State of retouching
Hi everyone! I’m trying to get a basic sense of the state of the industry right now, and I’m also curious whether others are having a similar experience.
For context, I’ve been a retoucher for over 25 years at all kinds of studios. I’ve never seen anything close to the brain rot that AI has caused. I’ve been at a large studio, as part of the marketing department of a large corporation, for the last decade. It’s not always the most glamorous work, but it pays the bills, and at the very least there was a sense of pride in the work we produced.
There are photographers and art directors I’ve worked with for years who have agonized over the tiniest shift in the density of a shadow, or some small detail that wouldn’t even be obvious or noticeable in the final use of an image. These same people are now creating images with AI that are just slop, period.
Sometimes I get direction like, “Check for product accuracy,” but mostly they don’t even seem to care enough to bother with that anymore. There is this vibe that these images are “free,” or bonus content we can create without the need for extra work. I think AI can be a great tool for editing, but not for creating a high-quality, product-accurate image.
Am I going crazy? Are there still studios that want to take photographs? I’m thinking about finding another job, but I’m afraid it will be the same everywhere. Is this due to the size of the company? It seems like the direction to use AI comes down from on high, and the people making those decisions are so far removed from the actual work that they have a fundamental misunderstanding of the technology.
Sorry if this isn’t the place for this. Also it wouldn’t let me post without an attachment. This image is not related to the discussion but I did make it in photoshop 😅