that are inherently using AI. And one of the reasons that I really want to bring this up at the start is that a lot of times a lot of people inside the creative industry are going to talk about AI like it's some evil overlord coming to get us.

And while I am not someone who makes any assumptions or predictions about the future, I can tell you that the state of AI now is not that. And there are actually a lot of things that are crazy, crazy useful to us as photographers. And this is just One really small example of something that has sped up my workflow by just so. So much. Like, I can't give you a measurable outcome of the amount of time that I have saved by the select sky command.

By having that command now inside of Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom, having the masking feature inside of there, so much time has been saved. So this idea of the tools and the things that exist inside of Photoshop as AI, oftentimes, if we just like sum this up, oftentimes what we hear about with AI is this generative, like creating something from nothing. And of course, it's not creating it from nothing, it's creating it from all of its training data.

But we also have tools that are based off of artificial intelligence that are looking for patterns when we, if we want to go down a whole rabbit hole in AI. AI is basically pattern recognition at this point now, it is exceptionally advanced pattern recognition, but it's still pattern recognition. And many of the tools that we're using, that is the basis for how they're working and how they are allowing us to edit our files more quickly.

So when we look at this idea of using AI in Photoshop, when I say I like AI and I will, I quite like AI, I think AI is a fantastic tool. I am looking at AI inside of the tools, inside of the presets, the processes that exist to help me edit my current work. I am not generally looking at AI in terms of the generative AI, though sometimes it's fun.

Like if I want to make a cat that is flying a plane dressed up as a flight attendant or as a pilot or whatever, you know, you could say dressed up as a. As an octopus, actually. That would be pretty cute, wouldn't it? Like a cat with multiple octopus. Arms, legs, octopi, arms, legs. Anyways, I could do that using generative AI and that would be kind of fun.

But that's not what I'm talking about from a practical standpoint of using it as a photographer. So when we are thinking about Photoshop and AI, really what we're thinking about is the ability for Photoshop to have tools within it that make our workflow go more quickly. When it comes down to it though, most of what I do in Photoshop, it's still the same way that I use Photoshop over a decade ago.

You know, I started teaching Photoshop in 2008, and the way that I taught my workflow in Photoshop in 2008, it is the same way I teach my workflow now. And that's not Because I'm outdated. It's not because I'm lazy or outdated and haven't done any work on it. It's because it's still the same process. So the ability to edit inside of Photoshop, to bring our images in, to bring them together, to use selections, to go into a very specific part of the image, all of that, it's the same, exact same workflow today.

It just is a little bit upgraded with some of the tools that make our lives a little bit easier in very specific instances. And I think the long and short of Photoshop AI, should I use it, Should I not all of these things. I think it comes down to anything in life, any tool, it can, anything can be used for good or bad. Anything can be taken by the person who's using it and have their intentions put onto it.

And AI, outside of this context of what we're doing in Photoshop, AI can do a lot of really, really amazing things. And if someone who has really poor intentions is using that, they can use it in a way that's really kind of crappy. It's going to be the same, you know. And I often think of the, you know, AI is the shift, like the Internet was, and all those conversations around when the Internet started.

Now we have all these conversations around AI starting, and I feel like the two of them, they're obviously not the same thing at all. But the shift and the impact, I think, is very similar if we kind of zoom out and look at the forest for the trees. So that takes me into the next part, which is thinking around how AI is being created inside of Photoshop, how we're actually using it.

And this is where I want to preface by saying I'm not some guru with AI. Do I try and keep up on it? Yes, because I don't want to fall behind and not know what's going on in the world. But. But on the same token, I am not spending hours and hours and hours reading into everything that exists on it, because I don't necessarily think that's the best use of my time.

And my brain is not. Doesn't have the data in it already to make that something useful. I am not a data analyst. I am not on the cutting edge of all of this. So I say that as a disclaimer and as a, you know, take this from. Not with a grain of salt, but take this from the perspective of someone who is invested in this and interested in this, but I am certainly not a leading expert on this.

So probably I would say the. The Biggest thing that comes to mind when we're thinking about photographers and we're thinking about using Photoshop and how the AI exists within Photoshop or just AI in general, as creative people, as image creators, the biggest issue that comes up is copyright and intellectual property. It's where is the data coming from that is being used to train the AI systems? And the reality is it's the images that exist out there.

