Imagen Review: Unleashing the Power of AI in Image Editing

Yogesh Pant
Nov 03, 2023

Ever since the launch of ChatGPT, there has been a lot of buzz around AI, especially in terms of enhanced photography. Just like people started to speculate ChatGPT would replace writers, now it's the photographer's turn. So, Is it true that AI will replace photographers? Well, Absolutely not! In fact, these AI tools would become the best companion for photographers helping them increase their creativity. There have been a lot of such tools available today. One such most talked about AI photo editing app is Imagen. But what is the secret behind Imagen’s success? How does it benefit the photographers? Let’s find out deeply in this Imagen Review. 

Imagen is an AI-powered image editing tool that uses Adobe Lightroom Classic to integrate with your workflow. The tool has wide applications for image editing, including culling, color correction, cropping, straightening, and subject masks. What’s more exciting is that Imagen’s latest version offers cloud backup for handling project backups seamlessly and automatically. 

Surprisingly, Imagen claims to cut down the post-production process by up to 96%. But Is it really true? What capabilities does this AI-powered tool have? We will answer these questions and many more in this detailed Imagine Review. 

How Does Imagen Work?



Before using an app that promises to ease your workload, it is important to understand the science behind it. Image is an AI-powered photo editing app that lets you edit, resize, or crop your images. It works on both Mac and PC, and it learns from your own editing style. 

You just need to upload a catalog (Lightroom LRCAT) of your photos to Imagen, and it will create an AI profile that matches your preferences. You can use this profile to edit any other photos you want, and Imagen will keep learning from your feedback. You can also adjust the AI profile or fine-tune the history of your edits at any time from within the app.

Imagen does all the editing on its servers, so you don’t need to upload your raw files other than the LRCAT file and its Smart Previews. This makes the process quick and efficient. Talking about the speed, we tested it with our home internet, which had an upload speed of about 10 Megabits, and it took only a few hours to upload a catalog of over 3,000 images. 

The latest updates in Imagen offer a cloud backup option for your original raw images or compressed full-resolution images. This can help you save space and time, as the compressed format reduces the file size of your raw photos by about 75% without losing any resolution.

Imagen’s editing speed is amazing, too. It can edit a photo in about half a second, so you don’t have to worry about how many photos you have to edit each week. The AI can handle any workload.

But the most important question is: Does Imagen’s AI really work? The answer is yes, it does! We have used Imagen’s AI for thousands of photos. It has saved us hundreds of hours of boring work and allowed us to focus more on capturing more photos and exploring new creative possibilities. 

Is Imagen Free to Use?

Imagen offers free-to-use photo editing tools until you exhaust your 1000 free edits. After that, you can pay for the feature you want to use at an additional cost. 

With a free plan, you can create an AI profile, but there’s a restriction on the number of edits, i.e., 1000 images. At the same time, you also get two profile options for using the tool: Talent AI and Lite Personal AI. 

For users who frequently need photo editing services, the price starts from 5 cents per photo edit after they exhaust their free limit of 1000 edits. They can further add on other services like crop, straightening, and subject masking at 1 cent each. 

Thus, if you edit about 1000 photos every month and pay for just a few additional tools, you could expect a total of $50 to $70 per month. Additionally, there is a minimum monthly fee for using the platform - $7 for 140 image edits per month. However, it comes with a rollover to the next month. 

As Imagen runs on multiple operating systems, you can download and install it on any system and even upload and download catalogs from different systems at once. 

Apart from the 1000 free edits and $7/per month plan, Imagen also offers fixed monthly/annual subscriptions. An “Annual Commitment Plan’ has an option to edit 18K/36K/72K photos annually, alongside a dedicated account manager. 

Imagen Review: Who Is It For?

No matter what kind of photographer you are, if you have an excessive workload, you should definitely need an AI solution like Imagen. It can save you a lot of time and hassle by automatically color-correcting your photos with stunning results. This can be especially useful for wedding or event photographers who have to deal with thousands of photos every month. 

