As professional photographers, we live for the moments behind the lens. We chase the light, connect with our subjects, and freeze fleeting expressions. But we all know the shoot is just half the job. The other half happens at our desks. Post-production is where we translate the RAW files from our cameras into the final, polished art our clients expect. It’s where our signature style truly comes to life. But for many, it’s also a bottleneck, a time-consuming task that keeps us from our next shoot.
Key Takeaways
- Editing is storytelling, not just correction. Your post-production should be a deliberate process that enhances the story you captured.
- A consistent workflow is your best asset. Having a repeatable system for culling, editing, and delivering saves you countless hours and stress.
- Your style is your brand. Define it, refine it, and apply it consistently to build a recognizable body of work.
- AI is a tool, not a replacement. Modern tools, like Imagen, can learn your unique style to automate the repetitive work, letting you focus on the creative finishing touches.
- Culling is the most important edit. What you don’t show is just as important as what you do. An effective culling process is the foundation of a strong gallery.
The Core Philosophy of Photo Editing
Before we ever touch a slider, we need to talk about the why. What is our goal in photo editing? Is it just to “fix” a photo? I don’t think so. In my experience, editing is the final step in the creative process. It’s the bridge between what my camera captured and what I saw in my mind’s eye.
Beyond Presets: What Editing Really Means
Many new photographers think editing just means applying a preset. Don’t get me wrong, presets are a great starting point. They can apply a complex set of adjustments in one click. But a preset is a blunt instrument. It applies the same settings to every photo, regardless of the light, the subject, or the exposure.
True editing is adaptive. It means looking at each image individually and making decisions. It’s asking, “What does this specific photo need to match my style?” A photo taken in bright sun needs a different touch than one taken in a dark reception hall. A preset can’t understand that context. A skilled editor can. This is also where modern AI tools have become so powerful. They can analyze the content of each photo and apply edits that are adaptive, just like a human editor would.
Defining Your Style (and Sticking to It)
What makes your work yours? It’s your editing style. It’s your color palette, your handling of contrast, your shadow depth, and your skin tones. This is your brand. When a client hires you, they are hiring that specific look.
This means consistency is king. A gallery that jumps between light and airy, dark and moody, and high-contrast black and white looks unprofessional. It feels disjointed.
Your first job is to define that style.
- Find inspiration. Look at photographers whose work you admire. What specifically do you like about their colors and tone?
- Experiment. Spend time in your editing software. See what happens when you push the HSL (Hue, Saturation, Luminance) sliders. How do the tone curve and calibration panels affect your image?
- Be consistent. Once you find a look you love, stick with it. Edit all your photos to that style. This portfolio of thousands of consistently edited images will become your most valuable asset.
The Big Two: Global vs. Local Adjustments
Think of editing in two main categories:
- Global Adjustments: These affect the entire photograph. Think of your main sliders: Exposure, White Balance, Contrast, and the Tone Curve. This is where you set the overall foundation for the image’s look and feel.
- Local Adjustments: These target specific parts of the photo. Ten years ago, this meant tedious work in Photoshop. Today, it’s all about masking inside Lightroom. You might brighten a subject’s face, darken a distracting background, or boost the blue in the sky. These local “tweaks” are what separate a good edit from a great one.
Section Summary
Editing isn’t an afterthought. It’s a core part of our artistry. Our goal is to develop a consistent, recognizable style and apply it adaptively to every photo. We do this by using a combination of global adjustments to set the scene and local adjustments to refine the details and guide the viewer’s eye.
Building an Unbeatable Post-Production Workflow
Your talent gets you the booking. Your workflow lets you run a profitable business. A streamlined post-production process is what keeps you from drowning in backlogs and burning out. It’s what allows you to deliver galleries on time, every time.
After years of refining, I’ve found a multi-step process that is fast, repeatable, and effective.
The Photographer’s Bottleneck: Why Workflow Matters
We’ve all been there. You finish three shoots in one week. You’re excited, but then you look at the 10,000 new photos on your hard drive. The idea of culling and editing all of them is exhausting. This is the bottleneck.
A workflow is just a system. It’s a set of steps you follow every single time. It turns that mountain of work into a series of small, manageable hills. It removes the guesswork and decision fatigue.
Step 1: Culling (The Most Important Cut)
I’m going to say something that might be controversial: culling is more important than editing.
Why? Because your clients judge you by the gallery you deliver, not by the 2,000 photos you didn’t show them. Culling is the process of selecting the best-of-the-best. It’s about curating a tight, impactful story. Showing three amazing, slightly different versions of the same pose is worse than showing just the one perfect one. It dilutes the impact and makes you look indecisive.
