Yapping Session 09 - AI in Photo Editing

Yes, I Used AI. No, That Does Not Mean I Did Nothing.

I have recently learned how to use more tools to achieve my goals without spending months on each picture.

And somehow, for that, I ended up being hated?

Which is honestly fucking insane to me, because I still worked my arse off to make the final image. I still had to take the photo, pick the right shot, clean it, edit it, upscale it, fix artifacts, balance lighting, preserve the person, preserve the costume, make the background fit, and make the whole thing look like it belongs together.

And what is worse?

I am usually doing this FOR FREE.

So at some point I have to ask myself, why do I even bother?

"Wow, You Changed the Background Without Asking?"

I have actually been told something along the lines of:
"Wow, you changed the background without asking?"
Sorry, my dear lassie, but what does the background have to do with your sorry arse?

And that is where I get lost.

I understand when someone does not want their face changed.
I understand when a cosplayer does not want their body shape altered.
I understand when someone does not want their costume redesigned, hidden, sexualized, or visually misrepresented.

That is completely fair.

But the background?

The random convention hall wall?
The ugly railing?
The dirty street corner?
The fire exit sign?
The grey nothingness behind you?

That is the part where people suddenly act like I have committed some unforgivable crime because I touched something around them.

And no, I do not understand.

The Background Problem

Here is the practical reality.

If I want to replace a background, I can do it in several ways.

I can build the environment in Blender.
I can find a free asset somewhere online.
I can composite something by hand.
Or I can generate a fitting background with AI and edit it into the photo.

And people love to pretend those are morally and creatively equal choices.

They are not.

If I take a background from some free online source, it usually comes with baggage. The license may be annoying. The style may not fit. The perspective may be wrong. The lighting may not match. The colors may fight the subject. So now I am not just "using a free background", I am spending hours forcing that background to behave.

And if I make it myself in Blender?

Sure. I can do that.

But now I am building, lighting, texturing, rendering, compositing, color matching, blurring, grading, and polishing an entire environment just so the final result can look almost exactly like what I could have achieved in one hour using AI-generated material.

The funniest part?

The finish would often be the same.

A blurry cinematic background behind a sharp subject.
The same fucking visual purpose.
The same final role in the image.

Except one version takes an evening and the other takes weeks.
And all of that just so some people can say "huh, nice" and scroll past.

Does that make sense to anyone?
Because it does not make sense to me.

AI Tools Are Not the Same as "AI Art"

Let me make one thing clear.

I understand the difference between AI-generated "art" and actual work.

Typing a prompt, getting a full image, and saying "I made this" is stupid. It should not be treated the same as painting, photography, cosplay, modeling, retouching, or actual production work.

But AI tools inside an editing workflow are a different thing.

AI upscaling is a tool.
AI denoising is a tool.
AI background masking is a tool.
AI fill is a tool.
AI lighting assistance is a tool.
AI-generated effects are tools.

A fucking hammer is also a tool.

You can bash your skull against a nail if you really want to suffer for the aesthetic of suffering, but the hammer will do the same job faster.

That does not mean the hammer made the table.

It means the person using the hammer did not waste their life punching nails into wood with their actual forehead.

The Tools I Actually Love

I have grown to love AI upscaling.
I have grown to love AI noise removal.
I have grown to love AI background recognition.
I have grown to love AI background generation when it is used properly.

And I absolutely love AI special effects and lighting effects when they fit the photo. They can look incredible. They can make a flat image feel cinematic. They can help the character belong in the world they are supposed to represent.

But most of all?

The upscaling and noise removal.

That is absolute love ❤️

Because noise removal by hand is hell. Sometimes it is barely even possible to get the result I want manually. You fight the image, you destroy texture, you bring back detail, you soften too much, you sharpen again, you get artifacts, you fix one thing and break another.

And then an AI denoiser does the same thing cleaner and faster.
So yes, I refuse to do that manually every time just to satisfy someone's imaginary purity test.

It saves time.
It improves quality.
It achieves the same result.

That is the entire point of tools.

What I DO NOT change

There is also this weird assumption that using AI means I just let it destroy the person in the photo.

No.

That is exactly what I try to avoid.

When I edit cosplay photos, I actively try not to change the cosplayer's appearance. I avoid changing their body shape. I avoid redesigning their costume. I avoid hiding the work they put into the outfit. I avoid replacing props with random nonsense. I avoid changing identity.

The person is the point.
The costume is the point.
The character is the point.

The edit should support that, not overwrite it.

So when someone starts throwing hate at my work just because I used a god damn AI tool somewhere in the process, especially while I am doing the work for free, I am not impressed.

I am flabbergasted.
Disgusted, honestly.

And I will no longer work with those people.

This applies to all photos with people, not just cosplayers. I value and respect people and their rights. I often go beyond and do extra shit around. Please return the respect for me and my effort.
(this is supposed to sound passively-agressive, so just give it the right tone when reading, thank you)

Free Work Does Not Mean Free Abuse

This is the part that really pisses me off.

I waste my time on people.
I do this my entire life and people just don't value my time.

