The Dead Pixels Society podcast

Transforming Wedding Photography Through Tech, with Vitaly Glebichkin, Retouch4Me

July 04, 2024 Vitaly Glebichkin Season 5 Episode 173
Transforming Wedding Photography Through Tech, with Vitaly Glebichkin, Retouch4Me
The Dead Pixels Society podcast
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The Dead Pixels Society podcast
Transforming Wedding Photography Through Tech, with Vitaly Glebichkin, Retouch4Me
Jul 04, 2024 Season 5 Episode 173
Vitaly Glebichkin

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Have you wondered what it takes to break into and succeed in the competitive world of wedding photography? Join us as we sit down with Vitaly Glebichkin, a wedding photographer turned tech innovator, who shares his journey from capturing weddings to revolutionizing photo editing software. Learn about the nuances of the wedding photography market, the increasing demand for natural-looking images, and the essential role of personal style in a photographer's success. Glebichkin also unveils the inspiration and development behind Retouch4Me, a game-changing service that achieves professional results while preserving natural skin texture.

In this interview, Glebichkin explores the future of photography, discussing the benefits of cloud-based image retouching services versus traditional desktop applications, particularly for photographers with privacy concerns. He introduces the Arams retouching feature, a free, efficient tool for batch processing and image culling, perfect for event photographers. 

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Hosted and produced by Gary Pageau
Edited by Olivia Pageau
Announcer: Erin Manning

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Have you wondered what it takes to break into and succeed in the competitive world of wedding photography? Join us as we sit down with Vitaly Glebichkin, a wedding photographer turned tech innovator, who shares his journey from capturing weddings to revolutionizing photo editing software. Learn about the nuances of the wedding photography market, the increasing demand for natural-looking images, and the essential role of personal style in a photographer's success. Glebichkin also unveils the inspiration and development behind Retouch4Me, a game-changing service that achieves professional results while preserving natural skin texture.

In this interview, Glebichkin explores the future of photography, discussing the benefits of cloud-based image retouching services versus traditional desktop applications, particularly for photographers with privacy concerns. He introduces the Arams retouching feature, a free, efficient tool for batch processing and image culling, perfect for event photographers. 

Energize your sales with Shareme.chat, the proven texting platform. 

ShareMe.Chat 
ShareMe.Chat platform uses chat-to-text on your website to keep your customers connected and buying!

Mediaclip
Mediaclip strives to continuously enhance the user experience while dramatically increasing revenue.

Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the Show.

Sign up for the Dead Pixels Society newsletter at http://bit.ly/DeadPixelsSignUp.

Contact us at gary@thedeadpixelssociety.com

Visit our LinkedIn group, Photo/Digital Imaging Network, and Facebook group, The Dead Pixels Society.

Leave a review on Apple and Podchaser.

Are you interested in being a guest? Click here for details.

Hosted and produced by Gary Pageau
Edited by Olivia Pageau
Announcer: Erin Manning

Erin Manning:

Welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau.

Erin Manning:

The Dead Pixel Society podcast is brought to you by MediaClip, Advertek Printing and the Independent Photo Imagers.

Erin Manning:

Hello, again, and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. I'm you're host Gary Pageau and today we're joined by Vitaly Glebichkin, a board member of the Retouch4Me and 3D Outlet creator. But that's a mouthful there on the name of the company. Vitaly, how are you today?

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Hi Gary, I'm fine. Thank you for having me.

Gary Pageau:

So you're coming to us from Russia today, but tell me about you yourself personally, how you got started in the business, because you were actually a wedding photographer when you started out, before you got into technology.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Yes, so I started from photography, so I really like to shoot everything, and so I start with like a family photography and so on, and then I go to the wedding photography and what's the market like in your market for wedding photography?

Gary Pageau:

because I've seen a lot of different changes over the you know styles over the world where they you know the sometimes in some countries it's you know big formal events with large families and several days of parties and then on down to people getting married in a field and it's over in 20 minutes. So it kind of varies a lot by region. What's it like in your country?