Manual Culling Techniques
For years, I culled manually. My process was simple:
- Import & Preview: Import everything into Lightroom Classic. Build 1-click Smart Previews.
- First Pass (Rejects): Go through the entire shoot quickly. Use the ‘X’ key to flag anything that is obviously unusable: missed focus, bad expressions, test shots, blinks.
- Second Pass (Keepers): Filter out the rejects. Now go through again, this time using the ‘P’ key (for “Pick”) or star ratings (like ‘1’ star) to mark every good photo. Be generous on this pass.
- Third Pass (Finals): Filter to see only your “Keepers.” This is the hardest part. Here, you compare similar images side-by-side. Look at the group of five family formals and find the one where everyone looks good. Use a higher rating (like ‘2’ stars) to mark these “Finals.”
- Filter & Edit: Filter your catalog to only show the ‘2’ star images. This is your final gallery. Now you are ready to edit.
The Culling Challenge: Time and Objectivity
Manual culling works. But it is slow. That three-pass system can take hours. For a big wedding, it could be a full day of work before I even move a single exposure slider.
It’s also emotionally draining. After 4,000 photos, your eyes glaze over. It becomes hard to tell what’s really good. We also get emotionally attached to photos. We remember the moment and forgive a slightly soft focus. A client won’t.
AI-Powered Culling with Imagen
This is one of the first parts of my workflow I handed over to AI. I was skeptical at first. How could a machine know what I’m looking for? But the technology has become incredibly good.
I use the Culling Studio inside the Imagen desktop app. This isn’t your main Imagen editing, this is a separate tool designed just for this step.
- Upload: I create a new culling project in the Imagen app. It works with my Lightroom Classic catalogs.
- Set Preferences: I tell it what I’m looking for. I can ask it to group photos and pick the best one, or even cull to an exact number of photos.
- Let AI Work: Imagen‘s AI then analyzes everything. It groups all the duplicates and similar shots together. It checks for blurry photos, closed eyes, and poorly exposed shots. It even has face recognition to make sure subjects are in focus and their faces are visible.
- Review: This is the best part. Instead of 5,000 photos, Imagen shows me a much smaller, curated selection. It shows me the groups of similar photos and highlights the one its AI thinks is the “winner.” I can quickly agree or pick a different one. It also flags photos that are likely “low-rated” (blurry, etc.) so I can ignore them.
- Send to Edit: Once I’m happy with my final selection, I can send those photos directly to be edited with my Imagen AI Profile, all within the same app.
This process took my culling time from 3-4 hours down to about 30-45 minutes of review. It does the heavy lifting, and I just make the final creative decisions.
Step 2: The Editing Environment
Once your photos are culled, it’s time to edit. This requires a “home base” for your photos. For nearly all professional photographers, this means using a catalog-based editor.
Choosing Your Core Software
You need an application that can handle thousands of RAW files, organize them, and allow for non-destructive editing. Non-destructive means your original RAW file is never touched. The software just saves a list of instructions (the XMP data) for your edits.
Adobe Lightroom Classic
This is the industry standard for a reason. Lightroom Classic (LrC) is a powerhouse built for high-volume photographers.
- What it is: A desktop-based photo management and editing tool.
- Strengths: Unbeatable cataloging and organization (collections, keywords, filtering). Powerful RAW processing engine. It’s built to handle 100,000+ photos in a single catalog. This is what I and most of my colleagues use. It also works perfectly with tools like Imagen, which can read your LrC catalog directly.
Adobe Lightroom
This is the “other” Lightroom, which can be confusing. Think of it as the cloud-based, simplified version.
- What it is: A cloud-centric app for desktop, mobile, and web.
- Strengths: All your original photos are stored in the cloud, making them accessible everywhere. The interface is simpler and more modern. Imagen also works with it, which is a huge plus.
- Weaknesses: The cloud storage can get expensive very quickly. The organization tools are not as robust as Classic’s.
Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop is not a primary editor for photographers. It’s a finishing tool.
- What it is: A pixel-level, layer-based image manipulator.
- Strengths: Unmatched power for deep retouching, compositing (like head-swaps), or advanced object removal.
- How I use it: I do 99% of my work in Lightroom Classic (or let Imagen do it). I only right-click and “Edit in Photoshop” for maybe 1-2 photos per wedding for very specific, complex fixes. Imagen also supports Photoshop (via Adobe Camera Raw), so you can integrate it there too.
