Built by studios, for studios: the AI assistant that never misses a beat

In part three of our Captura Classroom series, we sat down with Marissa (Senior Product Manager at Captura) and TJ (co-founder of Skylab, now Captura Enhance) for an honest conversation about how AI is helping studios move faster, deliver better, and keep quality high when volume ramps up.

It all started with a simple question: “What is your biggest post-production bottleneck?” For most studios, it came down to time, operations, and cost. And that’s exactly what the team set out to solve - with AI image editing.

From painting negatives to training models

TJ grew up around photography. His parents were wedding photographers before they moved into the school space. Post-production wasn’t just something that happened at the studio, it happened at the dinner table. First by hand, then in Photoshop, then Lightroom and now with machine learning.

“Every tool we built started with a studio problem,” TJ shared. “We took the edits we used to make manually, classified them, and trained models to do it consistently and fast.”

What Enhance can do (and where it started)

The first major feature was color correction. During the pandemic, TJ’s team needed to keep producing at scale, but they had no color correctors on staff. The solution? Teach a model to do it.

Now, studios can submit 5,000 to 25,000 sample images to train a custom color correction model tailored to their look. It was the first sign they were onto something. From there, the tools kept growing:

Head sizing and cropping

Cropping might sound simple, but TJ explained why it isn’t. “It is not just a ruler under the chin. It is geometry. Perception. Face shape. Lens type. It took years to figure it out manually. We trained a model to do it right, every time.”

Retouching  

Blemish removal, skin smoothing, and teeth whitening all handled with a human eye. Enhance only retouches what is temporary and leaves what makes people unique. That is a big part of why it has become such a trusted tool for portrait studios.

Background extraction

What used to take hours can now be done in seconds. No more jagged outlines or ghosting. Studios can easily offer more background choices to families.

Glass glare and braces removal

TJ called these two "the turning points." Studios were wasting time at the camera trying to adjust for lighting, only to spend even more time in post. Now, they don’t have to.

“This is the kind of edit that used to take 15 minutes. Now it’s instant.”

Built to evolve

The team continues to build based on studio feedback, with new features like flyaway hair retouching and sharpening tools on the roadmap, and it’s getting even better. With Captura Workflow, AI image editing is fully integrated into the end-to-end process. Upload images, edit automatically, and deliver fast to your customers without bouncing between systems.

Did you know? Getting your photos online within the first 24 hours can increase your revenue per subject captured by 25%. 

Studios are able to upsell additional retouching directly inside the shopping cart. Families can choose services like braces removal or premium retouching in just one click; giving studios a new, scalable revenue stream.

“This is the software equivalent of the best photography assistant you’ve ever had.”

Want to see it for yourself?

Watch the full session on demand to hear how AI image editing is reshaping the future of high volume studios. If you are looking for more ways AI can directly impact your bottom line, check out our blog post on how AI can boost your sales.

Or, if you are ready to test it in your own workflow, book a demo and let us show you around. We know you won’t regret it.