Vitaly Glebichkin :

So in Russia wedding market is really busy, so there are a lot of. It is really competitive, so we need to be a really high quality photographer to get the clients and a lot of people, uh, would like to get, like great photos so the clients, so they really know what they need to get and they have a taste and so so you need to be a really great photographer to work at this industry so when you say by the taste, you mean like a photographer has a style and they market that or yes or they have to try and interpret the style of the couple uh, I think, uh, it's the most um of the style of.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

So how can you like see the world?

Gary Pageau:

right, yeah, yeah.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

So it's more of the personal style of the photographer yeah, yeah, sometimes more of the personal style, and actually, if you uh see, like the whole wedding photographer, uh photography from uh 2000 to 2024, like now, so you can see that the pictures are changing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and some sometimes uh, there are uh some hard edit of photographs were famous, allowed, famous a lot of people, but but now, for example, um, people are trying to shoot like with natural lights and so on okay, so it's more going towards a natural look, that sort of thing.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Yes, yes, that's right. So this is why we are starting to develop our software.

Gary Pageau:

Well, that's kind of what I want to talk about. So where did you start in the software business? Why did you want to do that? Is it because you needed tools that you couldn't find anywhere else, or you thought you could do it better, or what was your initiative for that?

Vitaly Glebichkin :

so actually we started it because our founder, alex Sharonov, also photographer, so I also photographer, and we started it because on the market there were no tools for such editing. But we both know how to do, uh, what, what we need, right, yeah, but, but, but you don't have but, but you cannot find on the market such tools before, so the don't don't. The only reason is, uh, you, you have to create it by yourself.

Gary Pageau:

Well, that's what I'm saying. So what were the looks you were trying to achieve that you couldn't find through existing tools?

Vitaly Glebichkin :

So we are trying to achieve the look of the picture with like natural skin texture Right okay skin texture. Right, okay, because sometimes for some apps it is really easy to do retouching with the fake skin texture, with replacing the skin texture on the face, and our goal is to make the software that can retouch images like professional retouchers do, so. Actually retouch is not replace the skin texture, and so on.

Gary Pageau:

Hence the name of the company. It's not Replace For Me, it's Retouch For Me, yeah that's right, that's right. So you started with lookup tables right.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Yes, it was like the first project.

Gary Pageau:

Yeah, so talk a little bit about that, if you would, Because you're really talking about something that kind of plugs into something else. Right? It's not a standalone product.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Yes. So even now, not so many people know about the LUTs. So LUTs comes from the lookup table, so it's like the table where you can change the color. So, for example, if you imagine multiplication table, so you have columns of numbers and you multiply one by another and you, for example, in school, need to learn this table. If you need to multiply something in mind, you don't need to multiply. Actually, you just take the memory from your brain, right, you just take the results. So the lookup table allows you to get the desired color from the color you have, right, right.

Gary Pageau:

So for every color Right, sort of like the old multiplication table list. Right, you don't have to re-memorize five times three anymore, you just know that's the result.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Yes, so the thing is about LUTs is that LUTs are universal color presets, okay, and LUTs can be applied to photo, video, video gaming, for example, and for streaming, for color calibration of monitor, so we're using 3d lots.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

So it's it's really um universal color presets and we did developed the software that can create lots and that has a lot of tools that you cannot find anywhere to work with color, for example, a color grid when you can just on the grid so the color tied to the grid and you can just move the grid and change the color of your image.

Gary Pageau:

So when was that product introduced? When was that started? When I think maybe nine years or ten, okay, so you exactly, because I know there's a lot of folks kind of doing the Lutz thing, but sounds like you were pretty early on in that sort of yeah yeah. So were you primarily in Europe or did you start there or how did you? Get the word out on that product.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

So actually we just made some posts on Facebook and actually we don't have a website and we didn't have anything. And people just start writing to us and asking to buy the product.

