Neurapix ‘Kickstart’ Can AI Edit Photos in Minutes with Just 20 Training Images

Neurapix is a Germany-based startup that has created an AI editing platform that learns a photographer’s style and applies it to batch edits. Now, what used to take a batch of 500 training photos is being reduced to 20.

When the company first publicized its software earlier this year, it boasted that it could learn a photographer’s style using a set of 600 completed images that its AI would analyze over the course of two days. By the end of the month, it had improved that substantially to two hours, but it still required 600 photos to serve as a training set. It also eventually reduced the number of training images needed from 600 to 500.

Now, eight months later, Neurapix says it is capable of not only training its AI in as little as a few minutes, but it only requires 20 training photos thanks to a new option it calls Kickstart. The system can then produce what Neurapix calls a “SmartPreset” which can be used to apply an editing style to batches of photos.

Of note, Neurapix doesn’t just apply a filter that makes photos look the same. The company says the software actually dynamically edits every photo in a batch to match a given style. Neurapix says that adjustments aren’t just copied and pasted either, instead it adapts its edits to the images to make sure they look correct regardless of subject matter or lighting.

“Typically, it takes around 500 edited photos (one event) to train the Neurapix AI and create an individualized SmartPreset,” Neurapix says.

“With ‘Kickstart’, Neurapix aims to eliminate this potential hurdle for new users, allowing them to be impressed by the consistent and high-quality results of Neurapix AI as quickly as possible.”

Once a photographer uploads the 20 photos to Neurapix’s servers, the AI will produce a SmartPreset in “a few minutes,” a nonspecific time that Neurapix says varies based on bandwidth and server load.

While not explicitly stated, it’s likely that the results produced by Kickstart aren’t going to be as good as what the software could produce if it had access to a larger dataset, but the goal is to allow new users to start leveraging Neurapix faster and to that end, 20 photos is certainly far less of an ask than 500.

“Photographers can now enjoy their first AI-edited photo event in their own style even faster,” says Simon Diegmann, founder and CEO of Neurapix.

The Neurapix AI editing software is available as a plugin for Lightroom Classic, and the new Kickstart option will roll out starting October 6.