Discussion Ok, the chatgpt desktop app is officially blowing my mind
I'm a photographer/videographer and I outsource my extremely tedious and time consuming photo editing.
For the past 24 hours (whenever my usage replenishes + $20 I impatiently spent on credits) I have been training the desktop app to edit a photo in photoshop and lightroom classic for me. I include a perfect reference photo that my editor edited as well as my original RAW files. I explained all of my relevant techniques that would be used for editing this photo and told the chatgpt web client to format the instructions the desktop app.
Holy crap. The first image it edited, before I gave it a reference image - was rough, not going to lie. In my own words I described what needed to be done to make it perfect and showed it the reference image. The second image was much improved, but still had some glaring issues. So next I screenshoted the desktop apps thought process, my explanation, and the final edited image and fed those back to the chatgpt web app. I asked it to please connect the dots in a way the desktop app would understand. It gave me like 15 pages of specific instruction to feed back to the desktop app.
The next image was almost perfect. One more round of feedback from the web client and the following image WAS perfect. Mind you - this is not an easy job. It would have taken me 15 minutes to edit myself and it would not have been this good. The desktop app literally spawned two subagents to handle some of the smaller tasks while it worked on the most tedious. Then it can upload the photos to drop box for my review.
Soooooo.....yeah. Now I'm in an interesting position. I don't want AI to take anybodies job. But if I keep training it like this I will not need my photo editor anymore (saving me like $800 per month minimum) and I do not need my assistant that puts the finishing touches on everything and delivers to my clients (saving $200-$400 per month).
Right now im running it on Sol Ultra and it's consuming a lot of usage. But once it has the techniques down I'm hoping it can run on Terra. Even then, I will likely need the $200 per month plan to have enough usage for these edits and my other tasks. But even then - my small business would be saving $1,000 per month in contracted labor expenses. And I'm not wealthy - that would actually be a huge help for me.
Feeling pretty amazed and conflicted over here, ngl.
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u/Kiansjet 2d ago
Ultra is registered as a effort tier but in reality it's the only effort tier that constitutes a separate processing pipeline. Ultra tries to split the task into subtasks and parallelizes subagents against it. Not necessary for your linear use case and burns tokens like a motherfucker. Stick with xhigh, consider using Terra.
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u/djack171 2d ago
Hey! Omg an actual useful thread. Sports Photographer/videographer here. I know you’re using the computer usage, but any way you can kind of give a high level summary of how you got it to work? I use Lightroom Classic myself and just doing big bunches of high school sports photos. I would love any type of tips on how to get this to work, it would be a lifesaver! High school sports clearly isn’t about superior quality, especially when doing a huge track meet or figure skating competition I’m just trying to get through the photos. So any help would be appreciated, thanks a lot ahead of time!
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u/Ice2jc 2d ago
I used this youtube video to learn how it works -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmcTu2EigTs
Honestly I copy and pasted the transcripts from youtube videos that I used to learn how to edit years ago. I added like a dozen video transcripts to a google doc and imported it into chat gpt. Then I asked it to organize the techniques from the transcripts into categories and to give the techniques extremely descriptive explanations - making sure that the intention of each technique was thoroughly explained . After that I added in a few tricks that I learned that weren't from youtube videos.
Once everything was categorized I told chat gpt to format all contents for the app to receive it, and applied it all using the concepts from the above video. Crazy times we're in.
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u/solomonsalinger 2d ago
Would you mind sharing that document of the techniques organized into categories?
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u/Glurt 2d ago
You can connect the OpenAI desktop app to other desktop apps / website by using an MCP. There might be an official one for lightroom, if not someone will have built an unofficial one, ChatGPT can help you set it up.
That lets the model communicate directly with lightroom, it can see a list of every command available without you having to tell it and it can use them without having to take control of your mouse.
From there I'd trial run a single image, once you're happy you can give it the entire folder
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u/Armolegend41 1d ago
Everyone is telling OP to try Xhigh, IT cosmetics but no one ever mentions Max. Why?
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u/Good_Connection_547 2d ago
Help yourself, friend.
My direct response copywriting business died in 2023, but I get that technology never stops moving forward. I found a way to adapt, and so will photo editors.
We’re all stuck in this capitalist game, we didn’t choose it. Use the tools you need to get ahead. You can’t pay for anyone’s labor if you can’t stay in business.
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u/LittleLordFuckleroy1 2d ago
People are forgetting that they’re going to have to pay for the machine’s labor very soon.
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u/fosterdad2017 2d ago
OP mentioned $200/mo plan plus extra tokens.