Other Editors
Of course, Adobe isn’t the only name in the game.
- Capture One: This is the most common alternative. It’s known for its exceptional RAW processing, color tools, and built-in tethering features. It’s very popular with studio and commercial photographers. The workflow is different from Lightroom, but it’s just as powerful.
- Others (Luminar, DxO, etc.): Many other programs exist. They often have powerful AI features but sometimes lack the robust cataloging needed for a high-volume professional workflow.
Step 3: The Editing Process
You have your culled photos in your editor of choice. Now what? You need another system. This is my repeatable, step-by-step editing checklist for every single photo. I follow this order to get consistent results.
A Repeatable 10-Step Editing Checklist
- Profile & Lens Correction: First, I apply a camera profile (like “Adobe Color”) and check the “Enable Profile Corrections” box. This fixes lens distortion and vignetting.
- Crop & Straighten: I get my composition right. I straighten the horizon and crop for impact. This is a simple step that makes a huge difference.
- White Balance (WB): This is critical for good skin tones. I use the eyedropper tool on a neutral gray or white area, or adjust the Temp and Tint sliders manually until the skin looks natural.
- Exposure: I set the foundation. I adjust the main Exposure slider until the subject is properly lit.
- Contrast (Tone Curve): I ignore the main Contrast slider. The Tone Curve is where the magic happens. I typically apply a gentle “S-curve” to add a clean, dynamic pop to the image.
- Highlights & Shadows: I fine-tune the dynamic range. I pull Highlights down to recover detail in bright skies or dresses. I lift Shadows to see detail in dark suits or hair.
- Whites & Blacks: This sets the “anchor points.” I hold the Alt/Option key and slide the Whites up until I just start to see clipping, then back off. I do the same for Blacks, sliding down. This ensures I have a true white and a true black, which prevents a “muddy” edit.
- Presence (Clarity, Texture, Dehaze): I use these sparingly. A little Clarity can add punch, and a little Texture can sharpen details. Too much looks fake.
- HSL & Color Calibration: This is where the “style” is created. I go into the HSL panel to tweak my greens, oranges, and blues to match my signature palette.
- Sharpening & Noise Reduction: Finally, I zoom in to 1:1. I apply a standard amount of Sharpening (Amount: 60, Radius: 1.0, Detail: 25) and use the Masking slider to make sure I’m only sharpening edges, not skin.
The Challenge of Manual Editing: Speed and Consistency
This 10-step process is thorough. It works. But it is slow. On a good day, I can maybe edit one photo every 30-60 seconds. For a 600-photo wedding gallery, that’s 5-10 hours of repetitive clicking.
The bigger problem is consistency. After three hours, my eyes get tired. The “White Balance” I set on photo #400 might not quite match photo #10. This is what we call “editor drift.” It’s a huge problem for professionals.
Section Summary
A solid workflow is non-negotiable. It starts with a ruthless culling process, which can be dramatically sped up using AI tools like Imagen’s Culling Studio. Then, you move into a powerful, catalog-based editor like Lightroom Classic. From there, you must follow a repeatable, step-by-step editing process for every photo to ensure consistency. The manual version of this workflow is reliable but incredibly time-consuming and prone to human error.
The AI Revolution: Editing Faster and Smarter
This is where everything changed for my business. For years, I was resistant to AI. I thought, “My style is my art. A machine can’t replicate it.” I was wrong.
AI isn’t here to replace our creativity. It’s here to replace the repetitive labor. It’s a tool that lets us be the Art Director, not the assembly line worker.
What is AI Photo Editing (and What It’s Not)?
AI photo editing is not a preset. Let’s get that straight.
- A preset applies a fixed set of settings (e.g., Exposure +0.5, Contrast +20) to every photo, no matter what.
- An AI edit analyzes the content of each photo. It sees the light, the subjects, and the colors. Then, it calculates a unique set of edits for that specific photo to make it match a target style.
This is exactly what I do when I edit manually. I analyze the photo and decide it needs more exposure, while the next photo needs less. That’s what AI does, but it does it in less than a second.
The Imagen Approach to AI Editing
What sold me on Imagen was its approach. It’s not a one-size-fits-all filter. It’s built around your style. It’s a desktop app (for both Mac and Windows) that works directly with your existing software. It’s not some new, web-based platform I have to upload all my photos to. It connects its powerful cloud-based processing to my local files. It integrates perfectly with Lightroom Classic, Lightroom, Photoshop, and Bridge.