How are they exactly being trained? Where are all of those images coming from? Well, my guess is that they're not all coming from the public domain. I have read multiple articles on this and I couldn't tell you one way or another actually where it's all coming from. I think personally, when we put our work out into the world and it exists out in the world, that there are going to be people, there are going to be systems, there are going to be companies that are going to take our work and use it.

I think it's just the base level of we have created something and we have put it out there, it is now going to be a source for someone else. Do I think it should be a direct source that someone copies? Specifically? No. Do I like the idea of someone being able to take everything that I have ever posted and created, feeding that pixel data into an AI engine and saying creating generative work based off of that?

No, I don't like that. However, as someone who creates, publishes, puts my work out there, I have to know that that's a possibility and part of existing within such a connected world, Existing within systems and opportunities that come from being on the Internet, using AI, social media, all of these things, they're really cool that connect us to people we've never met before. You know, you and I very likely have not actually met before in person though it'd be really cool if we can one day.

It's all of that opportunity also comes at a cost. It comes at a risk and we don't get both. You can't, you know, what is it? Have your cake and eat it too. Although I like to think that I can eat my cake if I have it, but maybe have your cake, eat it and then not get the calories from eating cake consistently. Maybe that's what we should actually be using as the saying we're going to take the risk that comes with creating and sharing.

I will say that I don't think it's a huge risk. To me, so much of creating work is also comes from who I am, comes from my experience and just the pixel data that I have so the actual image that I have created, the ones and zeros that are translated and shown to us as pixels on our screen, that is not an accurate representation of everything that I am.

And then if you even go the next step, and maybe you would take the way that I talk about my work and input that it's still not all of who I am, there's no point at which I am sharing everything about myself. Am I trying to share a lot in what I is what I'm sharing, trying to be very authentic and genuine to who I am? Yes, absolutely.

But it's never going to be all of me. And so when we look at this idea of the work and having the work being quote, unquote stolen by AI really just used to train AI, I see it more so as my work is contributing to more of a global consciousness around this. And really, I think it's always doing that now. It's just, you know, AI is kind of like on steroids to do that.

We're always influenced by things that we come across. So we are influenced by magazines, we read books, we read articles on the Internet, the, you know, the TikTok account full of cute cat videos that we watched. We're influenced by any type of media that we see that someone else has created. And there is a very good chance that we will create something that is iterative of what someone else has created merely by the fact that we have experienced it.

So that is always happening. It's not happening on the scale that it happens with AI models being trained, but is still something that is happening as creatives in our world every single day. And so if I am going to be okay with my work inspiring individuals who see it, there's a part of me that is also okay with it feeding something inside of AI training. Do I think that companies should be transparent around how they do things?

Yes. Do I think that there should be like legislation at a federal level? Yes. Do I think that any of that exists right now in a way that I don't want to say is coherent? I want to say acceptable potentially. I don't, I don't think we're at a point where the systems that govern us have caught up with, with AI, it kind of feels a little bit right now like the wild, wild west to a degree.

Maybe not quite as, as gunslinging, but, you know, people are at least walking around with their guns on their hips and I think that will change. I really feel that we are in a state of flux still and that we're going to be in that state of flux for a while. And I'm sure there's people who can talk on this in a much more eloquent way than I can.

But at this point, I think we need to have our own ideas around what we're okay with. And we have to do that based off of. Not based off of a, I hate to say it, but like a scarcity or a lack mindset. Not based off of a, you know, I'm. I don't want to be a part of this. I don't want them taking what I've created. I don't want my work training things, not out of this fear that someone else is going to be able to very easily do what I've taken a long time to do.

I would rather us be looking at the ethics and the thought process of. I believe that this is what's important about the work that I'm creating and these things within AI can help me to do it. And I'm not giving a specific here because this is so different for every single person, everyone. It's going to be. Have variations and shades of gray. But if we can stop and really identify that what is important to me and what I'm creating, how am I okay with this new tool that is AI helping me and also using what I've created?

Because when it uses what I've created, it will help someone else. The answer to that is going to be, well, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is going to be to that. I think that paying attention to the question is probably the best we can do right now. Honestly, I think when you're so in something and something is so volatile and so flexible and changing day to day that holding on to the question and knowing that potentially we don't have the answer is the best place to be if we.

