As professional photographers, we live two lives. There’s the life we show our clients: the adventure, the creativity, the magic of capturing a perfect moment. Then there’s the other life: the one lived behind a glowing screen, surrounded by memory cards, with a cup of cold coffee and thousands of photos to cull and edit. That’s the grind.
Tools like Aftershoot came along and offered a light at the end of the tunnel. And for that, we’re grateful. But the world of AI photo tools is exploding. What started as a simple culler has evolved into a full-blown workflow race. Staying on top of the best tools is part of our job now.
Key Takeaways
- The New Standard: AI tools are no longer just about culling. The best solutions now offer an integrated workflow that includes culling, AI-powered editing, and even cloud backup.
- Two Kinds of “AI”: It’s crucial to understand the difference. Some tools use “preset-based AI,” which just applies a filter. True-learning AI, by contrast, studies your personal style to edit just like you would.
- Workflow is Everything: A culling-only tool solves one problem. An editing-only tool solves another. The best Aftershoot alternatives, like Imagen, combine both into a single, streamlined app.
- The Future is Personal: The most powerful tools, like Imagen‘s Personal AI Profile, learn from you and evolve with you, ensuring your brand and style always remain your own.
What is Aftershoot? (The Benchmark)
Before we dive into the alternatives, let’s set the benchmark. What is Aftershoot, and what does it do?
At its core, Aftershoot is an AI-powered culling application. For years, this was its main (and only) function. You’d feed it a folder of RAW photos from a shoot, and its AI would run through them. It groups duplicates, detects closed eyes, checks for blur, and tries to pick the “best” shots. It then gives you a selection of “keeper” photos that you can import directly into Lightroom Classic. This process can save hours, turning a 3,000-photo wedding cull into a much more manageable review session.
More recently, Aftershoot has added an AI editing feature. This lets you choose from a list of pre-built “AI Styles” or use their “Magic” tool to edit your photos.
How it Works
- Import: You point Aftershoot to your folder of photos.
- Cull: The AI analyzes and sorts your photos, assigning star ratings or colors.
- Review: You review its suggestions, make your final tweaks, and save the results.
- Edit (Optional): You can then apply one of their built-in AI Styles to the culled photos.
- Sync: The results (culling selections and edits) are synced back to your Lightroom Classic catalog.
Who It’s For
Aftershoot is popular with high-volume photographers, especially in the wedding and event space, who need to cut down their culling time dramatically. Its editing is a fast solution for those who aren’t overly concerned with a deeply personalized style and just need a clean, consistent look.
But what if you need more? What if you want an AI that edits exactly like you? What if you want your culling and editing in one seamless ecosystem that’s built around your brand, not someone else’s?
That’s where these alternatives come in.
The 10 Best Aftershoot Alternatives
1. Imagen
This is, in my professional opinion, the most powerful and comprehensive workflow tool on the market today. Imagen isn’t just an “alternative” to Aftershoot; it’s a completely different class of tool. It’s not just an app; it’s a post-production partner.
Where Aftershoot (and many others) offer AI styles, Imagen offers you. It’s built on the idea that your editing style is your unique brand, and AI should learn it, not replace it.
The Core: The Personal AI Profile
This is the main event. This is the feature that sets Imagen light-years apart from the competition.
It’s not a preset. It’s not a filter. A Personal AI Profile is a neural network that you train to edit photos exactly like you do.
Here’s how it works:
- You Train It: You feed Imagen at least 2,000 of your previously edited photos. These must be from a Lightroom Classic catalog, as Imagen needs to read every single slider adjustment you made.
- It Learns: The AI analyzes your edits. It learns how you handle white balance in dark churches. It sees how you treat highlights on a sunny beach. It memorizes your unique HSL (Hue, Saturation, Luminance) adjustments and how you use split toning.
- It Replicates: The result is an AI model that is you. When you send it new RAW photos, it doesn’t just slap on a filter. It analyzes each photo individually and edits it with your unique-decision-making process. The processing happens in the cloud, so it’s incredibly fast (under half a second per photo) and doesn’t slow your computer to a crawl.
The first time I got a gallery back, it was a wild experience. It was my work. My style, my preferences, my specific way of treating shadows. But I hadn’t spent 10 hours on it. I had spent 10 minutes.
What if I’m Just Starting Out? (Lite & Talent Profiles)
“But I don’t have 2,000 edited photos!” This is a common hurdle, and Imagen has two great solutions.