Imagen offers three main ways to get an AI edit.
Introducing the Personal AI Profile
This is the flagship. This is what I use. You train your own AI to edit exactly like you.
- How it works: You need at least 2,000 of your best, most consistently edited photos. These need to be in a Lightroom Classic catalog.
- The Process: You point the Imagen app to these catalogs. Imagen uploads the edit settings (not the full RAW files) to the cloud and builds a profile that learns your every tendency. It learns how you set white balance in shade, how you expose for backlight, and how you treat your greens in HSL.
- The Result: You get a Personal AI Profile that is 100% your style. When I apply my profile to a new shoot, the photos come back looking like I edited them myself. It’s about 95-98% of the way there, right out of the box.
Getting Started Fast: The Lite Personal AI Profile
What if you don’t have 2,000 edited photos? Maybe you’re a new photographer still defining your style. Imagen has a solution for that.
- How it works: You upload one of your favorite Lightroom presets (an XMP file).
- The Survey: Imagen then has you complete a short, visual survey to help it understand your preferences for things like exposure and white balance.
- The Result: It combines the “style” of your preset with the “intelligence” of its AI to create a Lite Personal AI Profile. This profile edits your photos individually to match that preset’s style, rather than just applying it flatly. It’s a huge step up from a standard preset.
Tapping into Pro Styles: Talent AI Profiles
This is a great option for new photographers or anyone looking to experiment.
- What it is: A collection of Personal AI Profiles built by world-class, industry-leading photographers.
- How it works: You can browse the showcase, see their styles, and apply their AI Profile to your photos.
- The Result: You get a sophisticated, professional edit instantly. It’s like hiring that photographer to edit your work. And because it’s Imagen, you can re-edit your projects with different Talent Profiles to see which one fits best.
The Power of AI Tools
Here’s what really saves time. Imagen doesn’t just apply your basic color and tone edits. It can also handle the tedious local adjustments and corrections at the same time. These are small add-ons to your edit, but they are incredibly powerful.
- Straighten: Imagen‘s AI analyzes the lines in your photo and automatically straightens the horizon. This is a huge timesaver.
- Crop: The AI identifies the subject and applies a smart, compositionally-aware crop.
- Subject Mask: This is a big one. Imagen automatically creates a mask for the main subject(s) and applies a little pop of brightness or clarity, just like I would do manually.
- Background Mask: The opposite of Subject Mask. It lets you subtly darken or de-saturate the background to make your subject stand out.
- Smooth Skin & Whiten Teeth: For portraits, these AI tools apply subtle, natural-looking smoothing and teeth brightening. It’s not plastic-y or fake. It’s just a clean, professional touch.
- HDR Merge & Perspective Correction: For my real estate colleagues, Imagen has dedicated tools. It can automatically merge bracketed photos into a clean HDR image and fix distorted vertical lines with Perspective Correction.
Keeping Your Style Yours: Fine-Tuning and Adjustments
My style isn’t static. It changes. I get better. I find new-found inspiration. What I loved in 2023 isn’t exactly what I’m doing in 2025. Imagen is built for this.
- How Imagen Learns: After Imagen edits a project, I download the results into Lightroom Classic. I review them. I might make a few small tweaks. Maybe I’ll warm up a few images or lift the shadows a bit more. When I’m done, I use the Imagen app to “Upload Final Edits.”
- The Fine-Tune Process: Imagen collects all these small “tweaks.” Once I’ve uploaded enough new edits, the app notifies me that my profile is “Ready for fine-tuning.” I click one button, and Imagen re-trains my profile, incorporating all my latest changes. My Personal AI Profile evolves with me.
- Profile Adjustments: If I need to make a quick change (e.g., “I want this whole gallery to be a little warmer”), I don’t even need to go into Lightroom. I can use “Profile Adjustments” inside Imagen to tell my AI to “apply your normal edit, but add +5 to the Temp slider.”
Section Summary
AI editing, especially with a tool like Imagen, has fundamentally changed my business. It gives me a Personal AI Profile that edits with my unique style. It handles all the tedious global and local adjustments in seconds per photo. And it integrates into my existing desktop workflow with Lightroom Classic. Most importantly, it learns from my final tweaks, so it’s always up to date. This has given me back 10-20 hours every single week.
Advanced Techniques and Problem-Solving
Once your main workflow is set, you’ll still run into tricky situations. This is where your skills as a photographer and editor truly shine.
Mastering Local Adjustments (Masking)
The biggest leap in modern editing is AI masking. Inside Lightroom, you can now click “Select Subject” or “Select Sky” with one button.
