Has AI photo editing now made taking the photo less important than ever?

With the rise of AI photo-editing tools, we are in danger of not only losing the valuable skill of taking a “good” photo, but more worryingly, we’re at risk of thinking that this skill has become redundant. I’m not overstating my point, and it’s not because I “wish things would go back to the way they were.”

Let’s put things in perspective. Fixing photos in post has been a reality for as long as I can remember. If you get the white balance wrong in the camera, then Lightroom can fix that. If the exposure value blows the sky out, then bringing detail and colour back is easily done (assuming you shot in raw). And if a shot were time-sensitive and the crop not perfect, then just adjusting the crop afterwards is one of the easiest edits of all.

These types of changes seem pretty reasonable, and I don’t think anyone would argue against the necessity of them. None of them are adjusting the “truth” of what was present in front of the photographer, and viewers are not going to question the reality of the captured image. But that’s not what I’m talking about.

My concern is that AI editing tools have shifted photography so far into post-production that taking the photo matters a lot less than it used to. It appears that the fix-it-in-post attitude is now on steroids. With Generative Fill and AI Uncrop, it’s now possible to completely transform a subject, fabricate the environment, and even rewrite the lighting in the space.

All of this, and more, means that, for many creators, the photo is no longer the final product; it’s just the data input. Professional photographers can now train private AI models on their own archives and let AI apply their signature style or look automatically. This is the logical extension of downloading a LUT from the internet and applying it to your photos blindly.

This reliance on AI often goes well beyond color corrections, though. Recent years have also seen an increase in hybrid compositing. This is where a photographer takes a high-quality studio shot of a product or model and uses AI to generate a photorealistic environment that matches the perspective and lighting of the original. The photographer doesn’t need to leave the studio or even bother capturing a background plate.

I’m not saying we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. A lot of AI tools can significantly enhance our workflows. Take AI upscaling, for example. Being able to increase the resolution of a photo or video has a lot of benefits, especially when it comes to large-format prints. But what about when that upscaling introduces detail that wasn’t there in the first place?

The ProScaler feature on the Samsung Galaxy S26 is evidence of this problem. Processing makes its best guess of what a low-detail area is and fills it in with what it thinks you want. But if we’re not too careful, we’ll end up delivering a fabricated photo with people present who weren’t there in reality.

I’m all for the evolution of photography, but what I’m concerned about is that we are in danger of becoming lazy photographers who no longer have to put in the hard graft of becoming better at finding and capturing the perfect shot.

This might not be a problem at this point in time, but looking ten or twenty years down the line, we might end up with a significant skills gap within the industry where no one cares about the art of photography.

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