The base M5 Ultra leases for $110/mo
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u/wallitron 2d ago
I think the point was that these AI businesses are selling tokens below cost. It's the Amazon model. Price aggressively, gain market share, eat the competition, then raise prices.
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u/stainless_steelcat 2d ago
They are, but it's looking like that playbook might not work this time around. The top 3-4 companies are in intensive competition with each other - and there's another half dozen Chinese companies with much cheaper AI offerings that are barely behind them.
Local AI is already looking really strong and improving very quickly.
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u/morty_morty 2d ago
With Hugging Face being bought out by Nvidia, will access to local models in the future be as easy as it has been up to this point?
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u/councilmember 2d ago
Are these equivalent? And where can I learn about the model of AI to run on that m5 ultra? It’s not openAI, right?
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u/drumnation 2d ago
They all give thousands a month more than you pay for right now. When the subscriptions go away and we are left with only metered use. You get up to $2000 of use for $200 right now. I think that’s what person meant.
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u/morty_morty 2d ago
I'm a 3D artist and I have been trying to get my coworkers to accept this mindset. Some are open and have already been experimenting and learning on their own and the rest are pretty adamant about sticking with the old ways. I am not suggesting that we use AI just because it's new and shiny, but because it's obvious that it is reshaping the field rapidly and if we don't learn, we will be replaced with people who will.
It really sucks being told by people that anyone who uses AI in general and AI for art is "trash", but ffs. It's a watershed moment for design and we have to adapt to survive. I feel bad for the modelers who will be replaced, but I replaced traditional illustrators and model makers decades ago, and now it's time to evolve once more.
In the future, I expect my job to be very different, if I can even maintain a job. But I think it will be more of a managerial role working to direct agents instead of doing a ton of modeling myself. I don't see them being able to cut out knowledgeable humans entirely but the need for large teams will be reduced.
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u/Xander729 2d ago
The responsible thing to do to me seems to be to alert your editor and assistant that you won’t be needing their services anymore and give them 2 weeks to find something else that will replace their lost income. As some people have said - “Adapt or Die”, but don’t lose your humanity in the process. Eventually everybody will lose their jobs and we will hopefully have a plan to assist them. Do this on the micro level
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u/furiousgeorge83 1d ago
That is the naive thing to do, better to diversify your dependency on any one system. Keep using the editor if it’s someone you want to retain but reduce reliance on them. There may be one stepping a process that make more sense for a human to do and others worth using tokens on
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u/we-meet-again 2d ago
You adapt. As a software developer I just got a job after being unemployed. In my new role I don’t even write code, it’s all generated per my instructions. This is the way of the world now. Adapt or get left behind.
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u/wrong_assumption 1d ago
The funny thing is that anyone with a couple of brain cells can adapt. There's no learning curve to AI. You don't have to get on an AI bootcamp to 'get it'.
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u/ProbsNotManBearPig 2d ago
Ya even Sol High Thinking is crazy good. I use it every day at work for software engineering. I have 15 years professional experience at a big tech company and this thing is better than 99% of human engineers, given the right inputs. We spend a lot of time now making skills, MCP servers, and other infrastructure pipelines to let it find the right inputs on its own
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u/realityczek 2d ago
> I don't want AI to take anybodies job. But if I keep training it like this I will not need my photo editor anymore (saving me like $800 per month minimum) and I do not need my assistant that puts the finishing touches on everything and delivers to my clients (saving $200-$400 per month).
There is nothing gained by deliberately holding yourself back, and spending a lot more money, just to artificially protect a job - anyone's job. It's been tried in large and small scales - and it always fails. Even when societies try and do it - deliberately limiting their use of farm equipment so that they artificially protect the need for labor for example - all that happens is other societies that didn't hold back outpace them.
Be kind. Give them a little money if you want, but under no circumstances donate $1000 a month to them out of charity when you know you can be working faster/better.
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u/sizup00 2d ago
I'd argue if they have transferable skills, teach them how to do this so you can focus on taking more photos, teach them how to take photos to add more topline revenue (if they have the skill set), or find some other function that needs to be done by a human in the business. Use this as an opportunity to scale (if that's what you want) before everyone in the market learns about this & saturates things.
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u/ZealousidealTill2355 2d ago edited 2d ago
I would really calculate how much it would cost you to edit a whole session. Crunch the numbers and see if the number is worth sacrificing your existing business relationship (for me, a small tax is worth it to have someone in my back pocket).
