How Visboom Changed the Way I Edit Photos as a Journalis
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As a journalist, I have always believed that the power of a story lies not just in the words, but also in the visual peace. A powerful photo has the ability to not just make a reader stop, but take a moment to pause and look, absorb the content of the photo and feel the emotion the photographer intended to show. There is always a long process that takes place in a quiet room for everything that goes into an image that looks "perfect". The editing, cropping, cleaning up the background, adjusting the overall colors and brightness, and so on. To be perfectly honest, it was always the part of the job that I personally avoided the most.
Until Visboom came into play. I began using it when I stepped in for a last minute assignment on a technology symposium. I had to write a story and publish it in a couple of hours with photos I had taken. I was photographing a speaker during the keynote with the sloppy sponsor snap gobbler banners in the back and different lighting light on the keynote speaker and darkness on the stage around the podium. I climbed back to my laptop and began to edit, thinking it was going to take me a while just to clean up the background of the image.
After I uploaded the first photo to the Visboom platform, I think I waited no more than two seconds, I clicked upload, tabled my time card, and poof gone was any background but a perfectly streamlined silhouette of the speaker. Fortunately, there was not a clump of hair or clothing patch in sight!
I was completely taken aback. In the past, I would've spent at least 20 minutes in other applications just to get the same level of clean output and now, I do that with a single click. That's when it really sunk in that tools like VISBOOM, which leverage artificial intelligence, not only make my work easier, but also change the type of work I do as a journalist.
I used to devote an immeasurable amount of time limiting or recontextualizing cropping, garment masking, layering and arranging. Now my work can focus on the more critical element: telling the story that unfolds in the image.
What used to be an additional duty for me, an unfortunate requirement for obtaining decent visuals to accompany published stories, has turned into a true joy since using Visboom.
For example, I have started to play with viewing styles. For a feature story, for example, I can very easily change the source's photograph background to something that is more contextually illustrative of a forest or an ocean, and the whole process is done with ease because how to remove background in ai has great, intuitive tools.
Visboom benefits me when I am in the field and have little time. For instance, I wrote a story from East Nusa Tenggara, and my connection was very limited, but, somehow, Visboom continued to work adequately with whatever limited network I had. I edited images all from my phone and did not have to pull out my laptop to do so.
Timing is everything when you are a journalist.
During one reporting session, I can process dozens of photos faster than usual. It's not speed; it is having consistent, professional outcomes. The AI background removal does not look like automatic editing; it appears smooth and organic.
Over time, I am beginning to consider Visboom not atool, but a sort of digital partner, guiding me through the balance of two of the pillars of visual journalism: speed and quality.
Its features are being continuously updated, and what I really love is how easily it integrates with other platforms. I can upload my edits directly to my internal editorial media and social media without needing to open separate applications.
What I find interesting is that Visboom, too, has a very simple interface for non-designers like me. No need to learn yet another bunch of technical skills; I just upload, click, and I'm done.
The most interesting thing is, Visboom has fundamentally changed the way I think about telling stories with photos. I can think more creatively about how to visualize the concepts written. I’m not limited to using raw photos from the field; I can manipulate them to ensure that my message is more effective.
For example, when I wrote a feature story about the fisherwomen, I knew I wanted to include a theme of "hope and resilience." Visboom removed a poorly lit, dull background and placed an image of the ocean taken at sunrise, which was more than just an image; the editing transformed was an illustration into the emotional narrative of the article.
I feel much more at ease opening my laptop to get started at the editing phase now. VISBOOM effectively returned the time I lost in editing due to the technical aspects of editing so that I have time to think, write, and create.
AI technology is often accused of taking away jobs from people. My experience does not tell me that: Visboom does not take me out of the job it makes me a better visual journalist. It allows me to work smarter, not harder.
And every time I hear fellow journalists complain about photo editing being convoluted, I just smile and say, "Try Visboom; you will know what it feels like to have a real AI assistant that knows what you are trying to do."
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