The introduction of AI-driven photo editing software has completely changed the game over the last couple years, and it’s only getting better. Post-production is more of a breeze than a drag at this point, and the software is more powerful and easy to use than ever. A case in point is Evoto AI Photo Editor, which allows photographers to make simple slider adjustments to achieve professional results and batch-retouch hundreds of portraits in just minutes. In fact, we were so impressed after testing it out that we have now officially incorporated using this software into our own professional workflow. In this video/article, we’ll show you why getting familiar with Evoto AI Photo Editor is worth your time.
Full Disclosure: Evoto has sponsored this tutorial. We receive numerous requests for sponsored tutorials, especially when it comes to AI-based software. However, we pass on most of these opportunities because the software is not very good. Evoto, on the other hand, is actually great. That is why we have taken this opportunity to share information on a piece of software that we are actually using in our studio.
Video: How to Retouch Hundreds of Portraits in Minutes!
What Is Evoto AI Photo Editor?
Simply put, Evoto is an AI photo editor that you can use to process RAW files, with options to use filters or presets, and other basic editing features. But it’s also much more than that. Evoto also serves as a powerful retouching tool that can yield incredible results with minimal effort and time spent.
Our Workflow in Evoto AI Photo Editor
To better demonstrate what Evoto can do, we’ll take a look at our workflow and how we use Evoto to retouch our photos. You can take advantage of Evoto’s free trial if you’d like to follow along.
Step 1: Start in Lightroom
Our workflow begins in Lightroom Classic, where we can access our presets and quickly apply a basic color grade. If you have a favorite preset or a basic editing system in place for Lightroom, go ahead and apply that now. Then, we’re going to take our photos right into Evoto.
Step 2: Move Into Evoto
Once you’ve loaded your photos into Evoto, go straight to the Portrait Retouching section on the right side of the editor. At this stage, think of everything you’re doing as creating a preset. Here’s what we mean. You can individually adjust sliders on each photograph, or you can dial in specific retouching adjustments you want to make, save it out as a preset, and then apply it to every image in a batch.
Single Image Editing – Female Subject Case Study
Within this preset that you’re creating, you can specify which settings you want to apply to each subject, meaning Male, Female, Child, Elderly, and so on. One preset can have different retouch settings for EACH PERSON! To illustrate what we’re talking about, we’ll share an example of dialing in settings to edit a female subject.
Here are some of the options you’ll work through to establish a preset for your female subject(s). Simply adjust the sliders to get the results where you want them:
- Remove Freckles & Acne
- Fix body blemishes
- Lighten up eye bags
- Under skin retouching, apply a bit of dodge & burn on the face, and adjust the skin texture to Satin for a little more of a highlight pop
- Unify the face and body complexion
- Make the eyes pop a bit more using sliders for both left and right eyes (because there’s always a little difference)
- Jump into makeup and enhance the contouring and highlights. You can even change makeup styles entirely, but be careful if you’re shooting for a client. Only make these changes if they request them. The same holds true for things like body reshaping.
- Lastly, reduce the fly-aways in the hair
Before and After
Here’s a look at the BEFORE vs AFTER (see the images above). We kept the edit subtle to meet our own preferences, but of course you can adjust all of the above and more to taste.
Now, here’s one of the best parts for knocking out a large set of retouches in minutes. All of the adjustments you made above can now be saved to a preset and your settings can now be used to batch-retouch!
Batch-Retouching
As you’ll find below, it couldn’t be easier to batch-retouch your photos. Here’s how batch-retouching works:
- Save your slider adjustments as a preset – remember to specify unique settings for males, females, children, elderly, or ALL people in a photo.Because we primarily do wedding work, within our presets we designate settings for both Male and Female subjects within the presets. Doing this makes it easier to apply the preset across an entire batch of images, including those with two or more people in them.
- Click “Save Preset”
- Give your preset a name
- Select a location to store the preset
- Select the Portrait Retouching settings (or whichever settings you want included)
- Save
- Find the preset under “My Presets” in the Presets panel
- Move to a new photo, click the preset, and see the results! You can also apply the same preset over an entire batch of photos as well.
PRO-TIP: Test your presets to make sure they are subtle enough to work on various images without taking anything too far or going over the top.
Truthfully, if this were everything that Evoto did, it would still be a valuable tool in your workflow. That said, we’ve really just scratched the surface here.
Additional Features of Evoto AI Photo Editor
Here are some additional features offered in Evoto AI Photo Editor.
Replace Backgrounds
You can quickly replace backgrounds on your studio work using a number of background options inside Evoto’s AI Photo Editor.
Full Skin Retouch and Color Unification
Select a boudoir image in which you need a full skin retouch or color unification and watch how efficiently and effectively Evoto works.
Furthermore, if the backdrop has marks on the floor or background, Evoto can easily clean it up!
Sky Replacement
Have a boring sky? No problem. Replace it with a better one.
Body Re-Shaping
You also have complete control over face and body reshaping, but please note that this is an area where it’s generally best to keep things natural unless a client makes specific requests.
Remove Stray Hair/Flyaways
Evoto quickly and beautifully knocks out stray hair and flyaways!
Remove Glare
Evoto can also remove glass/glare.
And More
Of course, you can handle all of your basic color and raw adjustment settings in Evoto’s AI Photo Editor as well. It’s a powerful piece of AI-driven software that actually works. Evoto helps photographers end the grind of retouching tasks and instead focus on what matters most. For you that might be shooting more, spending time with your family, or participating in other activities.
Pricing for Evoto’s AI Photo Editor
Perhaps the only thing that might prove a hangup for some is pricing. Evoto is free to download and try. When you’re ready, you can purchase credits for each image that you want to export. Credits range from 4.6 cents per image to 6.9 cents per image USD, depending on the package you choose. Buy more credits, and you’ll get a better rate.
The only time credits are used is when you export a photo. At that time, 1 credit = 1 exported photo. This means that you can edit an image as many times as you like at no charge. Only when you’re finished and export the image does it use a credit!
For those of you that want to outright own your software, or be able to have unlimited access, this might be a deal breaker. But, if you’re a professional photographer, you’re likely used to spending a good amount of money for image retouching. Whether it’s done in-house or outsourced, image retouching can cost around $5-10 per retouch just for basic retouching.
Evoto’s AI Photo Editor is a professional tool that offers complete control over the retouch, and you can apply it to ALL of the photos that you want retouched. If you’re editing 100 images for your client’s album, retouching that would have cost me $500-$1000 will now only cost $7 dollars. That’s a deal.
Improvements
As great as this software is, we’d love to have the ability to open/edit images directly from Lightroom Classic and then have the image brought back into Lightroom Classic without having to do this process manually. It’s not a deal breaker, but it would definitely be an awesome workflow feature.
Conclusion
While it’s true that we were paid to create this tutorial, we became legitimate Evoto users in the process. That rarely ever happens. That said, you don’t have to take our word for it when we tell you how great Evoto’s AI Photo Editor is. You can download the software for free and play with it to your heart’s content. Follow this link to get 30 free credits to use. This will allow you to finish out 30 images at no charge! From there, you can grab a credit package and find a way to work Evoto into your post-production workflow.
