Under the Hood

Hello from the future.

A future where we as photographers can focus on the things that we love. A future where we don’t need to spend months of our lives sitting behind a desk. A future where machine learning can be utilized to remove the most time consuming and tiresome editing tasks. We come to you from this future to bring you Impossible Things.

We built Impossible Things to be the fastest, easiest and most intuitive AI editing solution in the industry. Primarily designed for accessibility and convenience, Impossible Things works directly from within Lightroom Classic, and by using a whole lot of our own patent pending wizardry, it also is the only AI editing solution that natively blends with your favorite presets without the need for additional training.

Machine learning is all about data sets and we dug in deep to feed the beast. We began with a massive data set of over 1,000,000 DNGs from over 200 unique camera models and over 300 different lenses. The images were treated consistently using our patent pending lighting condition based approach. From this, our model learned to recognize and treat a large number of lighting conditions and make its own intelligent blends when things get tricky. 

Over the coming months and years, as this massive set continues to multiply, our cloud based deep learning will continuously be learning and improving. Each user will gain the benefits of Impossible Things’ massive and consistent training and won’t need to upload and train the system with every new look or change of style. Our patent pending methods blend and work seamlessly with any preset, either custom made or purchased, making predictions across 38 separate and unique adjustments and sliders.

Built into Impossible Things is what we call our shot similarity system, a clever and evolving method of recognizing images shot in sequence. When like images are shot within the same time frame our system will recognize and treat them similarly. This will ultimately lead to fewer tedious tweaks and free up time to do more enjoyable things.

There is power in the cloud. Don’t have any presets? We provide an ever growing library of styles for you to access in the cloud. Does the new preset you purchased not look like the preset designer’s final edits? We allow for preset designers to tune their presets and the predictive behavior from the cloud so that presets have a full list of instructions on not just what to edit but how to edit. You can easily identify artist tuned presets in the Impossible Things menu when the preset name is followed by a ✔.

All photographers aren’t created equal, so we wanted to make it as easy as possible to tune for personal preference. Do you like to edit warmer than normal? Do you like your presets to edit a full stop darker? We built in custom tuning as a frictionless solution for your needs. Simply adjust a number of incremental or percentage based sliders, and your next edit will be treated accordingly. Custom tuning adjustments are preset specific allowing you to tune the predictive behavior differently for each of your favorite looks. Moving from your desktop to your laptop? Custom tuning syncs effortlessly with your account so your preferences follow you wherever you go.

When going down the rabbit hole to create Impossible Things, we made a number of auspicious discoveries and engineered them into additional wizardry for users.

Let’s begin with the intelligence slider. When using custom tuning, Impossible Things provides a whole new type of slider called Intelligence. This slider allows the user to determine exactly how much influence they want our predictive model to have over their preset selections. Set it to zero and the preset stays static with our model only predicting Exposure, Temperature and Tint. Keep it at 100 and Impossible Things has full predictive capacity to intelligently adapt with 38 separate slider predictions.

Next we have Adaptive Lens Corrections. Applying Lens Corrections can be a mixed bag. Often by using Adobe’s built in lens profiles to correct for distortion, you might notice that it over or under corrects for lens vignetting. The Impossible Things formula takes advantage of Lightroom’s incredible lens profile library while using a little mathematical razzle dazzle to accurately correct for lens vignetting.

We also have our own powerful Adaptive Noise Reduction solution. Impossible Things uses its knowledge of each image’s ISO combined with the predicted exposure correction to calculate the perfect amount of luminance noise reduction to apply. We made sure to make it work well in all scenarios to clear up unwanted noise while never going overboard. Luminance noise reduction uses a lot of system resources, so Impossible Things waits until all photos are exported and edited before applying unique predictions to each photo as a final step.

Finally, we have added AI Masking Preconditioning. For users of Lightroom Classic 12 or later, Impossible Things offers AI masking preconditioning to enhance the subject of the photo or to provide some targeted retouching. We call it preconditioning because the final render isn’t applied until you are ready so that it doesn’t interfere with the speed of your workflow. AI Enhance Subject will isolate the subject of the photo and slightly darken and minimize everything else. AI Retouch Portrait will Isolate and smooth face and body skin, locate and whiten teeth, and find eyes to give them a gentle pop. These masks are subtle and designed to be used often and on everything.

We even have a future roadmap of inspired features, styles and tools. Impossible Things is primed by and for innovation and this is only the very beginning of our journey.

Now, we understand, that was a lot to digest. This was a massive effort from a large number of talented photographers, programmers, and data scientists, spanning several years. In all its technology, advancements and innovations, the beauty of Impossible Things is in its absolute simplicity. Do you want to just skip all the technical jargon and just create some beautiful images? Well, that’s the best part. You just need to select your photos and your preset and let Impossible Things work its magic. 

Our favorite word of the past year has been serendipity. All of the right connections were made with the right team at the right time. The creation of Impossible Things has been fortuitous from the start. As innovations persisted, while launch dates were pushed back, everything led us to the end of January 2023 and the Lunar New Year. We are here now, in the future, and perhaps our favorite serendipitous discovery yet is that 2023 is the year of the rabbit.

Header image by Sam Hurd