Even if you are a portrait photographer who takes hundreds or a couple of thousand photos per month, you can benefit from Imagen’s fast and reliable service. Imagen can also handle other types of photography, such as landscape and travel. 

We tried it on our own photos and we were impressed by the quality! However, if you only edit a few photos per month, you might not find Imagen’s $7/month subscription not worth it. But don’t worry, if you don’t use up your credits in one month, they will roll over to the next month until you need them. 

Imagen has different pricing options to suit your needs, whether you are a professional or a hobbyist. The bottom line is, that editing thousands of photos can take hours of your precious time, and Imagen can help you get it done in minutes!

Review of Imagen Features & Functionalities 

What makes Imagen stand out is its features. So, let’s review how Imagen features are making a difference in the photo editing world. 

Imagen Lite Personal AI Profile

While professional photographers have a lot of experience in color correction, not many of them have similar experience. They might feel overwhelmed by the idea of creating a personal AI profile with Imagen. But don’t worry, Imagen has a great solution for you: a Lite Personal AI Profile. 

You can easily create a Lite profile by using one of these two methods: either save a preset of a photo that you have edited to your taste or choose any existing preset that matches your style. Then, upload that preset to Imagen, and it will ask you some questions about your general editing style and preferences, and create a profile for you based on that. 

This is an ideal way to start using Imagen because you can apply that profile to all of your current photos, fine-tune it as you go along, and when you reach 3,000 photos, you can use Imagen to do a full analysis of your catalog. 

We think the Imagen Lite Personal AI Profile is a brilliant idea for beginners who want to get started with Imagen right away. 

Imagen Talent AI Profiles

You don’t have to wait long to explore new ways of expressing your creativity with Imagen. The platform allows you to use the skills and styles of various renowned professional photographers. How? By using Imagen Talent AI Profiles. 

These are special profiles that Imagen has created in collaboration with some amazing photographers who have a distinctive and refined editing style. These profiles are ready for you to use, because they have already been trained with more than 3,000 images, and probably adjusted with many Final Edits changes, too. 

And of course, you can always customize the profile to suit your preferences, as soon as you reach 3,000 edits of your own, and/or by using the “UPLOAD FINAL EDITS” tool.

Imagen Culling Tool

Before a professional photographer can edit the colors of their photos, they need to sort out the good from the bad ones. This is where Imagen’s AI can also help you! It can automatically remove the photos that are blurry or have closed eyes, and keep only the ones with the “best” smiles from each pose you took. It can even use its AI to compare two similar photos and choose the one with the better composition.

Imagen’s Additional Tools

Besides Imagen’s ability to edit, cull, and backup data on the cloud, there are many more technical functionalities this powerful AI tool can perform. You can use its trendy features like Crop, Subject Mask, and Straighten. 

These tools do exactly what they sound. The crop and straightening features allow photographers to level the photos and crop down the unnecessary parts. 

Meanwhile, the subject mask functionality automatically detects the subject from the photo and applies a mask using brushes. It is so similar to the in-built Lightroom feature. 

Simply put, you don’t have to worry about your time drawing on performing such time-consuming tasks. Just install the Imagen and see the magic happen. 

Imagen Cloud 

As we mentioned above, the latest updates to Imagen now allow users to back up their photos to the cloud as part of their workflow. You are already uploading your catalog to the cloud, so why not use that as a backup option? This has some obvious advantages: Your photos are backed up as soon as you start working on them! 

You can choose whether to back up optimized versions of your raw files or full-res raws. (Optimized files are much smaller, about ~75% less, but still have full resolution.) Imagen cloud backup is not included in the basic subscription. It has been free for 1TB of space during the beta phase, but after that, it will cost $3/month for 500GB, or $10/month for 2TB. 

If you need more space, Imagen will offer you a custom plan. You don’t have to worry about your privacy or GDPR compliance; Imagen only uses your photos (by AI alone) to create Personal AI Profiles or apply edits.