- Lite Personal AI Profile: This is a brilliant starting point. You just give Imagen one of your favorite Lightroom presets and answer a short survey about your preferences (e.g., “Do you like your images brighter or darker?”). In minutes, it builds a “Profile-in-training” that you can use right away.
- Talent AI Profiles: If you want a totally new look or you’re a fan of a specific pro, you can use a Talent Profile. These are Personal AI Profiles built by world-class, industry-leading photographers that you can apply to your own work. It’s a great way to experiment.
More Than Just Editing: AI Culling
This is where Imagen directly competes with Aftershoot and, in my view, wins. Imagen has its own powerful, built-in AI culling.
It does all the things you expect:
- Groups duplicates and similar shots.
- Detects blurry photos and ranks them by severity.
- Finds closed or blinking eyes.
- Uses face recognition to group by subject.
But it has one killer feature that no other tool has: Cull with Edited Previews.
Think about that. When we cull in Lightroom, we’re looking at flat, ugly, unedited RAW files. We’re trying to guess which one will look good. Imagen lets you cull photos after your Personal AI Profile has been applied. You’re no longer judging technicals; you’re judging the final image. You can make creative choices based on emotion, story, and composition, all because you’re seeing what the final product will look like. This is a massive workflow improvement.
The Full Ecosystem
This is the final piece that makes Imagen the top choice. It’s all one platform.
- AI Tools: On top of your base edit, you can add extra AI tools. Need to Crop or Straighten? Imagen‘s AI will do it based on your profile’s learned preferences. Need to apply a Subject Mask or use Smooth Skin? It’s all part of the same, single edit pass.
- Cloud Storage: While Imagen works on your projects (from Lightroom Classic catalogs), it can also back up your original RAW photos to its own cloud storage. This is a fantastic “two-birds-with-one-stone” feature.
- Fine-Tuning: This is the most critical part. Your style isn’t static, right? You change and evolve. With Imagen, after you review your AI-edited gallery in Lightroom and make a few small tweaks, you can upload those final edits back to Imagen. Your Personal AI Profile then learns from your changes. It gets smarter. It evolves with you. It never becomes outdated.
Who is Imagen For?
Imagen is for the serious professional photographer. It’s for the artist who has spent years developing a unique style and refuses to compromise on it just for the sake of speed. It’s for the studio owner who wants to scale their business but maintain perfect consistency.
If Aftershoot is a helpful assistant, Imagen is a digital clone of your creative brain.
2. FilterPixel
FilterPixel is a direct Aftershoot competitor. It’s a dedicated AI culling application.
How it Works
FilterPixel’s main goal is to get you from thousands of photos to a few hundred, before you even import them into Lightroom. It’s a pre-culler. You connect your app, import a folder, and the AI gets to work.
It analyzes your images and tags them. It’s very fast at identifying technical issues.
- Out of Focus: It’ll tag images that are clearly blurry.
- Eye Quality: It detects closed, blinking, or partially closed eyes.
- Composition: It makes a basic “good” or “bad” judgment on composition.
- Duplicates: Like all cullers, it groups similar shots.
After its analysis, it gives you a selection of “keepers.” You can review these, make adjustments, and then it provides a streamlined way to import just those keepers (and their surrounding groups, if you like) into Lightroom Classic.
The Limitation
The critique here is simple and functional. It’s just a culler.
FilterPixel does its one job quite well. But when you’re done, you’re still staring at the entire, massive bottleneck of editing those photos. It solves half the problem.
For a modern workflow, this feels like an incomplete solution. You’d have to buy FilterPixel for culling, and then another AI editor to handle the next step. Why pay for two separate apps and manage two separate workflows when a single platform like Imagen integrates both (and does the culling part with the added benefit of edited previews)?
3. Evoto AI
Evoto AI is an interesting tool, but it serves a very different purpose. It’s an AI editing app, not a culler, and it’s hyper-focused on portrait retouching.
How it Works
Evoto is a standalone desktop app where you import photos (or folders of photos) and get access to a massive list of AI-powered retouching sliders. It’s built to “perfect” images, especially portraits, at scale.
Its features are powerful for this specific need:
- AI Skin Retouching: Very advanced blemish removal, skin smoothing (that retains texture), and shine removal.
- AI Face & Body: Sliders for face-slimming, eye-enlarging, and even body reshaping.
- AI Makeup: You can digitally apply or enhance makeup.