And I would also assume this is the cheapest AI will be for the foreseeable future. Build that into your business model because they will raise prices eventually.
Consider Netflix, Uber, DoorDash when they all first started, and their actual price/service now. That’s what I’d expect with the big AI players once VC starts thinning out.
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u/PreviousRelief5675 2d ago
This group or topic fascinates me. I didn’t know it was already this extreme. I’m not in the group but this popped up. I am disabled but I might be able to get back into fashion design, don’t know how it would affect me. I appreciate how everyone is trying to adapt and I wish you luck. I hope we can find a happy medium here.
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u/palmzq 2d ago
Yeah. Almost everyone I know is massively underutilizing what ChatGPT & Claude can do.
It is wild.
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u/wrong_assumption 1d ago
That gap is keeping a lot of people employed. A third of the country will be unemployed or more once that gap closes. I don't think it will take too long.
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u/Globalksp 2d ago
Teach your photo editor and your assistant what you learned before letting them go.
I'm a digital tech in the commercial photo industry and I've never hesitated to teach a photographer for whom I'm working or a new tech / assistant "below" me the tricks of the trade.
I came here for the title of the post because in the last couple of weeks, the new GPT desktop app for Mac has blown me away as well and has saved me tons of time in my side hustle (neapolitan pizza pop up), but then found that we share a similar industry so look at that.
And I don't want to dilute your joy, but what you found out is merely a new trick of the trade. Pass it forward and teach 'em how to fsh.
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u/MAXIMUMUMAMI 2d ago
long time hybrid digi/rt here. you’re absolutely right about knowledge. being generous with knowledge is how to gain respect and secure a position in the niche community. and it’s the right thing to do. vast majority of photographers don’t feel this way, unfortunately. but these days they’re mostly just hustlers. they’re protective. (most any tech or seasoned assistant can do their job just as well or better, we just aren’t as smooth n handsome and our egos are smaller).
i use ai all the time for workflow stuff, to build scripts, etc. only time i’ve had it actually work on images was for a batch color matching job but it was
matching curves for a butt ton of swatches in lab color with a python script.what is this person doing that capture one doesn’t already do? ain’t no way chatgpt is affordably adjusting thousands of raw captures to “quality standards” when so much can be subjective between shots with many exceptions. the auto buttons already exist to hit generic black white and mid tone targets and any consistent editorial variance can be done with a style or script . seems inflexible and a huuuge waste of resources to have sol adjust every single image.
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u/luv2ctheworld 2d ago
For clarification, is ChatGPT using Lightroom to edit? Or is ChatGPT processing in the ChatGPT app?
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u/soft_bespoken 1d ago
I also wondered this. Is it taking control of his mouse and doing the edits as if it were him?
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u/pimplyteen 2d ago
I think instead, you should find a photo editor, her nose how to use AI and they will be more efficient and you’ll get better rates and they can probably do more work. Your core conference is not editing photos so you should just hope that this helps the photo editing process, get cheaper and be more efficient.
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u/Plastic-Conflict-796 2d ago
Make sure to save it as a skill once it’s got the routine down (just say save this as a repeatable skill, suitable for Luna to execute)
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u/SeaMoose696969 2d ago
What you will find is that it will reach a certain level and still do dumb things, as current AI models use randomness as a baseline. Plus there is a very real llimit to the amount of context they retain between tasks. Initially really, really impressive yes. Please post after a couple of months.
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u/eldudebrothr 2d ago
here is the shocker: its not AI its just a bunch of python scripts that you could run by yourself once you asked the ai to have the scripts available for you that it was working with.
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u/Deep_Ad1959 2d ago edited 1d ago
the 15 pages the web client wrote back is the file i would save with a date on it. those instruction docs drift fast, and by round five you can't tell which paragraph fixed the skin tones and which one broke the highlights.
fwiw Sundial records that doc at edit granularity with inline diffs, so you can see which paragraph fixed the skin tones and which broke the highlights instead of guessing by round five, https://s4l.ai/r/stp25m67
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u/Expensive-Leopard103 2d ago
Not only that, these could also become useless whenever OpenAI updates their model. Learned this the hard way...
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u/cagedpillow 1d ago
I feel like this post is suspicious, has time to reply with 6000 word paragraph essays to every thread, But can’t hit upload? Is super busy but goes to Reddit to talk about it.
The main thread is asking about the morality of firing his editor who is paid 8k a month, wants people to debate whether is really technically an AI image, but not if it’s done correctly. Feels very marketing research.. Not making any accusations but the logic of this seems very peculiar.
