As photographers, we spend years refining our visual style. The way we treat light, color, and contrast, until our images feel right. It’s something that develops naturally over time, through thousands of small creative decisions. So when artificial intelligence (AI) started to take over conversations in the photography world, I was sceptical. The worry wasn’t just about automation, but rather about losing control of the artistic process altogether.
Then I tried Imagen AI. Unlike AI tools designed to generate or imitate photography, Imagen AI exists to support it.
AI is becoming a useful presence across the entire photographic workflow, from client management and delivery platforms to editing software, but Imagen AI’s focus on culling and post-production feels uniquely designed with photographers’ creative intent in mind.
It learns directly from your own work, building what it calls a Personal AI Profile – a digital version of your editing style that evolves with you. Once trained, it can edit a photo in less than half a second, applying adjustments that reflect your individual approach rather than a one-size-fits-all preset.
That distinction is important. Imagen AI isn’t trying to guess what looks good to everyone, but learning what looks right to you. And because it analyzes each photo individually, the results remain consistent but never repetitive. It’s fast, accurate, and genuinely feels like an extension of your own workflow rather than a shortcut around it.
Training Imagen AI is straightforward. You upload a catalog of your past edits, ideally a few thousand images, and the software studies your creative decisions, such as exposure, color balance, and tone curves. Once your profile is ready, it continues to adapt with every project you feed it, keeping pace as your style shifts over time.
And if you’re looking for inspiration or a starting point, Imagen AI also offers a collection of pre-trained Talent AI Profiles by photographers such as John Branch IV, Susan Stripling, and Fer Juaristi; each bringing their own distinct aesthetic that you can use, customise, or learn from.
What really surprised me, though, was how Imagen handles the parts of post-production most of us dread. Its AI Culling tool intelligently sorts through thousands of photos, identifying blinks, duplicates, and out-of-focus frames, while grouping similar shots. It mimics human decision-making at a fraction of the time, leaving you with only the best images to review.
The new Cull to Exact Number feature even lets you specify how many final selects you need, which is a total time saver for weddings and events.
You can also preview your shortlisted images with your chosen AI Profile applied, getting a sense of the final look before editing even begins. Once you’re happy, Imagen AI can take over the full edit: balancing exposure, straightening horizons, applying subject masking, smoothing skin tones, whitening teeth, and performing subtle denoising, all while preserving your own signature colour palette and tone. What's more, everything can always be fine-tuned to your liking.
For me, the most noticeable impact has been time. Editing used to take up most of my post-shoot schedule; now, it’s something I can move through quickly and confidently, knowing the results will be consistent with my style.
Imagen AI claims to reduce editing time by up to 96%, which means spending less time buried in sliders and flicking between near-identical shots, and more time planning new shoots, meeting clients, or actually being outside with a camera again.
There’s also an integrated cloud storage feature that backs up projects as you work. It keeps everything safe and accessible from multiple devices, which is ideal if you’re travelling or switching between setups.
Imagen AI is an example of AI being used for photographers, not against them. It doesn’t generate imagery or replace creativity; it enhances it by removing the repetitive parts of the process and freeing up more time for the things that actually matter. It’s efficient without being intrusive, intelligent without taking over, and respects your personal artistic vision.
At a time when so many AI tools are focused on imitation, Imagen AI’s approach feels refreshingly authentic. It’s not trying to make everyone’s work look the same; it’s trying to make your workflow faster, smoother, and more consistent. It’s a collaboration between artist and technology, where the machine learns from you, not the other way around.
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