Gary Pageau:

Cool, cool, so then, but then from there you've actually have something that actually has a website and has more of a service involved.

Gary Pageau:

So how did that?

Gary Pageau:

kind of how did you make that jump to the Retouch for me, uh, environment?

Vitaly Glebichkin :

because it's, it's, it's probably using a lot of the same underlying uh beliefs and uh philosophy of how to retouch without using tables, right I think the main reason uh to switch up to retouching is technology, because before that, maybe like five years ago something there are not a lot of ai tools or apps in the net in the internet. So to make ai work you need to get a pretty fast machine to train it, to train neural networks. As soon as we get fast graphical cards we can start training our neural networks and start to get the software, start to develop it.

Gary Pageau:

Now, with a lot of this training that people are doing, they're using outside are doing, they're using outside databases, they're using you know, pools. What do we're using your own information that you had developed over the years from the lookup?

Vitaly Glebichkin :

table business.

Gary Pageau:

Is that sort of what you used, or did you use a different approach?

Vitaly Glebichkin :

yes, so the main reason I think that we get the results that we get is that they're using our own banks. Okay, so you cannot find in the internet the exact banks that you need to train, even if you try to, for example, train neural network to pick up like clothes or skin, and you get the bank with photos and you start to I don't know checking uh, the each image right and use, and you and you will find a lot of mistakes, right so, and each mistakes, uh, mistake uh, will be started by neural network, right and it'll just build on itself.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Yeah, yeah, build it by itself. Yes, so we have to prepare our own, uh, photo banks okay and it was really hard to do because even with high-end retouchers, so they had to retouch really precisely each image. So it takes a lot of time. Well, I can imagine.

Gary Pageau:

I mean because I've spoken to other people, other companies that have, you know, kind of been in the retouching side of it, like Skylab and whatnot, and they've used their own data to train it and they said it's much better than just going out and finding, um, you know, pools of information, of images, and then you know, stick a neural net on that and, like you said, it's it's not. It's it's not a professional yes, experience on that.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

You're just basically, you know, just throwing a bunch of data and now we're gonna hope it learns something yes, so if you need to um to develop, like ai, for example, photo app for mobile phone, right so you can use such banks. But if you're trying to get professional results with high resolution images, you have to prepare your own banks and you have to uh prepare your own banks and you have to check them and check the mistakes that neural networks uh does do so so.

Gary Pageau:

So when did you actually officially launch retouch for me? I mean, I've been aware of it for about a year or so, but you know you're in a hundred, some countries now, so you've been around a little while.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Yeah, so the first plugin we launched, I think, 2019.

Gary Pageau:

Okay.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

So like five years ago.

Gary Pageau:

And then of course COVID happened, so that slows things down a little bit yeah.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

So COVID and so on, so now we have 13 plugins for uh photo editing which can run as standalone apps, and we have we just released two uh video plugins, and so so now we have have uh three video plugins explain to me a little bit how this works, right?

Gary Pageau:

I mean, you have plugins for Photoshop. It sounds like.

Erin Manning:

So it's not a standalone.

Gary Pageau:

But you do have a standalone offering, right, Don't you, in terms of you can upload images into the cloud and have it do it for you. Is that also sort of like on those individual touches, like you know, fabric, eye vessels, eye brilliance, and those Can you do those individually, or is there a blanket cloud service for that?

Vitaly Glebichkin :

So for now we have two options. So you can buy plugins one by one and use it until we support them so all updates are free for the plugins or you can buy a subscription and use all plugins at once in the cloud the cloud. So, for example, if you have slow computer and you have not so many images for retouching or you don't want to buy the whole set of the plugins, you can just buy a subscription and actually every new customer gets 20 retouches for free. So it's a great opportunity to try our plugins on the computer.