Pros and Cons of Imagen

Pros

Cons

Advanced AI algorithms to analyze visual media assets

Limited support for non-English languages

Create custom workflow

Not enough flexibility for some organizations

Integrate with CMS

Highly accurate speech-to-text transcription

Free trial - 1000 free edits

Is Investing in AI Photo Editing App Development a Good Idea?

AI-powered photo editing apps are the future of photography and investing in it will never gonna let you regret it. Whether it is to improve the lighting, color, and contrast, or even replace the sky, AI photo editing apps can do it all with just a few clicks. But how much does it cost to develop an AI photo editing app and is it worth the investment?

According to some estimates, the photo editing app development costs can vary between $40,000 and $200,000, depending on various factors like the app’s design, tech stack used, location of the hired agency, and team size. 

However, the potential return on investment can be much higher, as the photo editing app market is projected to reach a valuation of $387.83 million by the end of 2027, growing at a CAGR of 3.57%.

The main challenge in developing an AI photo editing app is the dataset. Professional data labeling can also be quite expensive. Prices vary based on the type of data needed, but you can expect to pay anywhere from $50 to over $10,000 for high-quality datasets.

Therefore, investing in AI photo editing app development can be a good idea if you have a clear vision of your target audience, a unique value proposition, and a reliable development partner. You can also learn from the case studies of the existing AI photo editors like Adobe Photoshop, Luminar Neo, Canva, or Lensa to get some inspiration and learn from their features and user feedback.

How can Mtoag Technologies Help Build an AI Photo Editing App like Imagen?

As we said earlier, today every individual needs an Insta-ready photo to upload and get all the attention. And what helps them do so is photo editing apps with amazing effects. So, investing in photo editing app development seems to be a profitable business venture. 

But how can you find a reliable app development company that can build your dream photo editing app? Well, if you’re looking around, Mtoag Technologies is here to serve you. We have a team of the best developers and experts who will help you through every step of app development, from design to marketing. We will listen to your needs and requirements and create the best-customized solutions for you. 

We use the latest technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain Development, and Machine Learning, and combine them with user-friendly UI/UX design to offer solutions that are futuristic and result-oriented. 

Our solutions are not only designed to meet your expectations but also to exceed them. Our services are not just limited to designing and developing your app. We also offer post-launch services such as support and maintenance. Besides this, we also help create effective marketing strategies to boost your app’s performance and its ROI in the market.

Final Verdict - Is Imagen AI Any Good? 

We hope you find our insights on the Imagen review helpful. With AI advancing at an unpredicted pace, we expect Imagen will further introduce new and exciting features to make life of photographers easier than ever. 

Till now, you may have understood how popular and effective Imagen is. Thus choosing it as your photo editing companion is a decision you will never regret. At the same time, investing in AI-powered photo editing app development is more profitable than ever before. 

While we admit there’s tough competition in the market, you can still stand out from your competitors by choosing the right business strategies and leveraging advanced technologies. And that’s only possible when you hire a professional mobile app development company like Mtoag Technologies. Don’t believe us? Just check out our portfolio!

FAQs

Can the Public Use Imagen? 

Imagen is a free online service that allows anyone to create artistic images from their photos using artificial intelligence. You can use Imagen to transform your photos into different styles, such as paintings, sketches, cartoons, and more.

How do I Access Imagen AI? 

You can access Imagen AI by visiting its official website. You can also use Imagen AI as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari.

What is Google Imagen AI? 

Google Imagen AI is a research project by Google that aims to develop new methods for generating and manipulating images using deep learning. Google Imagen AI is not affiliated with Imagen.

How does Google Imagen Work? 

Google Imagen uses a neural network to learn how to synthesize realistic images from a given input, such as a text description, a sketch, or a low-resolution image. Google Imagen can also edit existing images by changing their attributes, such as color, style, or content.

How do I Upload Photos to Imagen? 

To upload photos to Imagen, you need to create an account and sign in. Then, you can either drag and drop your photos from your computer or select them from your device's gallery. You can also use the camera icon to take a photo directly from the website or the app.

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