- Backgrounds: Easy background replacement and cleanup.
It works by using its own pre-trained AI models. You apply their “portrait” style and then tweak the sliders to your liking. It can save a ton of time for headshot, school, or high-volume commercial photographers.
The Limitation
The limitation is in the name: it’s Evoto’s AI, not yours.
It doesn’t learn your style. You learn its tools. The results can be very clean and “perfect,” but they can also look generic if you’re not careful. For a wedding or lifestyle photographer who has a unique, moody, or filmic style, Evoto’s output might feel too “plastic” or “digital.”
It’s a powerful retouching tool, but it’s not a styling tool. It doesn’t compete with the Personal AI Profile from Imagen, which is designed to learn your unique color grading and artistic flair. Evoto solves a technical problem (retouching) very well, but it doesn’t solve the problem of scaling your artistic brand.
4. Fhotosonic
Fhotosonic has gained some traction as an AI-powered editor, often positioned as a tool that applies “AI presets.”
How it Works
Fhotosonic’s workflow is based on matching your photo to a style. You upload your RAW or JPEG photo, and their AI analyzes the content. It then suggests a few of its own “intelligent presets” that it thinks will look good.
Think of it as a “smarter preset” system. Instead of you scrolling through your whole preset library, Fhotosonic’s AI suggests a starting point. It’s a step up from a “dumb” preset because it’s at least trying to match the style to the photo.
The Limitation
This is a classic example of “AI” being used as a marketing term for what is, at its heart, a more advanced preset-matching system.
It does not learn you. It does not analyze your past work. It does not create a unique profile based on your creative decisions. It simply matches your photo to a style that it already knows.
This is fundamentally different from Imagen‘s Personal AI Profile. Imagen creates your style. Fhotosonic applies its style. For a professional, that’s a world of difference. It’s a fine tool for a hobbyist, but it doesn’t offer the brand control a professional needs.
5. Luminar Neo
Luminar Neo, by Skylum, is a very popular and powerful standalone editor and plugin. It’s not a direct Aftershoot competitor in workflow, but its use of AI tools puts it in the conversation.
How it Works
Luminar is a full-featured editor designed to compete with Lightroom. Its claim to fame is its huge library of “AI” tools that are very easy to use and produce dramatic results.
- Sky AI: The famous one-click sky replacement.
- Relight AI: Lets you change the lighting of a scene after the shot.
- Portrait Bokeh AI: Artificially creates a shallow depth of field.
- Mask AI: Automatically detects and masks subjects, skies, people, etc.
These tools are incredibly impressive, especially for single images. They let you do complex, “Photoshop-level” edits with a single slider.
The Limitation
Luminar is an editing suite, not a workflow automation tool.
Its AI is about giving you more powerful sliders to push. It’s not about taking the work off your plate. You are still the one opening every single photo (or small batches) and making creative decisions.
It is absolutely not built to batch-process a 3,000-photo wedding catalog with a single click and have it match your unique style. It doesn’t learn from you. It gives you its tools. It’s a fantastic tool for a landscape or portrait artist who wants to perfect a single image, but it doesn’t solve the high-volume workflow problem for a wedding or event photographer.
6. Topaz Labs
Topaz Labs is another company that lives in this “AI” space, but like Luminar, it serves a very specific, technical purpose.
How it Works
Topaz makes a suite of AI-powered utilities, chiefly: Sharpen AI, Denoise AI, and Gigapixel AI. They are designed to be “rescue” tools.
- Sharpen AI: Uses AI to fix motion blur and soft-focus shots in a way that traditional sharpening can’t.
- Denoise AI: Is one of the best tools on the market for cleaning up high-ISO noise.
- Gigapixel AI: Uses AI to “intelligently” upscale and enlarge photos for large prints.
These tools are very good at what they do. I’ve used them myself to save a “must-have” shot that was slightly blurry.
The Limitation
This is not an Aftershoot alternative. It’s a supplementary tool.
You would never run your entire wedding gallery through Topaz Sharpen AI. It’s not a culler. It’s not a creative stylist. It’s a technical problem-solver. It’s a tool you use on 1% of your photos, not 100%.
It’s a valuable part of a pro’s toolkit, but it doesn’t compete with workflow platforms like Aftershoot or Imagen at all.
7. DxO PhotoLab
DxO PhotoLab is a high-end, professional-grade RAW processor, much like Lightroom or Capture One.