Gary Pageau:

It seems to me like there's a growth in those kind of services where people are just letting the cloud do the work, as opposed to, you know, even if you do have the latest Mac or the you know a high-end Windows machine where you've got the NVIDIA graphics card and you've got all that stuff, it seems to me like people are getting much more comfortable with hey, you know, just let the cloud do the work yeah, but but some customers, for example, um, we have customers that are photographers, uh, for, like a fashion, some famous people and so on.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

so the privacy is the key and those people cannot send the images to the cloud because, it's not safe. So they actually use the computers for the edit that don't have, the computers that don't have connection to the internet.

Gary Pageau:

Interesting. I hadn't really thought about that. That's sort of the celebrity. I haven't really thought about that.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

That's sort of the celebrity you know, actually actually the there are a lot of photographers that prefer and keeps, keep, all, all the data on their computers.

Gary Pageau:

I imagine a lot of it's for privacy reasons or whatever reason. I certainly get that, but I just hadn't really thought about you know for in you and you know you want to. You know what the paparazzi get a hold of, those things in a cloud breach or something, so I can imagine I can see where that would be anything.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

So, yeah, so some, some, some people, uh, don't care, I, I don't care.

Gary Pageau:

I think you don't care, so I would like more people to see my images, so I'll put them all. Yeah, yeah, why not? That's right. So is that the growing piece of the business, the cloud piece, or is it?

Vitaly Glebichkin :

We just started it like a month ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's growing, but slowly. Yeah, yeah.

Gary Pageau:

I think it'll be interesting to watch how that grows. I think there is sort of this idea that people are going to want the cloud to do. You know, more of different kinds of work. You know, again there will be cases. Say, I create a look that I like right, Can I just apply it to an entire folder or an entire upload, or is it a one-by-one sort of thing?

Vitaly Glebichkin :

So we have a plugin which is called retouch. For me, color match. And actually you can just use the reference and your image to get the same look, pretty, the same look, okay. So yes, for example, you can do uh batch processing in photoshop and uh, the last week we just released our new retouching machine. We call it retouching machine, the name of it is Adams and the owner of the first retouching machine. So, using this software, you can start batch processing right on your computer using our plugins.

Gary Pageau:

Yeah. So tell me a little bit about the Adams thing, because that is new and I actually, just as I was prepping for this, I saw oh, that looks new, it actually does some of the culling and some of the things as well. It's going to go through. Let's say, if you know, it's not atypical for a wedding photographer to shoot two or three thousand pictures. Yes, in a wedding, especially some of these big formal events, but they can actually this will go through and do some of the culling as well, right, yeah?

Vitaly Glebichkin :

the cull the calling is. It's like a better feature, right, yeah, but we're still learning our training our neural networks to do calling like accurate and so on. But you can use it for the batch processing using our plugins.

Gary Pageau:

Well, that's cool, and that's a separate product as opposed to it's free.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Oh, it's a free product. Yeah, it's free. Yes, it's free. How? That's a separate product as opposed to it's free?

Gary Pageau:

Oh it's a free product? Yeah, it's free. Yes, it's free. How are you going to make money? All those computers cost money, man.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

How are you going to do that? So the people buying the plugins and using them?

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Yeah, so it's like a great compliment for our customers that already have the plugins so they can download atoms for free and use it, because a lot of people do not use photoshop for editing and they use, for example, uh, capture one, and in capture one you cannot Capture One. You cannot do like batch processing, like in Photoshop. In Photoshop you can set the plugin, set some final find settings for each plugin and so on. So you can't do this in Capture One, and if you have a lot of photographs you have to run plugins as a standalone app. So load the photos to one plugin, then to another, and so on.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Sometimes, so if you need to use, for example, five plugins in a row, it takes a lot of time, right? So for those people, we have items now, so you can just start batch processing and go to the bed and wake up with photographs come home from the wedding, just load it into adams and go to bed and come back and there you are right awesome yeah, so actually for the wedding, uh, most photographers retouches only like uh, close-up shots, right, but on, on weddings there are a lot of guests and there are all potential clients, right, and it is better to retouch everyone, right yeah, exactly yeah.

