Photo editing used to mean hours of painstaking manual work. Selecting hair for background removal, individually removing blemishes, carefully dodging and burning to adjust exposure. Now, AI-powered tools do much of this automatically, often better than manual approaches.

I was skeptical when AI editing features started appearing. Surely they’d look artificial, miss nuances, create uncanny results. But after two years of using them, I’m convinced they’ve fundamentally changed the editing process for the better.

Here’s what’s actually working in 2026 versus what’s still marketing hype.

Object and Background Removal

This is where AI editing first became genuinely impressive. Selecting complex objects like hair, fur, or trees used to require precision and patience. Now, AI-powered selection tools in Lightroom, Photoshop, and even free tools handle it better than most manual attempts.

Adobe’s “Select Subject” and “Select Sky” work reliably. Click once, and the selection is accurate enough that you can immediately adjust or replace backgrounds. The time savings are massive.

Background removal apps like remove.bg process images in seconds. Yes, occasionally it makes mistakes around fine details, but the initial result is so good that quick manual cleanup is all you need.

This technology has made certain types of photography more accessible. Product photographers can shoot items in any setting and extract them cleanly. Portrait photographers can replace distracting backgrounds with simple gradients or better locations.

Noise Reduction

High ISO noise used to be a major limitation. Shoot above ISO 3200, and your images looked grainy. Software noise reduction helped but often made images look plastic and smudged detail.

AI-based noise reduction from tools like DXO PhotoLab, Topaz DeNoise, and Adobe’s latest updates is dramatically better. It distinguishes between actual detail and noise, preserving texture while removing grain.

I now shoot at ISO 6400 or 8000 without hesitation, knowing I can clean it up in post. This opens up low-light photography that would have been impractical before.

Sky Replacement

Photoshop and Luminar AI offer one-click sky replacement. You can turn a boring blue sky into a dramatic sunset or add clouds to a flat white sky.

This is controversial. Is it still photography if you’re replacing entire portions of the scene? That’s a philosophical question with no single answer.

Practically, it’s useful for certain types of work. Real estate photography where the weather didn’t cooperate. Landscape images where the composition is strong but the sky was disappointing.

The danger is overuse. When every landscape has a perfect golden-hour sky, images start looking unrealistic and formulaic.

Portrait Retouching

AI skin smoothing, eye enhancement, and teeth whitening are built into many apps now. They work quickly and produce natural results when used subtly.

The key word is “subtly.” The defaults on many apps are too aggressive, creating that over-processed fashion magazine look where skin has no texture. But dial it back, and the tools are useful.

Face-aware adjustments can now identify individual faces in group shots and apply different corrections to each person. This is genuinely helpful for wedding photographers or anyone shooting groups.

Upscaling and Enhancement

AI upscaling tools like Topaz Gigapixel can increase image resolution convincingly. You can take a 12-megapixel image and create a 48-megapixel version that holds up to scrutiny better than traditional interpolation.

This is useful for recovering older digital images or dealing with crops from images that weren’t quite sharp enough. But it’s not magic. A blurry image upscaled is still fundamentally blurry. It’s just bigger.

Similarly, sharpening AI can recover some detail from slightly soft images, but it can’t fix significant focus errors.

Automated Masking and Selection

This is perhaps the most revolutionary change in practical editing. Adobe’s AI-powered masking in Lightroom can automatically select people, skies, backgrounds, subjects, or specific objects.

You can tell Lightroom “select the person” and it does. Then you can brighten just them, or darken just the background, or adjust just the sky. Previously, this required manual masking with gradients, brushes, or complex selections.

The ability to make these adjustments in Lightroom (which is faster and more intuitive than Photoshop for most edits) changes how quickly you can process images.

What’s Still Hype

Generative fill (creating image content from text prompts) is impressive as technology but limited in photographic usefulness. Yes, you can type “add a bird flying” and Photoshop will create one. But it rarely looks like it belongs in a photograph. The lighting, perspective, and style usually don’t match.

This will improve, but currently, it’s more useful for graphic design and conceptual work than photography.

AI-generated style transfers (making your photo look like a painting or another style) have been around for years and are still mostly novelty effects. They’re fun to play with but rarely produce something you’d actually use.

Automatic “make this photo better” buttons exist in many apps. They’re hit-or-miss. Sometimes they nail it, sometimes they make bizarre choices. You still need to understand editing fundamentals to judge whether the automatic result is actually an improvement.

The Learning Curve Question

Some photographers worry that AI tools mean you don’t need to learn editing skills. This is both true and not true.

You can achieve decent results faster with less knowledge than before. That’s good. It makes photography more accessible.

But understanding color theory, composition, and intentional editing choices still matters. AI can execute technical tasks brilliantly, but it doesn’t know your artistic intent. You still need to direct it.

Think of AI editing tools as assistants. They handle tedious technical work so you can focus on creative decisions. That’s positive, not a dumbing down.

The Ethics Question

When does editing become manipulation? This has always been debated in photography, but AI makes it more relevant.

Photojournalism has strict rules about what’s allowed. You can adjust exposure, contrast, and color balance. You can’t add or remove elements. AI makes violations easier and harder to detect.

For artistic or commercial photography, the standards are looser. But transparency matters. If you’re presenting work as straight photography when significant elements are AI-generated or replaced, that’s misleading.

My approach: editing that could have been done in the darkroom (adjusting exposure, contrast, color, dodging and burning, cropping) is fair game. Adding or removing significant elements crosses into digital art territory. Both are valid, but they’re different things.

Cost and Accessibility

Many AI editing features are now built into standard software. Lightroom, Capture One, and ON1 all include AI-powered tools in their normal subscriptions or purchases.

Specialized tools like Topaz products cost extra ($100-200 each) but are one-time purchases.

Free tools with AI features include GIMP plugins, Darktable, and even some web-based editors. The technology is becoming democratized.

Practical Workflow Changes

My editing workflow has changed significantly because of AI tools:

Culling and selecting images is faster because I’m less worried about perfect exposure or complex backgrounds. I know I can fix more in post.

Masking and selective adjustments that used to take 5-10 minutes now take seconds. This means I spend more time on creative decisions and less on technical execution.

I’m more willing to experiment. Want to see what this landscape looks like with a dramatic sky? One click to test it. Previously, I wouldn’t bother unless I was certain it would work.

Batch processing is more sophisticated. AI-powered cropping and subject detection means I can apply different adjustments to different images based on their content automatically.

Looking Forward

AI editing will continue improving. Features that seem magical now will be standard in a few years. New capabilities we can’t imagine yet will emerge.

The fundamental relationship between photographer and computer is shifting. The computer is becoming a collaborator that understands image content, not just a tool that executes specific commands.

This is exciting. It lowers technical barriers, speeds up workflows, and enables results that would have been impractical before. But it also requires photographers to think carefully about where the line is between enhancing and fabricating.

Photography has always been a mix of capturing reality and creative interpretation. AI editing tools expand the creative possibilities while maintaining the foundation of captured light. That’s powerful, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.