How it Works
DxO’s claim to fame is its “AI-driven” corrections. It has two main features that are truly best-in-class:
- DeepPRIME: Many photographers (myself included) consider this to be the single best AI-powered noise reduction available. It’s simply incredible.
- Optical Corrections: DxO has spent decades building a database of thousands of camera and lens combinations. When you open a RAW file, it automatically identifies your gear and applies custom, lab-tested corrections for lens distortion, vignetting, and chromatic aberration.
The Limitation
It’s a manual editor. A brilliant one, but manual all the same.
Its AI is used for technical correction, not creative automation. It doesn’t cull for you. It doesn’t learn your color-grading style. It gives you the cleanest, most technically-perfect RAW file possible, and then says, “Okay, now it’s your turn to do all the creative work.”
It’s a fantastic piece of software, but it’s not a workflow automation tool. In fact, it adds a step to your workflow (e.g., process in DxO, then edit in Lightroom).
8. ON1 Photo RAW
ON1 Photo RAW is another all-in-one editor, a direct competitor to the Adobe/Luminar/Capture One trifecta.
How it Works
It’s a standalone editor and plugin that tries to do everything. It has its own file browser, layers, effects, and, of course, AI tools.
- AI Auto: This is their “better auto button.” It analyzes the photo and applies a “good” starting edit.
- AI Match: This attempts to match the look of the JPEG preview from the back of your camera.
- Portrait AI: Like Luminar and Evoto, it finds faces and gives you sliders for skin, eyes, and mouth.
The Limitation
This is a recurring theme. The “AI” in these all-in-one editors is just a “smarter auto button.” It’s not a learning model.
ON1’s AI Auto feature doesn’t know you. It doesn’t know your brand. It’s applying a generic “good-looking” edit that was trained by ON1’s engineers.
It’s a great tool for someone who wants to leave the Adobe ecosystem. But it does not solve the high-volume batch editing problem for a working professional who already has a unique, established style. It’s not learning, and it’s not automating your brand.
9. Impossible Things
Impossible Things is another player in the AI culling space, making it a very direct Aftershoot and FilterPixel competitor.
How it Works
It’s a standalone culling app. You feed it your RAWs, and it sorts them. Its marketing is focused on being a “collaborator” that helps you find the best images faster.
It features the standard suite of culling tools:
- Duplicate detection.
- Analysis of focus, blur, and closed eyes.
- Grouping of similar photos.
It’s a clean, fast app that does what it says it will do: it culls your photos.
The Limitation
We’ve been here before. It’s a “point solution.”
It only solves the very first part of the problem. You still have the entire editing mountain to climb. Why use one app for culling and another for editing when a tool like Imagen integrates both?
The workflow just makes more sense. Cull in Imagen. Click a button. Send the keepers to be edited by your own Personal AI Profile. It’s all in one place. Using a culling-only tool in 2025 feels like you’re still working with an outdated workflow.
10. Sleeklens
I’m including Sleeklens to make a specific point. This isn’t an “AI” company in the same way, but it represents a huge part of the “workflow” market.
How it Works
Sleeklens is a “preset” company. They sell high-quality Lightroom presets and “workflow” bundles. These are packs of presets and brushes designed to give you a specific look (e.g., “dark and moody,” “light and airy”).
The Limitation
This is the “old way,” and it highlights why tools like Imagen are so revolutionary.
A preset is “dumb.” It’s a static, saved set of slider positions. It applies the exact same settings to every single photo you click. It doesn’t care if the photo is in a dark church or on a bright beach. The preset for “+1.50 Exposure” will be applied just the same, forcing you to go back and fix every single photo by hand.
This is the very problem AI editing solves. A true AI tool like Imagen adapts. Its Personal AI Profile “knows” that in a dark church, you do push the exposure, but on a bright beach, you pull it back. It makes individual decisions for each photo, all based on the patterns it learned from you.
Comparing a preset to a Personal AI Profile is like comparing a bicycle to a starship. Both are “transport,” but they are not in the same category.
How to Choose the Right Aftershoot Alternative
At the end of the day, the right tool depends on your problem.
- Do you only want to cull faster? A tool like Aftershoot or FilterPixel will work. But you’re leaving a lot of efficiency on the table.
- Do you want a “perfect” but “generic” portrait edit? A tool like Evoto AI is built for that.
- Do you want powerful new sliders for editing single images? Luminar Neo is a creative playground.
