Professional event photographers typically lug around a ton of equipment: Between the camera, tripod, gimbal, microphones, lighting equipment, memory cards, batteries, chargers, a laptop or iPad, and ‘spares’ for virtually all of the above – it’s a wonder that ‘body building’ isn’t a prerequisite for a career in event photography. But the time it takes to set up all that equipment and shoot the actual event pales by comparison to the work that awaits photographers afterwards: the process of backing up and transferring the photos to your computer, culling unusable images and painstakingly editing those that remain – takes up the lion’s share of the event photographer’s workflow, and can last many days, and even weeks.
Happily, in addition to impressive developments in photographic technologies over the years, there have also been some exciting advances in culling and editing software thanks to AI. These AI-powered tools can save photographers a substantial amount of time, allowing them to get their jobs done way faster, deliver their photos to their event clients a lot sooner, and use all that ‘freed-up time’ to either take on more work or simply ‘chill’ between jobs.
But most of the software currently on the market tends to specialize in a single aspect of the event photographer’s workflow, which means that in using them, event photographers still need to use a host of other tools to get their job done; the more tools are used, the fiddlier and more time-consuming the overall process.
Snapify’s all-in-one platform was conceived to solve this very problem, by incorporating the entire event photography workflow in a single solution – from shoot to delivery. Instead of using multiple tools and software to back up and transfer files, review and cull photos, edit them and share them with clients – event photographers can use a single end-to-end solution for all of it, cutting as much as 90% from the ‘traditional’, mega time-consuming workflow.
Comparing the main features of popular Event Photography Platforms
We were curious to see how Snapify’s features compare to those of other popular tools on the market, so we looked at Aftershoot, Lightroom and Imagen to see how they stack up in the main areas of the event photography workflow:
- Automatic backup: automatically transferring images from the camera to your editing environment
- AI-powered culling: automatically reviewing and culling photos based on certain criteria
- AI-powered batch editing: automatically editing multiple photos at once
- Image sharing: seamlessly delivering photos to clients
Let’s dive in!
- Automatic backup (automatically transfer images from the camera to your editing environment)
Aftershoot:
❎ Automatic file transfer is not available. To use Aftershoot, you need to import your photos from your memory card manually using the “Ingest and backup photos feature”. It can, however, put them on up to two separate hard drives at the same time, after which culling begins automatically based on your predefined settings.
Lightroom:
❎ Automatic file transfer is not available. Although Lightroom offers a variety of storage options and the ability to create and manage albums, you have to upload all your photos into Lightroom manually.
Imagen:
❎ Automatic file transfer is not available. Imagen is a photo editing solution for Adobe Lightroom Classic, and as with Lightroom, you need to upload your photos to the platform manually.
Snapify:
✅ Automatic file transfer IS available. Snapify adds 5G connectivity through a small, cellular-based device that connects wirelessly to any professional camera and backs up the images you shoot to the cloud in real time, eliminating the need to spend hours transferring files manually to your hard drive. The solution also includes a Snapify card (an SD card inserted into the secondary slot of the camera that connects it both to the rest of the Snapify suite) which also serves as a secondary backup to the primary SD card, to give you even more peace of mind.
- AI-powered Culling
Aftershoot:
✅ AI-powered culling is available. Aftershoot’s AI-powered culling software reviews and culls thousands of photos in a matter of minutes, locating duplicates and sorting unwanted photos that are blurry or contain red or closed eyes. You can set a variety of criteria for grouping duplicates or identifying unusable photos for easy removal, and tweak the culled selection as you wish in the preview screen.
Lightroom:
❎ AI-powered culling is not available. To cull photos in Lightroom, you first need to add either ‘flags’, color labels of ratings to individual photos (which can be very time-consuming if you’ve got hundreds or thousands of photos to review), and then filter them based on the flags, labels or ratings to display the photos you want to either keep or reject.
Imagen:
BETA AI-powered culling currently in BETA. Imagen Culling (still in BETA) automatically removes duplicate images, blinks, blurry images, or photos with poor composition.