I know I'm going on a little bit of a tangent. I apologize. But it's just, this is what I feel like I need to say. If we get very rigid in our beliefs when the actual technology, the actual development is changing so rapidly, then we are going to fall behind. So the biggest thing, if I'm. If I'm going to like put together this whole, like ethics and the copyright, the intellectual property, this whole AI conversation, the biggest thing to me would be holding on to that question and constantly reevaluating it.

And two, you know, the other part to this is maybe you do decide this is something you're really passionate about, this is something that you want to pay attention to the legislation that exists. The way that companies are doing this, if that's you, that's great, because we need people who do that. We need people who are going to be the whistleblowers on the industry who are going to be paying attention to this.

And I think for some people, they will have the brain to do that and to keep up with that. And for others, like myself, I'm going to do my best to listen to what those people are saying and keep that as part of this question in my mind. That's ongoing. So the next part is thinking about AI in photography and Photoshop specific again to night photography. So we've talked a little bit about.

Here's the foundation of editing. Here is some of the tools, the differences in the generative versus working with our images. AI talking about just this conversation about AI in general. But now I want to bring it back to why I would say AI itself isn't going to replace us as Milky Way photographers. Not yet, at least. I don't know. Let's come back to this in a year and we'll see.

Maybe I'll. Maybe I'll have something different to say at that point, but not yet. The very first reason I will say why is because of star accuracy issues. So AI does not understand exactly what the sky should look like. AI is built off of pattern recognition and there are a lot of patterns in the stars. But when we are looking at generative AI or we're looking at even just AI tools that allow us to fix some things within our images, it's still going to be looking at pattern recognition.

And these tools, especially in Photoshop, they are not built yet. I don't know this. This absolutely 100% could exist. But at the moment we're niche enough that it does not yet exist. They're not built to create pixels that are based off of the actual stars that exist in the sky. So if you see these AI generated images of Milky Way photography of aurora, I see lots of like northern lights, the most amazing northern lights.

And it's like, yeah, that's an AI generated image. Even the Milky Way, it's not correct. It's just not correct. And this is a conversation I have around Photoshop in general as astrophotographers, Milky Way photographers, people photograph the night sky, whatever you want to call us, okay? Got lots, we've got lots of names, whichever one you want. We have to pay attention to the way that we edit our sky and our images.

If this is something we care about, if we care about having correctness and representing the universe as we see it with accuracy. Because we can't just clone one part of the sky over another part of the sky. We're cloning over stars, planets. Like we're cloning over an insane amount of things that are huge, that are, that are, are so big and completely incorrect. If we do it that way, if we take it and we clone this one spot over onto another spot, it's like, well, I see that star pattern or, you know, I can see exactly what those stars are and they don't exist in those two places in the sky.

Am I going to be the one? Me, myself, personally. Is Christine going to come at you for this? No, probably not, because I'm not an astronomer. Will an astronomer potentially come at you for this? Yes, yes, they might. Depending on how much your images get circulated and shown online. People know what the night sky looks like. It does not change in any crazy measurable amount in our images.

It's the same. Is it actually the same? No, no. There's lots of things that are changing. I just saw a very interesting post the other night and it was showing how the moons were shifting around a planet and how that showed up in multiple different images. But for the most part, the structure and the way that we see in the way that we photograph it is not going to be different.

It is going to be the same night in and night out when we are looking at the same area of the sky. AI just doesn't do that. It does not recreate it correctly. So there is a technical correct and AI will not get that technical correct. The other thing as well is then of course we can go down this route of. I've just been saying it's the same, it's the same.

This guy's the same. I know. I just. If I did like a word count, how many times did I say that it's going to be a lot. But it also shifts and changes. It shifts and changes depending on your latitude, depending on the time of year, depending on the moon cycle. There's lots of nuance to photographing the night sky that we know as having the experience of being out there.

I mean, let's just even like talk about light pollution. What about the light pollution in different areas? There's so much nuance to a well crafted Milky Way photo and there's so many variables that can change the way that that image looks. To have that be recreated through AI at this point, it's just not there. And you could probably honestly make this, you could make this argument for many other genres of photography as well.

That's just not what we're here for. When we get into the nuance level of things, the things that we know about the genre because we live and breathe it. Or if you're like, well, I don't, maybe I don't quite just live and breathe it. Maybe I like go and take puffs of it on the weekend, sorry, this is a family friendly one podcast. But maybe, you know, we're more of a.