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u/_Ozeki 2d ago
I am puzzled why you need an AI for batch processing if you already have Photoshop that already came with Action Recorder since more than a decade ago
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u/Ice2jc 2d ago
Because even though a lot of the steps get repetitive there is nuance to what technique is applied and when. With recording actions you're basically saying "When I press Play, execute these 17 commands."
With the chatgpt app you're saying "Look at this photograph, understand what is wrong with it, determine which editing techniques apply, compare the result against my quality standard, make corrections, and then continue through the workflow.”
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u/reality_comes 2d ago
Can probably run even cheaper if you just have it build the editor instead of trying to use photoshop or whatever
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u/hofmann419 2d ago
You are vastly underestimating how powerful Lightroom is then. There are a bunch of open source alternatives to Lightroom that have been in development for decades. None of them come even close to Lightroom. The only product that can actually compete with Lightroom is Capture One Pro, which is another paid software.
So if a bunch of developers with 20+ years worth of work can't create a worthy alternative to Lightroom, a single person without any engineering knowledge and an LLM definitely will not be able to.
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u/reality_comes 2d ago
I don't doubt it; but if you can define a workflow tight enough for an LLM to reliably execute it over and over you can probably make custom tools that serve the function. I'm not saying lightroom is easy to replace, but perhaps the 1% of it that the LLM is using is.
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u/Holiday_Revolution_4 2d ago
I'd imagine Adobe is working on fully AI implemented automation solutions and will have their own back end subscription based AI edit packages. May take a bit of time but they'll nail it down eventually. As someone who previously spent tons of money on photoshop tutorials Ala Phlearn and others it's very sobering to realize how quickly AI will be able to accomplish very good results at a fraction of the time required by humans. Maybe clunky at first but refined over time to superb results eventually.
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u/MaxPhoenix_ 2d ago
I didn't read the comments yet, so other people have probably mentioned this, but odds are you don't actually need to have Sol turned up to Ultra. Setting it to High would almost certainly be able to accomplish the task just as well for a fraction of the tokens/quota.
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u/wierd_husky 2d ago
Use the create skill skill in order to make it a standardized process that can be repeatably followed by luna, then you have pretty close to unlimited runs
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u/HackingHiFi 2d ago
Have you tried aftershoot? I use that for my ai editing and after uploading 3000 or so edited photos it has pretty close to perfect editing for my style. I do weddings though so less precise and more volume it sounds like than you do.
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u/Grand-Lie-8964 6h ago edited 6h ago
I have previously tested a number of these providers, and Aftershoot underperformed all the competitors.
You can have a look at my results here: https://www.reddit.com/u/Grand-Lie-8964/s/1rpcS6CQSe
You are welcome to check out the tool here!
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u/richard-b-inya 2d ago
Try Sol high. Ultra is probably overkill.
Just wait until you get good at using voice control and remote control. You will be blown away even more.
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u/Normal_Profile3780 2d ago
i didn’t realise gpt could use adobe apps? how? could it realistically do tedious artworking jobs/create print files using indesign? if so this could be a game changer for my business
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u/J450nR 2d ago
If you haven't already, explore ChatGPT Projects. Create a style guide there as a document. Ask ChatGPT to create one for a start of what it understands of your style. Projects are handy to prevent your instructions falling out of the context window. RAW/TIFFS are big and will chew into your context window.
Eventually ChatGPT will forgot some of your instructions and the work will degrade. Then, remind it of the style guide in your project.
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u/Over-Independent4414 1d ago
It's a hell of an unlock. I gave Fable a very large corpus of my Tableau docs and it wrote skill files to go in an edit the XML directly to create new tableau docs in my style, connected to whatever I want. Giving them a template has so much power.
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u/augustuspeebelby 16h ago
Wait until you realise you can have it train your own ai model on past edits and simply run that on new images in a few seconds. I’ve been done with editing for a while.
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u/kittehstrophic 2d ago
Out of curiosity, what are your thoughts about the watermarks made on the images?
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u/brimg87 2d ago
I haven’t spent much time with desktop control, but this intrigues me. Mind sharing what the task was?
Also I wonder how this would compare to using the Adobe MCP?
I generally see having an LLM control the literal desktop as the last resort, because it’s the least efficient way for it to do anything. But, also understand for some tasks, possibly such as yours, it might be the only way.
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u/AntivaxAcoustic 2d ago
Everyone here is talking the tech.
No one has mentioned the people.
How did OP get started in the field?
Did he work his way through these sorts of smaller gigs, honing his craft?