I take their photos.
I sort through the shots.
I edit them.
I clean them.
I enhance them.
I try to make them look cool.
I spend hours making something they can post, keep, enjoy, or use.

Then they hear the word "AI" and suddenly I can shove my work up my rectum?

Fuck you.
Literally, go fuck yourself.

I respect consent.
I respect privacy.
I respect GDPR.
I will not share photos with someone's face in them if they do not want that.

But respecting someone's privacy does not magically make their opinion intelligent.

If your entire argument is "AI was used, therefore your work is worthless", then that is just plain stupid.

And that should be translated to all environments. Making software and using copilot as a helping tool literally just makes it faster, but it does not replace the programmer, it just helps him. The misuse, again, is when someone sits down and generates the whole thing. (Though it's literally still impossible if your aim is something bigger than a simple website even if you wanted)

You Are Not Entitled to Control the Whole Photo

Here is another thing people do not seem to understand.

Being the subject of a photo does not automatically make you the creative director of every pixel around you.

You absolutely have a say in how you are represented.
Your face, body, costume, identity, and personal dignity matter and you have a say in it.

But no, you do not have the divine right to demand that I ask you before changing a wall, a sky, a street, a background, a light effect, or some random trash bin behind you, especially when you are not the owner of the photo and the changed part is not you or your property.

If I alter your appearance, that is a serious topic we should speak about.
And if I replace the grey convention wall behind you with a better fitting environment? What does that have to do with your opinion when you didn't even pay me to do this and yet I give a shit about how it all looks together?

And I find it extremely privileged and abhorrent when someone reacts with disgust because I dared to touch something around them in a photo I worked on.

Fuck you

The copyright laws, let me inform you when you obviously have no clue, say clearly that the author and owner of the photo is the person (or entity) who took the picture. Meaning that you DO NOT own the rights to the picture your cat took of itself by accident with your smartphone, the cat actually has it. Moron. (technically the cat will never give a damn, but really it's their photo, not yours)

The Actual Problem Is Not AI

The actual problem is not the use of AI.

The problem is the people who do not understand process, effort, tools, ownership, editing, or boundaries, but still feel entitled to judge all of it with maximum confidence when hearing something they just don't like.

AI can be misused.
Of course it can. The same as a hammer or other tool, even AI can be misused.

It can steal attention from real artists.
It can flood the internet with low-effort garbage.
It can be used to fake work, fake people, fake photos, fake everything.
It can be used irresponsibly and disrespectfully.

But that does not mean every use of AI inside a creative workflow is automatically evil.

There is a massive difference between generating an entire fake artwork and using AI to upscale a crop, remove noise, mask a background, create atmospheric lighting, or build a background plate that still needs editing, grading, and compositing.

Pretending those are the same thing is just stupid.

People Hate What They Do Not Understand

This is literally just another hill that exists purely because people do not understand how the technology works.

They do not understand the differences between AI tools.
They do not bother to learn.
They do not bother to adapt to the era of new tools.
They just react the same way their grandparents reacted to the existence of the internet.

I was told that the cosplay community, at least here in Czechia, stands against the use of AI.

And honestly?

I bet that opinion stands mostly on the fact that some moron stole a lot of art, used it to train an early AI model, and now a whole group of people stopped thinking right there.

They understood the first outrage and learned nothing after

And all I can say to that is:
You are stupid, do not work with me, and fuck you.

Stolen art is not the same thing as AI-generated output.

An AI model does not have conscious knowledge of any specific artwork used to train it. It does not sit there with a folder full of stolen pictures, carefully picking which one to copy. It is a probability machine, full of numbers, weights, patterns, and correlations.

"Teaching it" means giving it another set of data, which then affects how the model interprets patterns. And even that behaves differently from model to model, because every model has different probabilities, different weights, different training, and different behavior.

It is the same basic idea as large language models.
They generate the next word based on calculated probability.

They do not know anything.
They do not understand anything.
They do not have opinions, taste, morality, intent, or memory in the human sense.

They are just fucking tools.

And tools can be used well, badly, lazily, creatively, honestly, or dishonestly.

That does not make every person using the tool a thief. And I DO USE AI TOOLS.
I am not lying about it, I am not hiding it, because there is no shame in honestly using the tools without abuse, without thinking, or working.

"AI Has No Place in Art" Is Not an Argument

And I have also been told:

"AI does not have any place in any process of making any art."

And I just blatantly cannot agree with that.
Not because I refuse to listen. Not because I worship AI. Not because I think every AI use is automatically good.

But because that is not an argument.

It has zero logic behind it.
It's just a feeling, an opinion based on zero grounds.

You may feel like AI does not belong in art. Fine. You can feel that. But now explain it according to the arguments I actually presented.

Explain why AI upscaling is evil.
Explain why AI denoising is evil.
Explain why AI masking is evil.
Explain why AI background recognition is evil.
Explain why AI-assisted lighting is evil.
Explain why using a generated background plate as part of a larger edit, when the essence of the image was not broken, but actually enhanced, is evil.
Explain why making the EXACT same job but faster makes it evil.