I only go out and shoot every once in a while. You still are going to be at the point where you understand the nuances. You know what it's like, like to go out on a night where, you know, it's just the sky is kind of murky, it's not super nice. And that's because of the atmospheric conditions. You know what it's like to go out and have lots of different light pollution, to have, you know, that cabin nearby and the lights blaring onto your scene and the way that that goes into the sky.

These are things that in general are not going to be accurate when it comes to AI. Also, these are things that the people who are using AI to create. So this is another really, really important thing. So there's the first part that I've just been talking about is like AI's actual ability to recreate the images that we are capturing out at night. And it's not to the point yet where it's going to replace us, but then we're also looking at the people who are generating these images.

So the people who are using the tools that exist in AI, whatever generative AI that they're using, whether using Dall E or even inside of Photoshop, there are generative things that exist, their ability to prompt AI. And this is if you're new to the world of AI. Generally when you are working with it, you are creating a text based prompt. Some of those prompts now and the ability to prompt are changing to not just be text based, but for the most part that's what exists.

People's ability to create a prompt, to give an image that we could create while we were out on location. It's probably not there yet. If someone doesn't have the experience of spending a lot of time out at night under the stars. If someone doesn't have the experience of editing those images, of knowing what they look like, they're not going to have the experience to prompt correctly with enough information to create a prompt that's actually going to get a really great Image, there's a lot of specificity that exists inside prompting that you're just not going to get unless you know more about it or you know how to prompt to get more information about it.

So really, I'm going to say at this point, you know, AI is not going to replace what we're doing as Milky Way photographers. And another really big kind of part of why I don't think AI is going to completely replace us is also thinking about us as the artist. And I've touched on this already, so I'm not going to go crazy far down this rabbit hole. But when we are sitting at our computer and putting a prompt in to say, beautiful Milky Way rising up over a fjord, that is a very different experience than actually going and being in a location and getting there, let's say, before nightfall and staying there.

As the sun goes down, as we start to hear the birds getting quiet, the insects getting quiet, as we start to see the first stars coming out at night, as our senses become more attuned to being out at night, less of our vision is being used. More of our other senses are coming alive. As we're setting up our camera, as we're choosing the perspective that we want with our camera, as we're going through the technical considerations of how are we going to actually shoot the image, how are we going to put it together?

All of that is very difficult to recreate. And part of this is that I very, very much believe as photographers, we're not just putting an image up there for people to see. We're creating a visual experience to communicate with people. And the image is a huge part of that. But it's not the only part of it. The way that we talk about our work, the way that we show our work, even the way that we utilize social media to show behind the scenes.

You know, we could talk a lot about how annoying it is that we can't just go on Instagram and just post an image anymore. But, you know, what's actually really cool is that I can create a reel that has fast transitions, that has small video snippets that will let people have this feeling and this experience of being with me to create the image, and then they get to see the final image, the final representation of that experience.

How much more connection do they have to that? A lot more. So we have, yes, just a final straight image that we can print, put up on our wall post on social media, but we also have so much more that goes into it, and we get to, as photographers, as artists, we get to bring people into that world. And that is not something that AI is going to do well yet.

Can it exist? Can it be done? Yes, absolutely. Pretty much anything can be done at this point. Except for getting a Milky Way that looks correct in the night sky, but not easily and not to the point that people are really going to connect. Could someone potentially prompt AI, get videos made that look like behind the scenes, put all of these pieces together and then consistently have a narrative and a thought process behind it and create something that really doesn't exist at all?

And create it consistently and in a way that puts this person as an artist and puts the media that they're creating out there, the images, behind the scenes, videos, all of that. Could they do that never having gone outside and taken a photo? Yes, they could do I think that it is accessible enough for most individuals to do that? No, absolutely not. Do I think it's even at a point where it would make any sense, like why would someone want to do that at this point?

It's not that lucrative, you know, it's really not. We're not out here making gads and gads of money off of doing this. Can people get brand sponsorships and deals and things like that if they grow a social media following really big or if they have a lot of views on YouTube and things like that? Yes, but there are a lot more ways to make a lot more money putting in that level of effort.

So I think the likelihood of someone trying to recreate being us as in an authentic way, inauthentic, of course, using AI, but in. In a more authentic way is. Is very slim. It's very slim because we go out and do this because of that connection, because of being out there. Are there going to be people who just create one off images out there that get lots of likes and views and things like that on the Internet?