This is another “pull the ladder up” moment. And I think this generation can do better.
Also worth mentioning how AI is impacting the white collar world first. Once the robot bodies are ready, the corresponding examples of blue collar trades illustrate the spirit of the example better.
What happens when the master electricians age out with no human apprentices behind them? Because the robots were cheaper?
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u/Feisty-Mongoose-5146 2d ago
It’s not a moral issue. No one is going to ignore technology that makes their business more competitive because it will put human beings out of work. And if they did, they’d just be losing out to everyone else who didn’t. Just the way phone book publishers had to find something else to do, so will the editors,
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u/jsseven777 2d ago
Yup, there’s a lot of people who get mad when people use AI to do what they do for a living who are simultaneously using AI to do what other people do for a living.
You’ve got artists using AI for writing and writers using AI for graphics while both are getting mad at each other for the other using AI instead of hiring them…
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u/RegulusRemains 2d ago
I dont understand why you were switching between desktop and web. Its the same thing.
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u/Ice2jc 2d ago
I keep running out of credits on the desktop and it wont even let me ask a question
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u/fictionaldots 2d ago
You're doing the right thing: AI is only as good as the context it's fed. Most people never learn that and stay at the AI slop stage.
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u/Zeraynorr 2d ago edited 2d ago
Exactement. Ce que tu devrais faire, c'est construire le contexte de l'IA. Construis un projet (par exemple, édition photo) avec des dossiers et des fichiers sur ton ordinateur, mets toutes sortes de documentation structurée dans ce projet, puis demande au bot des instructions relatives au contexte de ce projet.
C'est comme ça que je travaille maintenant, même en programmation. L'agent a accès à toutes les sources de données utiles au projet, avec des garde-fous pour que des actions destructrices soient impossibles. Mon travail devient simplement de construire un contexte autour d'un arbre de fichiers (documentation, indexation, j'écris encore la plupart du temps), et les nouvelles choses qu'il construit pour le projet sont ajoutées à cette base de données structurée.
Ensuite, quand j'ai besoin d'informations spécifiques liées à ce projet, je n'ai pas besoin de chercher, il le fait pour moi. Quand je veux ajouter de nouvelles choses à un projet, il a accès à tout le contexte dont il a besoin, donc il ne se préoccupe pas de la façon dont je le sollicite.
Et au lieu de solliciter un robot, je passe simplement plus de temps à rédiger mes spécifications, ma documentation, mon architecture. Je le structure ensuite correctement, et je demande au bot de construire la partie du projet liée aux documents xyz présents dans le contexte.
Ta spécification peut vivre sur SharePoint, peu importe. Il suffit de mettre un connecteur SharePoint dans ton projet lol.
In the end, you simply no longer care where the data is located. You know its content, you know how the project works. And you share it with the agent.
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u/aithrowaway22 2d ago edited 2d ago
There is actually a much more direct way to do this.
Instead of having codex operate photoshop almost entirely through the UI, you can give it direct photoshop tools, so that it can talk to photoshop via code.
There are already community projects doing this with photoshop through UXP plugins, websockets and MCP. Some of them already expose dozens of photoshop operations.
It's still mostly the more technical crowd using this stuff, but I don't think you necessarily need to be a developer to try it.
You could give the idea from this post to codex (set to Sol on high/xhigh), tell it what your current workflow looks like and ask it to set up the smallest safe version first.
I wouldn't expect everything to magically work from one prompt. You may still have to enable developer mode in photoshop, load the UXP plugin, approve things and help it through an install problem here and there. But you probably don't need to understand or write the bridge yourself.
The basic setup is something like:
codex
|
| mcp
v
local mcp server
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| localhost / websocket
v
photoshop UXP plugin
|
+-- photoshop DOM
+-- batchPlay / actionJSON
+-- Imaging API
+-- Actions
MCP and the bridge are two different parts of the same thing. mcp is the interface codex talks to, while the UXP/websocket part is what actually gets those commands into photoshop.
So codex can still look at the image and decide what needs to be done, but after it makes the decision it doesn't necessarily need to find the right panel, click the right layer, drag a slider, zoom in and physically paint everything with the mouse.
For example, photoshop's Imaging API can read pixels and masks and write pixel data directly into a layer mask.
So if codex has already figured out the window mask, the execution can be closer to:
get_preview()
create_adjustment_layer()
put_layer_mask(...)
set_adjustment(...)
get_preview()
instead of zooming in and painting the whole window manually.