- Guiding the Eye: I use these masks constantly. After my Imagen edit is applied, I might do a quick review and add my own masks. I often add a “Radial Gradient” mask over my subjects and boost the exposure by +0.15. It’s a subtle change that draws the viewer’s eye right where I want it.
- Taming Distractions: See a bright, distracting exit sign in the background? I’ll add a radial mask over it, drop the exposure, and pull down the saturation. It disappears without anyone ever noticing it was there.
Handling Difficult Lighting (Mixed White Balance)
The hardest lighting to fix is mixed light. This is when you have two different light sources in one photo. The classic example is a reception hall: the room is lit with warm, orange tungsten lights, but the DJ has blue and purple uplighting.
- The Problem: You can’t fix this with the global White Balance slider. If you correct for the orange light, the purple light looks really blue. If you correct for the purple light, your subjects’ faces look like Oompa Loompas.
- The Solution (Local Adjustments): This is another job for masks. You set your global WB for the most important part of the image (usually your subjects’ skin). Then, you use “Select Subject” (or “Invert” it to select the background) and use a local WB adjustment on the background to neutralize the weird colors.
Section Summary
Advanced editing is just problem-solving. Most issues can be solved with modern local adjustment masks. Whether it’s taming a high-contrast scene with HDR or fixing mixed lighting with local white balance, these tools let you take full creative control.
Finishing the Job: Storage and Delivery
You’ve culled. You’ve edited. You’re almost done. Now you just have to protect your work and deliver it to the client.
The Final Steps: Exporting and Sharpening
Your RAW files are not delivery-ready. You need to export them as JPEGs.
- My Export Settings: I use Lightroom Classic’s export dialog.
- Image Format: JPEG
- Quality: 80 (The human eye can’t tell the difference between 80 and 100, but the file size is cut in half).
- Color Space: sRGB (This is the standard for all web browsers and most print labs).
- Resize: For a full-res gallery, I don’t resize. For a blog, I’ll resize to 2500px on the long edge.
- Output Sharpening: I set this to “Screen” and “Standard.” This applies a smart, final bit of sharpening to the JPEG.
Protecting Your Work: Backup Strategies
This is not optional. If you lose a client’s photos, you’ve lost their trust (and your reputation). A single hard drive is not a backup. It’s a time bomb.
The 3-2-1 Rule
This is the gold standard for professionals:
- 3 Copies of your data.
- 2 Different Media (e.g., your computer’s hard drive AND an external hard drive).
- 1 Copy Off-Site (in case of fire, flood, or theft).
My system:
- Working Drive: My computer’s internal SSD.
- On-Site Backup: An external hard drive on my desk that automatically backs up my working drive.
- Off-Site Backup: A cloud backup service.
An Integrated Solution: Imagen Cloud Storage
Because I’m already using Imagen for my workflow, using their Cloud Storage was an easy choice.
- How it works: When I upload a project for editing from a Lightroom Classic catalog, Imagen can also back up my RAW files to its secure cloud.
- Optimized vs. Original: It gives me two options. I can back up the full, Original RAW files, or I can use their Optimized option. The optimized files are high-resolution but compressed (up to 75% smaller), which saves a ton of space and upload time.
- The Benefit: This instantly checks the “off-site” box for me. My culled, edited projects are safely backed up in the cloud as soon as I send them to edit. It’s all part of the same single workflow, all in one app.
Delivering to Clients
Finally, you have to get the photos to your client.
- Traditional Delivery: For years, this meant using a USB drive or a generic cloud service like Dropbox. It works, but it’s not very professional.
- Gallery Services: Most pros use a dedicated gallery service like Pic-Time, Pixieset, or ShootProof. These are beautiful, custom-branded, and allow clients to download photos and order prints.
- Streamlining with Imagen: Imagen has a “Deliver” feature. After my edits are done, I can have Imagen automatically export the final JPEGs to a folder for me. Even better, it connects directly to Pic-Time. I can have Imagen edit my photos and then publish them directly to a new Pic-Time gallery, ready for my client. It cuts out several final steps.
Section Summary
Finishing the job means exporting your photos with the right settings, protecting them with a solid 3-2-1 backup strategy, and delivering them professionally. Tools like Imagen can help streamline this final stage by integrating cloud backup and gallery delivery directly into the editing workflow.
Conclusion: Editing as an Extension of Your Art
Photo editing is a deep, technical, and creative skill. It’s so much more than just “filters.” It’s the craft of turning a good photo into a great one. It’s how we build a consistent brand and tell a powerful story.
