AI Image Editing
Whenever we click a picture or a take a screenshot, or scan an existing image, the 'first look' may sometimes have some shortcomings. The image could have too much 'noise' or brightness, the resolution might be too high, or the image might require correction for say brightness, contrast, or something else altogether.
Before the advent of the "AI Image editing tools", many of these tasks were performed manually, often by professionals or trained artists who were adept with the fine aspects of image editing. Tools like Adobe Photoshop were the predominant method of editing images, though there are many more alternatives available in the free, freemium, and open source world. In the early 2000's a photo editing tool called Irfanview was immensely popular among Windows users. So was Corel Draw. In the open source world, GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) was and is a very popular and widely used image editing software. In Mac, there were options aplenty starting with the Photos app that comes with every iOS or Mac device.
Many operating systems offer a basic photo editor that comes bundled with the installation. Changing the resolution (pixel size), adding text or annotations, cropping the image, or other tasks can be performed with ease using these editing tools. For more advanced functions, most people typically turn toward the more well known image editing programs.
#Enter AI Image Editing Tools
When you click a picture with your smartphone, both android and iOs offer an "auto edit" feature that can do basic corrections to the image. The "auto edit" uses some form of AI based image editing technology at its back end. So whether we are aware of this or not, most people already are using some form of AI image editing tool these days. Most likely true for those who take pictures form their smartphones on a regular basis.
Apps like Adobe's Ps Camera (i.e. photoshop camera), or [Prisma](https://prisma-ai.com/prisma0, take this idea a notch further. They use a base image and transform it completely, to make it look like say a comicbook style, pop art or even an animated image.
I have added a few screenshots below from Fotor, a photo editing site. These screenshots are used only to illustrate the features and the options offered by AI image editing tools. I do not have an account or any affiliation with Fotor.
Earlier this year, Forbes magazine had published an interesting post titled, What is the Future of Artificial Intelligence in Photo Editing?. This post was written by Ben Meisner, the founder of Ribbet.com, an online photo editing site. This post discusses how AI imaging editing tools have helped in reducing human error, automating labour intensive and repetitive tasks (e.g. light or colour correction to an entire library of images), and thereby introducing efficiency to image editing process. The article ended with the author's views that AI image editing technology could prove to be a valuable asset to the professional artists and photographers,. However, the technology was still under development and was far from replacing professional photo editors. But with time, the acceptance and the use (I refer to it as the 'breadth' and the 'depth') will increase.
While I am not an expert in this field, I am inclined to agree with the author's observations and conclusions. Nearly one year has passed since that article was published, and we are already witnessing rapid developments in the form of new algorithms, tools, and features that have improved AI based image editing.
Below is a mini list of some sites and apps that use AI technology for image editing. This list expands the other image editing options I have mentioned earlier in this section. Fotor, Lexa, befunky. There are many other sites such as autoenhance.ai, lunapic, and Pixlr. You can find several lists online that showcase "top AI image editing tools". This post by Makeuseof has one such list.
The purpose of this section was to introduce the idea of AI image editing to you, and not really do a deep dive into this subject. I hope that the current level of detail in this segment has achieved my objective.