In 2026, the photography industry is reaching a turning point. Half of ALL wedding photographers now use AI tools to automatically “cull” (select) and edit their galleries, and that number is climbing. While this makes the business more “efficient,” I believe it compromises the very thing you are paying for: a professional’s eye.
Adobe Lightroom has auto-culling built in now, and whilst it’s a relatively new feature, it’s only going to get used more and more as time goes on.
I’ve made the deliberate choice to keep my process traditional. Here is why I don’t follow the trend of AI-outsourced editing.
The 20-Year Test
Wedding photos aren’t for today; they are for 20 years from now. We have no idea how AI-manipulated images will be viewed by future generations. They may end up looking like the “digital filters” of the past-dated and artificial.
By sticking to traditional, manual editing, I am playing it safe for you. I want your grandkids to see a genuine record of what happened, not a computer’s “optimized” version of a memory. Authentic images are timeless; AI-generated ones are a trend.
Why I Don’t Use AI for Culling or Editing
The majority of the industry now uses AI cloud servers to handle the “heavy lifting” of a wedding. This presents three major issues that I refuse to pass on to my clients:
Privacy: Using AI editors often requires uploading your private images to third-party servers to “train” algorithms. I don’t do this. Your photos stay on my secure, local drives. Your faces are not data for a tech company.
The “Soul” of the Gallery: AI programs are built to find “perfection” and delete “mistakes.” But in a wedding, a blurry photo or a technically “imperfect” frame might hold the most emotional value. A machine cannot feel that; it just sees a technical error. I manually inspect every single image to ensure no real memory is ever discarded by an algorithm.
Human Craft: Using AI to “auto-edit” is, frankly, a shortcut. You are hiring me for my judgment. If a machine does the work, you aren’t getting the artist you paid for.
My Actual Process
I don’t believe in lazy editing, but I do believe in a consistent look.
Custom Presets: I use batch processing to apply my own custom-made presets at the start of an edit – a look I’ve spent over five years developing. This is my signature style, not a generic AI filter. After the “base” preset is applied, I then inspect and edit each image delivered individually.
Manual Refinement: A preset can’t do everything, every image needs to be altered for tone, contrast, exposure, composition and more.
Global Adjustments Only: My editing is rooted in reality. I perform “global” adjustments (light, color, cropping) and minor spot-healing (blemish removal). I do not use AI to reshape bodies, alter facial features, or digitally fix (this includes adding or removing) the people in the photos.
Total Transparency: Where I Do Use AI
Anyone in 2026 claiming they don’t use AI “at all” is probably lying. The majority of people use it. I use AI as a tool for administrative and writing tasks – such as helping draft parts of this website or organizing my business backend.
I draw a hard line at your memories - I will never use Ai to replace the artistic eye you hired me for. No algorithm is going to decide what memories get saved or discarded based off whether it's technically accurate photograph or not. When it comes to your photos, it’s 100% human-made.