AI is changing car photography forever
AI is being widely introduced into our daily lives, and it was only a matter of time until it reached the world of car photography.
While some photos are easily recognizable as having AI generated backgrounds or futuristic cars, the development of new AI image generating software has started to blur the lines on what’s real and what isn’t. Personally, I think this new feature will be a positive component to the way we create and view photographs.
What really grabbed my attention the other day was these images of a rare R34 Nissan Skyline GTR - a car that can easily fetch a price tag of over $250,000.
At first glance as an automotive photographer, I was thinking how did this photographer manage to get a rare car in someone’s bedroom - and get such a perfect photo? While it does look plausible that one owning this car could have the luxury of having a house big enough to drive it into the bedroom, I quickly found out from the hashtags that this image was generated using a software called MidJourney.
To get these perfect images, some of the AI software programs will use actual reference photos to place the subject in imaginary locations to produce a full image. These images are created within seconds by entering a specific prompts into the program - some even letting you ask it to regenerate a new result similar to what you might find on ChatGPT.
Is AI a good thing for car photography?
I believe AI being used for car photography is a great thing. Some people will think otherwise.
What’s great about it in my opinion is that now for a photographer like me in Toronto, where there will never be streets filled with palm trees, or a nice sandy beach (that actually looks like a beach) - an AI software like this can help make that a possibility. Anyone living in LA is gifted with an abundance of opportunities to take great, real car photos in scenic locations. Not to mention the weather is typically better where nature is still thriving, giving more natural colour to car photos.
AI also adds benefit to editing automotive photos
In Lightroom, users can now benefit from using some AI tools such as denoise, and masking. Now within a few clicks you can quickly select your subject, background, or even just the sky. These previously could take a painstakingly long time to do with just a computer mouse, but now with the AI recognition software it has certainly cut down editing time.
These two features alone are huge game changers, and I believe there is more to come. In fact, I believe there may be a time in the future where Lightroom is able to recreate specific styles of colour grading (or presets) based on how you’ve edited photos in the past.
Closing thoughts
While AI is becoming increasingly popular to be used in our daily lives (heck, you can even use AI to generate blog posts like these), the need for a human touch will still be required for good results. CGI is also used in almost every movie or TV show, so something like AI in the photography world is nothing new technically. I’m personally excited to see where things go, and how much advanced it will get.