Yes, absolutely. Are people going to get more and more confused around what is quote unquote real and what is artificial intelligence? Yes, they absolutely are. Are we as artists and photographers going to have to take into consideration the general public discourse around AI, around whether or not images exist? Yes. Are we going to have to defend our creations more and more? Yes, all of these things, but this is just part of it.

This is part of being a creator. This is part of interacting on a larger scale with a lot more people. So I think at the end of the day, we are not going to be replaced. We are going to have to shift in the way that we think and in the way that we Communicate, and that's always going to happen. I'm not talking to you the same way that I would have talked to my students 15 years ago.

It's different. It's shifting. So where do I see this going if we're looking forward? Well, the short answer is, heck if I know. I think I read a really great book by Neil DeGrasse Tyson and I forget what it is right now. You know what? I'm going to try and look it up right now as we're talking because it was a really, really. It was a really good book.

But he basically said, you know, when people talk about the. When they talk about predictions for the future and the things that we're. We want to. Starry Messenger. That was it. Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization. There we go. That was. Did you like my multitasking there? Hopefully it wasn't too bad. He basically said that when we are going forward and thinking about predictions for the future, that our brain is not going to make the jumps that happen in reality.

So we're going to predict in a much more linear way, but we're not going to look at these. I don't remember what he calls them. Maybe quantum jumps, you know, just complete things that change everything and allow us to be in a completely different place than we are right now. So I think anything could happen. I think we're in a pretty cool place where anything can happen. I think short term we are going to be looking at balancing the traditional ways that we've done things as photographers with the new tools that come in.

And the likelihood of things changing ridiculously dramatically are not that. That high. If we look at the history of photography, you know, going from 1839 to now, the process of it is still the same. It is still capturing light. And then it is finding a way to take that light that we have captured through an optical device, that is our lens and our camera, and then translating that into something that we can visually see that's still going to exist.

The tools that exist around the ability to capture around the way that we process those are going to change, you know, but until we get to the point where we have things like, embedded in our brains that let us experience something and then translate that experience to someone else and send it to them, I don't know, across an interconnected web or something, the actual process is going to be at its base, kind of the same.

And we are going to instead have iterative abilities on the tools and functions that allow us to go in and edit our images, to create our images. And those tools and functionalities, the reason why I don't think that they're going to be so crazy different is because they're being developed from the people who are using them. And they're being developed to make the way that we use things better, more efficient, more quick, more accurate.

But it's still based off of the things that we're already doing and just those things being improved. So we're going to see more artificial intelligence brought into programs like Photoshop. We're going to see new tools exist. We are going to see the current tools that we have becoming more accurate, becoming quicker. These are not bad things. These are things that can let us create in a way that takes maybe less time at our computer.

Also not a bad thing. Who wants to stare at their computer screen until their eyes bleed? Not me. Not me. I'm happy to spend less time editing and more time actually out shooting. More time maybe printing my images, more time taking the things that I've created and putting them into to a hole that someone can hold in their hand and put up on their wall or experience in a different way.

We are still going to be. Until there's a dramatic shift in the way images are recorded from the world, we are still going to be doing this with our basic fundamentals. The way that we put together our images, the way that we capture them, it's still all of those basic fundamentals. We still go through the steps of, okay, I'm going to capture this scene. What is the light in this scene?

What do I want to show? So then we make the decisions for that based in our camera. Maybe we get tools that help us make those decisions. Maybe there are things that are built into our camera that make it easier to do that. Then we're going to be taking those files, we're going to be bringing them onto our computer, we're going to be editing them to bring out the thing that we want to see in them.

Maybe we'll get to a point where we can do prompts that say, make it like this. And then it takes the data and creates that for us. That could happen. Then we're going to be bringing them inside of Photoshop and putting our images together again. It's the same basic process. I told you, this is 15 years ago. I was teaching Photoshop. This is how I taught it. It's still going to be the same, but some of the functionality, hopefully we'll get upgraded and we'll get quicker and smarter.

So I'm not. I don't think it's doom and gloom. I don't remember I said, I don't feel like we're at robot overlord. Overlord part. I also don't think that we are yet at a place that the way that we edit is going to be completely shifted and changed. I think we're going to be following the same fundamentals and we're going to have access to new tools that allow us to do some of those things more efficiently.