Snapify:
✅ AI-powered culling is available. Snapify backs up the photos you shoot to the cloud in real time, and automatically creates ‘smart’ web galleries that accessible via our app. Once in the cloud, our AI algorithm kicks in almost instantly to begin culling and editing photos automatically. Snapify will cull blurry photos or photos of people with closed eyes, all of which can be reviewed in the app, so you still retain the final say in your final selection.
- AI-powered Batch Editing
Aftershoot:
BETA AI-powered batch editing currently in BETA. Aftershoot EDITS (still in BETA) learns from your past edits and uses that information to color correct and edit your sessions with your custom editing profile. It adjusts exposure, white balance, and HSL for all color tones, as well as straightening and cropping.
Lightroom:
❎ AI-powered batch editing is not available. Although Lightroom is rich with editing features and presets – some of which use AI technology that can save a lot of time (for example masking, adding filters and effects, removing unwanted backgrounds or objects, and more) – these shortcuts still need to be applied to individual photos, and can’t be applied automatically to hundreds (or thousands) of photos at a time.
Imagen:
✅ AI-powered batch editing is available. Imagen is an AI-powered photo editing solution for Adobe Lightroom Classic, so it analyzes each photo and adjusts the different Lightroom parameters based on the user’s chosen editing style and what the photo actually needs. Imagen also analyzes your previous photo edits to create your personal AI profile, which you can then apply to your Lightroom Classic catalog to adjust white balance, exposure, color correction, cropping, straightening, subject masking (to apply local adjustments within photos) and more. You can also choose from a selection of pre-built “Talent AI profiles” created by other photographers, and edit your photos in their style. All AI edits can be reviewed and tweaked in Lightroom.
Snapify:
✅ AI-powered batch editing is available. Snapify’s powerful AI-editing algorithm allows you to edit multiple photos at once using a variety of built-in presets for stunning, studio-quality results. Editing features include white-balancing, color and tone enhancement, alignment, cropping and more. You can also use the ‘slices’ feature to edit certain localized areas within a photo rather than the photo as a whole. All AI edits can be reviewed, so you retain control over Snapify’s editing suggestions. In addition, you will soon be able to use your own presets by uploading thousands of your previously edited photos to ‘teach’ the algorithm your favorite editing styles and apply them to new photos.
- Image Sharing
Aftershoot:
❎ Image sharing is not available. You can cull photos within Aftershoot but to continue working with the files or share, you generally need to export them to other software first.
Lightroom:
✅ Image sharing is available. Lightroom allows you to access your cloud-storage library from any device (mobile or desktop) and post individual photos, groups of images or entire galleries to photo sharing sites like Google Photos or Flickr.
Imagen:
❎ Image sharing is not available. You can download your edited projects to Lightroom but you can’t share photos directly from within Imagen.
Snapify:
✅ Image sharing is available. Snapify’s app (available on both mobile & web) is the hub through which photographers can manage and share their photos with clients. You can set the sharing settings to give your clients access to their photo gallery as soon as you like, which means they can start viewing and engaging with photos (marking their favorites) even during the event! Once you’ve finished reviewing and editing photos, you can share them with clients using a variety of options. Clients can then download them or send them to guests. You can also take care of customer payments within the app.
Also – share photos with guests, using “people tagging” (coming soon!): Photos of specific guests can be located in the photo gallery thanks to facial-recognition tagging (subject to their registration and consent) and shared with them during or after the event.
Conclusion:
Clearly there’s a variety of platforms on the market, each of which specializes in a certain aspect of the event photography workflow. But the only solution that ticks all the boxes – is Snapify, which is all about simplifying the entire process, and in so doing, saving photographers a ton of time. The ability to manage the entire process all within a single platform – from backing up photos, to lightning-fast culling, to studio-quality editing, sharing images with the client and even accepting payments – is redefining event photography, and has already been referred to by Snapify users as a “game changer”.
à Try Snapify today and start delivering masterfully-edited event photos in a snap!