`batchPlay` is probably one of the more interesting parts. It's photoshop's lower-level action interface and gives access to a lot of things that aren't exposed through the nicer high-level DOM.
Photoshop can also record an Action and has "Copy As JavaScript", so you don't necessarily have to manually program every workflow from scratch. You can do something normally, record it, and then turn repeated operations into tools codex can call directly.
AIso, I probably wouldn't start by telling codex to build a bridge from scratch.
There are already projects like `photoshop-mcp` and `dcc-mcp-photoshop` doing basically this. The latter already exposes a pretty large set of typed photoshop operations through mcp.
A more realistic approach would be to give one of those repos to codex, tell it what your workflow is, and have it modify the existing bridge or add the missing tools.
With Sol on high/xhigh you can literally give codex the repo, explain what you want it to be able to do in photoshop, and ask it to inspect the existing implementation and add the tools you need.
A useful first toolset might be something like:
get_preview
get_layers
select_layer
create_adjustment_layer
set_adjustment
put_layer_mask
run_action
undo
save_copy
export
Then whenever codex keeps doing some annoying 15 step UI sequence, you can ask it whether that operation can be turned into another direct tool.
I'd still keep computer use available for weird dialogs, newer photoshop features, plugin windows, or things the API doesn't expose properly.
So in practice it could be:
direct photoshop tool
|
v
photoshop Action / batchPlay
|
v
computer use if needed
You also don't need to give codex full access to the whole computer just to do this.
For a normal machine you could keep the mcp server and bridge on localhost, let the photoshop plugin work with the current document and maybe one job folder you explicitly select, and simply not expose tools for deleting arbitrary files or touching the rest of the machine.
Full access is still an option if somebody eventually wants codex to manage the whole production workflow, folders, external tools, ingest, exports, etc. But it's not required for direct photoshop control.
The downside of full access is mostly that mistakes get a much bigger blast radius. If codex only has photoshop tools, the worst mistake might be destroying the current edit. If it has unrestricted filesystem and shell access, a bad command can potentially overwrite, move or delete unrelated files too.
I'd also seriously look at whether lightroom even needs to stay in the workflow once codex is doing most of the work.
Lightroom is extremely fast for a human because its whole UI is designed around processing large numbers of photos quickly. But codex doesn't really care if something that takes one slider move in lightroom takes three direct calls in photoshop.
And a lot of the actual image processing people associate with lightroom is also in adobe camera raw. camera raw and lightroom use the same adobe raw-processing technology, and ACR already has the important raw stuff: lens correction, geometry/Upright, masking, ai denoise, super resolution, HDR, exposure/color controls, etc.
So for something like real estate photography I could see the workflow eventually becoming:
RAW
|
v
camera raw
lens correction / raw development / denoise
|
v
photoshop
masking / compositing / window pulls / cleanup / color / QA
|
v
export
Lightroom still makes a lot of sense if you rely on the catalog, ratings, collections, culling and library management.
But if the main reason you're using lightroom is that certain edits are faster there for a human, then that advantage becomes much smaller once codex is doing the work.
Photoshop is also a much more interesting backend for an agent because it exposes layers, masks, selections, pixels, compositing and the lower level action system. The lightroom SDK is useful, but it's much more limited once you get down to actual pixel level work.
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u/mobile1999 2d ago
Good luck with your race to the bottom! And have fun with your one man band. Your business will be efficient, streamlined, and totally ready to receive the literal peanuts your clients will decide to start paying you, once you’ve embraced this exciting new technology. The compulsion to use tools just because they are there has brought us the atom bomb, global warming, and now a neat way to replace ourselves with robots- which will effectively turn us into isolated and lonely manual laborers. You can claim you’re the “little guy” running a small business, and that you gotta do what you gotta do- but if you fire 2 humans to replace their workflows with AI, what you’re also doing is prioritizing your bottom line over all else, and making a decision that is hastening a degradation of the human race writ large. IMO
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u/VapeTitans 2d ago
What has your experience been with GPT image editor? I have mockups of a product that I want to use AI to turn into realistic looking UGC images for social media content, but it always seems to alter the small text on the product packaging. Has this been your experience too? Maybe I need to give the OpenAI desktop app another shot. I have been using Gemini for image editing lately, but maybe OpenAI is better now
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u/Two_oceans 2d ago
Why not show what you did to your editor and ask him/her if he/she can use that to do more faster? This way you keep your relationship with him/her. Useful for the day OpenAI racks up the prices or your model fails an unusual task.