For years, this craft was inseparable from long, tedious hours at a computer. We had to choose between growing our business (shooting more) and perfecting our art (editing more). Today, that’s a false choice.
By building an iron-clad workflow and embracing new technologies like Imagen, we can automate the repetitive parts of the job. We can let an AI learn our style, apply it in minutes, and handle the tedious work of culling and masking. This doesn’t take away our creativity. It buys us back our time. It lets us be the photographers and art directors we always wanted to be.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What’s the difference between a Personal AI Profile and a Lite Personal AI Profile on Imagen? A Personal AI Profile is trained by learning from at least 2,000 of your previously edited photos, so it learns your unique style in great detail. A Lite Personal AI Profile is a faster way to start. You just upload a preset and answer a few questions, and Imagen builds an AI profile that intelligently applies that preset’s style.
2. How does Imagen’s AI editing work with Lightroom Classic? Imagen is a separate desktop app that works with Lightroom Classic. You select a catalog or collection in the Imagen app, choose your AI Profile, and hit upload. Imagen‘s cloud processing edits your photos (saving the edits as XMP metadata). When it’s done, you click “Download Edits,” and Imagen automatically updates your Lightroom catalog. All your sliders will be moved, just as if you did it yourself.
3. Will AI editing replace my job as a photographer? No. AI is a tool, just like your camera or Lightroom. It can’t replace your creative vision, your connection with clients, or your unique style. Imagen doesn’t create a style for you; it learns your style from you. It’s a tool to do the time-consuming work, so you have more time to be creative and build your business.
4. What is “culling,” and why is it important? Culling is the process of sorting through all the photos from a shoot and selecting only the best ones to edit and deliver. It’s vital because it strengthens your gallery, removes distracting or technically flawed images, and allows you to tell a clearer, more impactful story.
5. Can Imagen’s AI learn my black and white editing style? Yes. When you create a Personal AI Profile, you can choose to make a “Color” profile or a “Black & White” profile. You would just need to train it on your edited black and white photos, and it will learn your specific preferences for B&W conversion, contrast, and tone.
6. What are “local adjustments,” and why do they matter? Local adjustments (or masks) are edits that affect only a part of your photo, not the whole thing. This includes things like brightening a subject’s face, darkening a background, or enhancing a sky. They are what separate amateur edits from professional, polished images because they allow you to guide the viewer’s eye.
7. How many photos do I need to create a Personal AI Profile? Imagen recommends a minimum of 2,000 edited photos from a Lightroom Classic catalog. The more consistently edited photos you provide, the more accurately the AI can learn your style.
8. What if I don’t like an edit that Imagen produces? That’s the best part of the process. You simply download the edits into Lightroom, make your own “final tweaks” to any photos you want, and then use the “Upload Final Edits” feature in the Imagen app. This teaches your profile what you changed. The next time you “fine-tune” your profile, it will learn from those changes and become even more accurate.
9. Does Imagen work with Photoshop or Lightroom (cloud)? Yes. Imagen‘s desktop app has “Extended Adobe Compatibility.” It can read and write XMP metadata, so it works with Lightroom (cloud), Photoshop (via Adobe Camera Raw), and Bridge, not just Lightroom Classic.
10. What is the 3-2-1 backup rule? It’s the professional standard for data safety. It means you should have 3 copies of your data (e.g., your working files and two backups), on 2 different types of media (e.g., your computer’s drive and an external drive), with 1 copy off-site (e.g., in the cloud, like Imagen Cloud Storage, or at a different physical location).
11. What is the difference between “Global” and “Local” AI Tools in Imagen? Global tools (like your Personal AI Profile) affect the whole image’s color and tone. Local AI Tools are extras you can add, like Subject Mask, Smooth Skin, or Background Mask, which apply local adjustments to specific parts of the photo, all done by AI.
12. How much time can AI editing really save me? In my own business, Imagen cut my editing time by about 96%. A wedding that used to take me 8-10 hours to edit by hand now takes about 20-30 minutes. That includes uploading, letting Imagen edit, downloading, and doing a final review with my own small tweaks. It’s the single biggest timesaver I’ve ever introduced to my business.
13. What is Imagen Cloud Storage? It’s a backup solution built right into the Imagen app. It’s designed for photographers and works with your Lightroom Classic catalogs. When you send a project to be culled or edited, Imagen can also back up your RAW files to the cloud at the same time, giving you a secure, off-site backup as part of your normal workflow.