- Do you want a technically perfect RAW file to edit yourself? DxO PhotoLab is a master of that.
But here’s the real question for working professionals:
Do you want an integrated platform that culls your photos and edits them in your own, unique, personal style, faster than you ever thought possible?
If the answer is yes, your choice is clear.
Final Thoughts
As professional photographers, our time is our most valuable asset. Every hour we spend culling and editing is an hour we aren’t spending shooting, finding new clients, or just living our lives.
Tools like Aftershoot cracked the door open and showed us a better way. They proved that AI could handle the most tedious parts of our job. But the next evolution is here, and it’s so much more powerful.
It’s not just about speed. It’s about speed and quality. It’s not just about automation. It’s about automation of your personal brand.
For my money and my workflow, the only tool that ticks all of those boxes is Imagen. It’s the only platform I’ve ever used that truly learned me. It’s an assistant I trained myself, and it’s allowed me to get back to the part of the job I actually love: taking pictures.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
1. What is the main difference between Aftershoot and Imagen? The biggest difference is the editing. Aftershoot’s editing is based on pre-built “AI Styles.” Imagen‘s Personal AI Profile learns your unique editing style from 3,000+ of your own edited photos. Also, Imagen is a complete, integrated platform with culling, editing, cloud storage, and fine-tuning in one app.
2. Is AI photo editing as good as a human editor? This is the magic of Imagen. Its Personal AI Profile is a human editor. It’s you. It learns from your human-made edits and replicates your decisions. This means it’s not a “robot” style; it’s your style, just scaled.
3. Do I need 3,000 photos to use Imagen? No. You only need 3,000+ edited photos to build the hyper-accurate Personal AI Profile. You can start editing immediately with a Lite Personal AI Profile (which just needs one preset and a quick survey) or by using one of the many Talent AI Profiles from pro photographers.
4. How much does Imagen cost? Imagen uses a pay-as-you-go, per-photo pricing model, which is very scalable. Culling has a small per-photo fee, and editing has a separate per-photo fee (around $0.05). There are also subscription plans for culling. This is often far more cost-effective than hiring a human editor.
5. What is the best AI photo culling software? Tools like Aftershoot, FilterPixel, and Imagen are all excellent AI cullers. The main advantage of Imagen‘s Culling is that it’s integrated with the editing workflow. You can cull and then send your keepers to be edited with one click, all in the same app. Imagen also lets you cull with edited previews, which is a game-changer.
6. Can Imagen edit in my unique “dark and moody” style? Absolutely. Imagen‘s AI is style-agnostic. It doesn’t care what your style is (dark and moody, light and airy, film, high-contrast B&W). It only cares that you can provide 3,000+ consistent examples of it. If you can, it will learn it.
7. What is “Fine-Tuning” in Imagen? Fine-Tuning is how your Personal AI Profile stays up-to-date with your evolving style. After you review an Imagen-edited gallery, you make your final tweaks in Lightroom and then “Upload Final Edits” back to Imagen. The AI learns from your tweaks, ensuring it stays a perfect match for you.
8. Is Imagen a desktop app or web-based? It’s both. It is a desktop app for macOS and Windows that you use to create and manage your projects. But the heavy AI processing (the culling and editing) is done in the cloud. This is the perfect combination, as it keeps your personal computer fast and free to do other work.
9. What software does Imagen work with? Imagen is built to work perfectly with Adobe Lightroom Classic. It also has integration and support for Lightroom CC, Photoshop, and Bridge.
10. Can I use Imagen for just culling? Yes. You can subscribe to Imagen‘s culling plan and just use that. It’s a powerful and fast culler all on its own.
11. How long does it take to get my photos back from Imagen? It is incredibly fast. The AI editing averages under 0.5 seconds per photo. This means a full 1,000-photo gallery can be edited and ready for you to download in under 10-15 minutes.
12. What’s the difference between a Lite Profile and a Personal AI Profile in Imagen? The Lite Profile is a starting point. It uses one of your presets as a “base” and combines it with AI-powered Exposure and White Balance. The Personal AI Profile is the pro tool. It learns from 3,000+ of your actual, final edits, meaning it learns all your nuanced HSL, split-toning, and masking decisions. The Personal Profile is far more accurate.
13. Is my data safe with Imagen? Yes. Imagen is very clear about this. Your photos are your property. They are only used to train your Personal AI Profile, and they are never shared or used for any other purpose.