Gary Pageau:

No, you know, you're exactly right. I mean, that's one of the things is, you know, sometimes, when people go to a wedding, you know they, they may picture themselves right from that right.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

That's right absolutely yeah, so the uh and the guests can choose you like a wedding photographer for those. So there are a lot of couples which are not married, right, for example. So, yes, it's a great opportunity for photographer to retouch everyone and to deliver the best quality on the market. So it's competitive.

Gary Pageau:

So you've added video to part of your offering. I mean, in some ways that's a natural extension, but it's also more of a technological challenge A little more. I mean it's more difficult. Right, you've got moving images, you've got all kinds of things happening there. Tell us a little about that sort of evolution, because you know, I mean I've seen it here in North America where, specifically, wedding shoots are really more multimedia productions. Now, right, you've got two or three cameras, you've got drones, you've got video, you've got all kinds of. Now, right, you've got two or three cameras, you got drones you got video, you've got all kinds of things right.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Same here.

Gary Pageau:

Yeah, so tell me a little bit about kind of that evolution of that offering, because you could have just stayed with your piece and not address video probably, and been fine.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Yeah, so for the video we have a Hill plugin and dodge and burn plugin. So the heal plugin removes some small imperfection on the face and the dodge and burn plugin just smooth out the skin on the face. So it's like for the photo, but for the video you have to retouch each frame in a row, so it's pretty, pretty slow. It's like one frame per second for now. Right, Maybe we can make it faster, or graphical cards developers will develop faster graphical cards.

Gary Pageau:

Right, so, but your goal here is not to you know cause I think a lot of the video tools that are out there almost are like, uh, you know, they're almost unrealistic right, in terms of some of the filters and things people do, but that's not what you're trying to do?

Vitaly Glebichkin :

you're actually trying to produce more of a uh, what someone should or tends to look like as opposed to, you know, like an instagram filter or something like that yeah, that's right because, for example, if you shoot, it's not only for the video for example, some guys with uh fuji cameras, full g, uh full frame and uh middle format cameras with uh 100 megapixels, and when they try to use other software and they get like a smooth texture, fake texture on the face and only our plugins.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

So they said only our plugins works with high resolution images. Yeah, it takes time, but it's really faster than do it by yourself. And as for the video, yes, if you shoot 4k, so it's pretty high resolution on on the big monitor, you see all our imperfections on the face. Yeah, and sometimes, uh, it is better just to eliminate them, because imperfections so uh, it's, it's not like the, the person right, it's got, so they, they come and go right and the person stays the same. So why? Why we should look at this and maybe we can just make it looks better right well, I mean certainly I mean you have people you know let's say they have.

Gary Pageau:

you know, maybe they're up late the night before and they, you know, their skin isn't the greatest or something. So certainly you want to present them in the way they want to be presented in something like a wedding or something like that, or a fashion shoot or some of the other things that you're. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so are you seeing any uptake in the video retouching tools in, like the non-wedding market? I'm kind of curious what other places people might be using that sort of technology so, for example, video for the social media okay, tiktok instagram.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

so if you should like a close-up picture, so you need to use retouching and, for example, for video blogging also for music videos, like clips and something, or, for example, for if you shoot people naked or with, I know, swimming suits because we have a clients that shoot a lot of, for example, something like bodybuilders Okay Guys, yes, some beach photography, Right, and if the person had like acne on the body somewhere and some bodybuilders, so they get a lot of protein and sometimes it is bad for the skin. So you have to eliminate all these little marks on the body so it will look really better after.

Gary Pageau:

Interesting. I had not thought about the bodybuilding market, but you're right, that would be something where someone is obviously looking for an ideal representation of themselves and they may not want, you know every little, like you said, imperfection on there, especially if they're doing probably not for competitions, but for, like, highlight reels and for things like that. You know competition. I think they do live.