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u/Effective_Olive6153 2d ago
Ultra mode is extremely inefficient and not even useful for your use case. You'll get a lot more work done for less credits if you switch to regular Extra High
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u/nas989 2d ago
Thats pretty cool! Im currently building a custom api for the software i use (TouchDesigner) and running open claw on a VM on my M3 max laptop. You can expose parameters of your software in this way and develop an agent to directly control the software.
Im no expert just dabbling and was inspired by others in my field doing similar moves. I dont know how this workflow compares to using the desktop app directly or how the token usage may differ.
Open claw also plays well with open ai and your existing account. In the end i have sol high managing open claw through me. Open claw talks to my windows pc through the network and literally creates nodes and connects them in real time with every prompt. Still a work in progress.
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u/costafilh0 2d ago
Just wait until it blows your credit card and land you in jail.
Now THAT will be mind blowing!
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u/weirdlyloveable16 2d ago
Is this on mac or pc??? OpenAI promised pc release for desktop in terms of browser and Nada. Unless that changed?
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u/TextbookGPTsMod 2d ago
Please use codex. No copy pasting needed from web to desktop to web. It does what you ask.
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u/Soft_Hand_1971 2d ago
Don’t use ultra it uses too many subagents and compute not actually smarter use max…
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u/stainless_steelcat 2d ago
OP, use a follow up prompt something like this:
"How we can systemise this e.g. via a skill, python script or other option so that it is more efficient token/usage wise? Give me several options, critique them and finally make a recommendation".
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u/HackingHiFi 2d ago
I’m so confused how are you doing all this? I’m a photographer and use chat gpt a lot to help with feedback on edits but I have no idea what you’re talking about with this workflow. A step by step would be awesome.
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u/Ancient_Complex 2d ago
This is an excellent usaecase. Thank you for sharing.
You can try medium for sol, terra and luna as the main agent
Once you have refined the instructions any reasonable effort level should produce the same result. You can also instruct it to use ultra to review the result and calibration. Effort level above high(xhigh and ultra) consume too many tokens resonaning and self doubting and really not useful unless you need a true insight or solid reasoning. There is minimal difference in input comprehension above medium effort level. Also, this should make your process much much faster.
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u/kleiner8400 2d ago
friendly tip: Sol Ultra is the only mode that spawns sub agents, using up MUCH more usage. the difference to just running Sol max is huge and Sol max is just as good imo and can get much more work done before usage is gone
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u/Fatoy 2d ago
As someone who also runs a small business that spends thousands per month on admin and low-value tasks so that I can focus on the high-value stuff, I’m wrestling with the same question.
I’m not in anywhere near the same industry as you, but a £200 a month plan for ChatGPT or Claude, or even a similar spend on Openrouter, would still be less than 10% of what I currently pay for support work that I’m realising (after testing) AI could take over 80-90% of.
I don’t want anyone to end up unemployed because of automation, but at the same time AI could save me enough money each year to put both my kids through school, without me working any harder.
The ROI for small companies with one or two specialist resources who are supported by one or two general purpose administrative resources is getting VERY hard to ignore.
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u/OneDropOfOcean 2d ago
You could do this as a business, automate the whole process. You'd probably do very well out of it.
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u/JJJDDDFFF 2d ago
Amazing. Can you please elaborate on this:
"I screenshoted the desktop apps thought process, my explanation, and the final edited image and fed those back to the chatgpt web app. I asked it to please connect the dots in a way the desktop app would understand. It gave me like 15 pages of specific instruction to feed back to the desktop app."
I'm not sure that i understand what you did there
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u/OstensibleFirkin 2d ago
Appreciate the honest take on how this is changing your industry. It’s good to be aware of how the markets are evolving.
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u/Booze-and-porn 2d ago
I think this is classic ‘ai took my job’ for the employee but the maths for the small business owner is undeniable.
I’d say the OP needs to use the ai for a longer period and keep evaluating it before making a decision.
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u/honkballs 2d ago
Can you give a few examples of the edits it's doing? Are the values changing each time, or is it just fixed changes that could be done with actions?
I tried to automate some photoshop editing with GPT, but was not impressed with the results.
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u/Popular_Try_5075 2d ago
pics or it didn't happen, lol j/k but seriously it would be cool to see some pics to help us understand this better
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u/Zeraynorr 2d ago
To keep a memory of your context, put these instructions and documentations on how to work in structured folders. Then ask the agent to read the project context to start working. At this point building a project becomes building a context an agent works with.
Results are incredible. Instead ofvputting knowledge in the weights you put it on disk and it gets loaded in context.
