A big issue nowadays is that computational photography is now about as important as the camera itself, so the software and computational hardware including ML accelerators are a big competitive edge that’s really only available to the big hitters.
To purist photographers though, it's a little deceptive to have computers modify the photo. It's hard to turn off all those ML augmentation settings on the iPhone. It brings back the old question of how much Photoshop is too much? Will phone photographers get disqualified from photo contests one day?
Literal photoshopping is an indispensable skill for photographers these days. None of the big photography contests disallow photoshopping in general (there are limits) and winning photos are clearly photoshopped. The phone just does it automatically.
Indeed but I’d argue it’s always been an essential skill. When it comes to film, people were already doing tricks to modify the image. Many photos people think of as right out of the camera are “photoshopped”. This applies to photos even from the 1800’s... I mean, the famous full body shot of Lincoln standing up is completely fake.