For me, that's exciting because it means that once I can bring someone through the fundamentals, once I can give someone the process of this is how we edit your raw files. This is when we go into Photoshop. These are the steps. Once we can get people through that process, then we have that kind of base core knowledge in our head. The next step becomes a lot easier when there are new tools that come out, when there are new things that are created.

It's less of a like, oh, there's so many things, or, oh, here's this new thing, and I don't know how to integrate this. I don't know how to do this. And it's like, okay, well, I actually know what my workflow is now. Now I see this new tool has come out. I'm going to try it. Okay. Does it make my current workflow shift? Does it make it. Can I improve it in some way?

And we're just going to have that ability to build off of. Off of that base and off of those foundations. So I get excited. I get excited because it just means that there are new things that I can try, there are new ways to do things. Um, I am an old dog learning new tricks all the time. And, you know, until my bones are too tired, I'm going to keep doing that.

And do I think that, as I said, things will be dramatically different? No, I don't. Not yet. But I also think it could be pretty cool when things do shift dramatically. And maybe I'll get to be alive for a point when that happens. And you know what? If it does, we are still going to be creative people. We're still going to be people who enjoy going out at night, who enjoy being out in the landscape.

And there might be really cool new ways that we can help other people have those experiences that will be really awesome. So I don't know. I don't know where we're going to go with all of this. I think AI is a really fun thing to talk about. It's a fun thing to think about how impactful it is for us now. Really If I were to look at everything we've talked about in today's episode, I think the biggest impacts are going to be tool functionality and the ability to do things quicker for us inside of our programs, especially Photoshop.

I think the conversations around the ethics, copyright, intellectual property and your usage within your work and the communication of that. So the way that we communicate that with people, or don't communicate it, the way that other people communicate it, you know, I can see practical considerations like things like what type of AI was used, and you have to list that out when you are submitting an image into a competition.

I think that, that, that level of thinking about the usage of AI and the systems and the things that are in place with it or not yet in place is something that we should just have our mind, just have it kind of in the back of our mind and to follow. And then really the very last bit, where I don't actually think AI is something for us to worry about in terms of us as artists and the work that we're creating.

Do I think there will be some things in AI that people were doing before that now becomes more obsolete? Yes, I absolutely think that there will be. And I know maybe you've seen this meme, but there's. There's a meme that exists and it's just, you know, the. I'm terrible. It's like retelling a meme is like retelling a joke. I'm terrible at doing both. But it basically talks about how, you know, they want AI to be cleaning and cooking and doing laundry.

They don't want AI to be doing all of the fun artistic things. And while AI absolutely can create very quickly a lot of artistic and creative things, I don't personally think it's going to remove the value that exists around people as creatives, especially just given the fact that the act of being creative gives so much to us as individuals, let alone the fact that we're, like, sharing it and putting it out in the world and all of that.

Do I think that there will be some things that AI can do a great job with, like data analysis, for instance? Yeah, absolutely. And I'm sure there's many other examples that people could come up with, but I don't, when I come down to it, when we get down to the end of this episode, I don't think AI is going to push us out of being creative photographers. I don't think that using Photoshop and using the AI tools within Photoshop to edit our images is cheating.

I don't think that it is. It makes our images any less authentic. And I don't think it shifts or change, changes who we are as an artist. It's just another tool. It's just another advancement. It's just another way for us to create things in the world. And there's lots of opportunities, there's lots of things that we can now do and get access to or do more quickly. And, you know, from the recording of this to whenever you're listening, there's probably been a bajillion more things.

Yes, that's my very technical term of things available to us. So I really do think that we have the ability to still be creating really, really cool things, still have that human touch as part of it, and to integrate what we're doing and to have AI be a useful part of that. So who knows, who knows what I'll come back with in six months or a year's time, but right now, that is how AI fits in to my work as a creative, how it fits into Photoshop.

I hope that today you've gotten something to think about, maybe multiple things to think about, maybe multiple things you disagree with me on. I'd be okay with that, too. The idea is to help us open up our thoughts and have hopefully, a few new ideas to chew on and to also just be excited about the opportunities that exist. So that's what I have for you today. Thank you for being here with me.

Thank you for giving me your earbuds, for hanging out with me in whatever way you have, whether you went for a hike or did some laundry, any of those things. I hope that you are feeling potentially a little bit inspired to sit at your computer and do a little bit of editing, a little bit of creating, and I look forward to chatting with you next time here on the After Dark Photography podcast.

Take care