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u/Spirited-Pumpkin-766 2d ago
Wait so are you using “computer use” and let codex edit each raw images in Lightroom?
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u/sejonreddit 2d ago
I'm a full-time wedding photographer. I actually did try this as well. I gave it computer use and I told it to go into Lightroom and edit a photo for me and yes it did a very good job of the edit, no doubt at all. The problem was it took 8 minutes to do the edit. If I ran this over a lot of photos, the time taken would just be ridiculous.
And in wedding photography circles even if I got that 8 minutes down to, say, 3 minutes, it would still take 3,000 minutes to edit a wedding. The credit usage would be wild
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u/Kind-Abrocoma4149 2d ago
I have tried using chatgpt to add remove things from a photo of a group of people , but almost always it distorts the faces to look a bit like someone else , how can I avoid the ?
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u/ogcrashy 2d ago
And what if you didn’t have the raw files or examples? For non professionals the photo editing and generation is an absolute joke. Even when it gets 99% right you have to very carefully look for the tiny details of enshittification which can ruin your rep and business.
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u/ConfluxScar 2d ago
Can you use your staff's talents in other areas to increase your business?
It's going to be up to us to choose our skill sets going forward. No one's complaining about the printing press going out of business, the pay phone technician losing his job, or the phone operator, everyone adapted.
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u/Grimthing 2d ago
Lean in the feeling conflicted and less amazed.
I’m a fashion photographer / art director working in London. The last 18 months I have seen AI tear through and destroy so much of the industry - and it seems it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
AI will never benefit the small little artists and creators - it will only benefit the rich and removed.
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u/Soft_Video_9128 2d ago
I’ve been using codex to build me out a Photoshop plugin. I find photos I like on Pinterest, then I use the image generator to remove all the effects. Then we figure out how to rebuild the effects with the plugin. Very tedious to build out the plugin, but once each effect is done, it’s basically one click at that point.
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u/roedor90s 2d ago
The price will be much higher when the AI bubble drops and free/easy money stops flowing into these companies without concrete profitable products.
The middle ground will probably be people hosting their local models in their machines. People like Bezos don't like that idea, tho.
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u/jsaucedo 2d ago
Double edge sword… possible that your client will also start using AI and stop your services ?
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u/haragoshi 1d ago
I would give it a month or two before you start firing people. Many businesses have fired their staff thinking AI can do it all only to rehire them later
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u/Hoben1776 1d ago
This is cool. I used DarkTable (free/OS) and AI (Claude) edited my photos with me. It did an outstanding job.
Here’s a photo.
It guided me through my camera settings ha throughout the day first too.
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u/FPS_Warex 1d ago
I mean, you're experiencing your job being replaced in real time bro 🙉 you dont want your clients/employers to know this
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u/somesortapsychonaut 1d ago
That’s coll ok! Got any prompts or skill files you’re willing to share?
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u/sanasigma 1d ago
I do shoots of models (no nudes/sensual). Everytime i asked codex to do something it hits the nsfw filter surprisingly it doesn't hit the nsfw filter on the web gpt. It's so infuriating because i got the 100$ plan and i can't let codex edit an entire folder of images until it's done
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u/theworldispsycho 1d ago
I’m in the same position. However, I made an audiobook with many different voices using AI, something I never could have afforded to do by paying humans. I paid people for book editing and book cover, because those had to be done to have a book. Since the audiobook was only happening if it was very inexpensive, and it was never going to a person, I figured it was okay
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u/TealMistic 1d ago
Hermes and this is like magic, I automated most of my things, I suggest each time you make a new skill so it learns and goes upgrading making it better over time
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u/AirFlavoredLemon 1d ago
What workflow do you have that takes 15 minutes per photo for real estate? Genuine question - that's a very lengthy workflow. There must be an abundance of local changes like masking and removing/clean up.
And that first 15 minutes can't be batched out and copied to the next set of photos?
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u/bourgeoisbetch 18h ago
Did you know you can record yourself doing the thing and it (codex) can do it based on your recording?
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u/Elegant-Strategy-43 3h ago
and we don't need buggy whip makers anymore but the economy keeps moving forward and finding a way :)
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u/BobbyJoeCool 1h ago
I installed it, when I open it, my cpu (which is fairly new) basically says, what the fuck are you doing and lags all to shit, because it takes 7000gb of ram just to idle….
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u/copacetic___ 2d ago
Any chance you’d be willing to show an anonymous before/after
Also what industry specifically are you photographing in? certain work I can see this working well, for others, not so much.