Because so far, nobody has been able to present any logical argument.
Just vibes. Just outrage. Just "I do not like it, therefore nobody should use it."

And that is not good enough for me. I'd hope for the future of humanity and the evolution of critical thinking that nobody is satisfied with such an answer. That this would not be good enough for ANYBODY.


I have also been told:

"You should just do less if you cannot do it without AI."

But that is the funniest part.

I can do it without AI.

I can rebuild things manually.
I can composite by hand.
I can clean noise manually.
I can make backgrounds myself.
I can do the long, painful, primitive version of the same work.

I am just not going to waste my life on it.
Is that so wrong?

Is hammering a nail into a wall so morally offensive that I should get shot for not using something more primitive?
Are we really going back to stones and sticks?
Because that is literally the same thing.

Tools improve. Workflows improve. People adapt.

Photography itself was once treated as a threat to "real art."
Digital painting was treated as fake because it had undo buttons and layers.
Photoshop was treated as cheating.
3D references were treated as cheating.
Stabilizers, autofocus, presets, plugins, filters, content-aware fill, denoisers, LUTs, brushes, stock assets, and procedural tools have all been treated as cheating by someone at some point.


And yet here we are.
Everyone uses tools.
They just get very dramatic when the new tool is not the one they personally grew up with.

The question is not whether a tool was used.

The question is whether the work is honest, respectful, controlled, and good.
That is the only standard that makes sense.

And I also hope everyone realizes that photo editing for the past twenty+ years has already been using tools that are machine-based as all hell.

Photoshop actions.
Filters.
Smart selection.
Content-aware fill.
Noise reduction.
Sharpening algorithms.
Camera RAW processing.
Lens correction.
Skin smoothing.
Color grading presets.
Upscaling.
HDR merging.
Panorama stitching.
Automatic masking.
Object removal.

All of that is software interpreting an image and producing a result based on instructions, parameters, models, algorithms, or learned behavior.

And cinematography?
Cinematography is filled with machine-made effects. Stabilization, compositing, CGI, tracking, rotoscoping assistance, color matching, simulation, denoising, motion interpolation, digital makeup, background replacement, and a mountain of other tools.

But hey, it is an algorithm and a human is controlling the machine until it gives them the desired result.
Oh wait!
Am I describing a filter in twenty-year-old Photoshop, or am I describing AI?

I. Fucking. Wonder.

So where is the standard?
Because if the standard is “the machine helped”, then almost all of modern visual production is suddenly invalid.
If the standard is “the computer calculated something”, then digital editing has been fake for decades.
If the standard is “the tool made the work faster”, then every serious creative workflow is apparently cheating and computers are evil.

So the actual standard cannot be “AI was involved.”
That is too stupid to survive even basic comparison and I truly want to believe that nobody is as stupid as to stand behind such a statement.

The standard has to be honesty, control, consent, respect for the subject, and the quality of the final work.

I'm just witnessing a complete selective outrage against a thing that evolves quickly and people fear it instead of understanding.

Pick One, Then

Absurd enough, I really have been wished all hate on earth for using AI tools.
I really have been wished so. That's how far and how disgusting this illogical hatred towards technology goes.

So fine.
From now on, I can offer two options.

Option one:
You get this result without AI.
But I charge you 120 hours of editing, because that is what it may take to manually rebuild, render, composite, denoise, clean, mask, relight, and polish the whole thing.
And I will never again do that for free, because that is an absurd amount of work that nobody will ever appreciate anyway.

Option two:
You get literally the same result, but I charge you 2-3 hours of editing, or maybe I even do it for free, as I often do.
But I will use AI tools.
And you can either suck it up, or pay for 120 hours so I can redo the entire thing for the same result like an absolute moron, just because you are uncomfortable with me using a fucking hammer.

Then tell me if it is worth your emotional storming.

Final words

I am not going to suffer for weeks just to prove that I could have done something manually.

I really hope that people will read this and attempt to understand the problematic, the technology, the tools. At least ATTEMPT to do so.

I can do things by hand.
That does not mean I should always do them by hand, does it.
I can walk 100km distance, for sure, but I can also drive a car and save day/s of struggles.

The final image matters. The respect for the subject matters.
The honesty about the process matters. The time spent matters. And the result matters.

And yes, the tools matter too.

AI is not my replacement.
AI is not the artist.
AI is not the photographer.
AI is not the editor.

AI is a tool in the box.

And if someone cannot handle that or does not want to understand the effort, then I have a very simple answer:

Go fuck yourself ❤️ (or just bash your head against a nail)

I take pride in my work, so this stance really offended me if you did not notice.
And a little disclaimer: the preview image is the actual work I did (PART of it, it was a big photoshoot with even more people), with the cosplayers actually censored. If you know and recognize them by some miracle, don't hate-speech them, don't bully them. They are just an example of a large issue. And it's by no means the goal of this post. I'm just bitching and I hope somebody hears it and I wanted to show you at least partially what I am now unable to share in it's full glory. I respect consent. It's also fair to say that I did actually get consent to share some of it and am thankful to people who actually agreed and value my work. Thank you once more ❤️