Gary Pageau:

They don't do that on video, so I think that's yeah, yeah, that's right so because, as everyone knows from looking at me, I've, you know, clearly competed bodybuilding, right that's something I'm doing.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

You're the other right.

Gary Pageau:

So we covered, kind of the lookup table. We've covered the AI, we've covered video. Yes, what is sort of on the roadmap going forward? It sounds to me like you've got a pretty broad portfolio of offerings and obviously there's, you know, enhancements and things going forward. It sounds to me like you've got a pretty broad portfolio of offerings and obviously there's, you know, enhancements and things. But and I, whenever I talk to a software developer, I always like to ask them kind of like you know what's inspiring you to go forward, when it looks like you wouldn't say you've got everything, but you've got a lot.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

So we are working on the project and maybe I hope, we will release it this year, and so every photographer dream of like a magic button on the camera so you just press the button and get the perfect shot, right, yeah, so we are working on this.

Gary Pageau:

Oh, you're working on the perfect shot button.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Yes, yes, yes.

Gary Pageau:

So all you need to do is just click the button and you will get the retouched image and then we'll take into account all the you know, 10 or 11 things you already have, or that's what I think artificial intelligence or ai or whatever you want to call it, will come in. Kind of interesting is when people are using it and they're not, may not even realize they're using it.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Yes, so for today, for example, for mobiles, there are a lot of AI built in Sure and for the mirrorless cameras, for example, I have a Sony somewhere and it has AI for focusing Sure. We just started this AI age Right. Like uh age right, ai will, um will be built in every piece of uh equipment, right?

Gary Pageau:

maybe coffee machine or something you know well. You raise an interesting point because I don't think most people, especially in consumer world, right, when they shoot with their iphone or their samsung or their yeah, their, you know, whatever android phone they may be using, they don't realize that there's a lot of processing that's going on in that camera.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

You know they're not getting an image straight out of the camera, right, I mean, that's being processed that's right, almost to the extreme actually yes, so, uh, actually, actually, yes, so actually, the scientists and developers almost squeezed everything out of technology of building, you know, lens to the camera matrices and so on. So now we need to process the picture, and the one who have the better software to process the image, so the one will be the top of the market today. So the software that processing the image will depend how your camera shoot.

Gary Pageau:

Yeah, because really, I mean the lenses and the sensors are kind of at their peak. I mean I don't know, there's no point in having much more resolution on a consumer.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Yeah, so why do I need 100? Okay, because some people need. Okay, if you need to get uh the poster with uh the size of the skyscraper, of the really big building. So, yes, you need 100 megapixels, but when you have like 14 in your mobile phone, what for?

Gary Pageau:

Well, you know all those Instagram. You got to have a lot of data there to fix all the Instagram errors, right?

Vitaly Glebichkin :

It's all about the marketing, because if the customers see two smartphones and one have, for example, 12 megapixels and the other, the other one, is like 20 or 30, yeah, so the uh, the customer probably decided the smartphone with the highest resolution yeah, which, but it may not have the best software, right?

Gary Pageau:

I mean, that's just. That's just.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

The reality is it may not get better results yeah, for example, uh in iphones that are not uh then, so they uh had a lot of time. Like 12 megapixels only, yeah, but the but the quality of the picture is really better than other phones, for example yeah with, but with twice the resolution, right exactly yeah, yeah, the resolution is smaller, but the picture is cleaner well, a lot of your customers aren't shooting with iphones.

Gary Pageau:

I mean some, maybe some of them are for, like, a second camera, for certain effects or things, but they're shooting primarily with, like you said, fujis and some other things. You know canon, the usual suspects. Do you think they're keeping up with their own software to compete with iPhones in terms of making the pictures look good? I know, for example, spoogee Films doing a lot with their film simulations and things like that, but you know that's sort of their sweet spot. You know we want to make it. I had two.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Fugees. So yes, so but, I had two Fujis. So yes, but it almost seems like they haven't really.

Gary Pageau:

The camera makers, in my opinion, haven't really taken that piece of it to the next level, the in-camera processing to the level that a smartphone has?

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Yes, that's right, and I think so. For example, let's consider the lots, so it's color presets and now, uh, some, for example, cameras from sunny, I think for video blogging allows you to load a lot your own preset color presets of the camera and shoot with your own style, right.

Gary Pageau:

so yes, software and cameras, I know will grow I mean, it is interesting now that a lot of them are starting to be able to post directly to the cloud, and you know things like that.

Gary Pageau:

That's starting to happen, which I think is interesting. Yes, I've always thought that was sort of like one of the things that you know the the camera manufacturers. You know they said, okay, we got great sensors and we got great lenses and we'll let the photographer do everything post-process in something else. Right, they'll do it in photoshop or lightroom or capture, you know one, or whatever they're using. And I think you know I think there's a lot of people, especially younger content creators, who would like to do it more in the camera, right, not even take it to a desktop, and I think that's maybe a big opportunity for them or for someone like you who will take those images and enhance them yeah, so, for example, uh, the greatest example is my wife, because when we are traveling I have a like mirrorless camera and shoot, so then they come back and she waits the photographs like half a year, maybe more.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Yeah, really, so it is better for her just to take the smartphone with a good camera. Yeah, so, take a picture and just upload it to the social media. For example, if you compare the speed of photo processing like, uh, 20 years ago or 10 years ago, yeah, so, it's, it's, it's speeding up. Yeah, continuously, and no one's uh want to get yesterday photos right. People need them today, right same day, for example, yeah, yeah, same same day. For example, if you are shooting like, uh, um question or some events, so you need to provide the images like in time, right, so it's like at the same time, yeah, it's crazy.

Gary Pageau:

Yeah, you're right. I mean, it is that you know that window, but they're still expecting the the same quality of images, as if they'd spent time in Photoshop tweaking them.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Yeah, that's right, because when you're trying to retouch photos manually and you want to get professional quality, you have to spend first of all, money, because you need to learn, and the good learning cost good money. So, yeah, you can go to the you know, youtube find some lessons. There are a lot of lessons and there are a lot of good lessons, but you have to spend a lot of time. If you don't don't spend time to spend money, okay, then you need to master your skills, right, you have to retouch a lot of images, like half or maybe year, to get really great results, because if you don't know how to retouch correctly, you can just uh read the photo, and there are a lot of uh examples on the web, right?

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Our main goal, I think, is to make the retouching procedure like as easy as as it can be. If you see the, the photograph, like, the process, the retouching is like um routine, right. So you, you have to do it, but you cannot um. So we asked some photographers so, do you love retouching or not? So, most of them do not love retouching, right, they, they love to shoot right, exactly that's why they got in.

Gary Pageau:

the business was to be behind the camera and taking pictures of subjects and things like that. Yes, the retouching and organizing and coloring and all that stuff is not why they got in the business.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

Yeah, so it's like routine, right, our goal is to take up this routine and just deal with it. Just deal with it.

Gary Pageau:

Well yeah. So where can people go for more information, to learn more about you and your company? How can they reach you?

Vitaly Glebichkin :

I'm not as social media person, as I could be, so maybe just you can leave my email or something.

Gary Pageau:

And, of course, the website is retouch4.me. That's the website, that's right so make sure you check that out well. Thank you so much, sir, for your time. Appreciate your insights.

Vitaly Glebichkin :

I'm looking forward to playing with your uh plugins thank you service and uh take care and hope to talk to you soon so thank you, gary, for inviting me, and thank you others who's listening to this.

Erin Manning:

I hope you enjoy this thank you for listening to the dead pixel society podcast.

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