Try it yourself
It’s vibe coding, but for photos. Editing, from intentions and stylistic references, using non-destructive and collaborative techniques in Adobe Lightroom Classic.
Astra is the AI assistant I’m working with in Codex as explained here (“Ad Astra”). With Computer Use, it can inspect my photographs and operate Lightroom’s controls. This is no “auto-enhance button”: Astra takes a creative brief, makes virtual copies, does light painting with gradients, crops and levels, colour and light tweaks.. and explains its choices. With the same tools and techniques I use. I can inspect any mask and move every slider afterwards, in partnership.
Earlier this year, particularly for swim meet photography, I partnered with Claude (“Brand New Renaissance”) and had it learn heuristics from my past photos. Rather than drive Lightroom directly, Claude would use XMP “sidecar” files to communicate edits to and from Lightroom. The flow combines deterministic processing with generative steps to keep it efficient, meaning both clock time and token use. With indoor pool lighting and 1000s of frames, there was plenty to AI-delegate before I layered on my style, though that foundations/style boundary was honestly a bit blurred.
Today (mid-Sept 2026), I gave Astra some photos from our family trip to Japan, briefs, and permission to explore. The brief usually included:
- The photographs, already in Lightroom.
- Why I took them, what I remember, what I wanted the edit to bring out.
- Where they might end up: a print (and for where, with frame type), desktop wallpaper or phone background.
- A few influences (e.g. Peter McKinnon, whose Lightroom videos have taught me a ton). I explicitly requested some adventurous interpretations alongside Astra’s own choices, and permission to surprise me.
Astra inspected candidates, proposed a direction, made creatively named virtual copies, edited, compared and refined. I came back with reactions and more context.
I’ll share Astra’s edits and notes and my observations on a few shots below. Humble gallery here on Flickr.
Fushimi Inari – Quiet Sanctuary
First, a hat-tip to Jim Williamson who urged me, over WhatsApp from Canada, to still make the climb to this sacred spot.. in pouring rain.. even after my family (understandably) bailed. After ascending past hundreds of vermilion torii, I found a quiet spot that gave me a very particular feeling. How I described it to Astra:
It was this sort of mystical ‘Legend of Zelda’ moment where I felt like I discovered something secret off the trail. Serene, beautiful.. absolute serendipity.. the rain let up at just the right moment.
Astra’s edit notes: Rob had already shaped the surrounding shadows. I built on that by controlling the highlights, opening shadow detail and adding a soft radial lift through the inner gates and path. The light gives the eye somewhere to go while the foreground stone, wood and moss remain shaded. That suits the feeling of discovering a passage and wanting to follow it.
Two things I’d note: (1) for the uninitiated, there’s no ‘automated’ tool [that I’m aware of] native to an app like Lightroom that would do something like light painting with a radial mask, and intelligently spot-remove distracting details, to accomplish what Astra did (2) most importantly, Astra could explain the why bother relative to my ad-hoc brief, and invited participation.
More details of the Fushimi Inari edit at the end. Part of why I’m impressed here is the restraint. If you’ve ever mashed the Auto-Tone button, you know what I mean.
Onomichi – Working Harbour
Why I cared: U2 in Onomichi was our base, at the edge of the Seto Inland Sea, before my son Julian and I rode the Shimanami Kaido, while the rest of the fam low-key explored Onomichi by bike. An old warehouse converted into a hotel, it felt like a ski chalet for cyclists.
The ride was gorgeous, but not in a picturesque, going-to-Banff sort of way. Rusts, metals and textures, aquaculture and industry alongside the coastal beauty, plus this exquisitely maintained cycling infrastructure. As I put in the brief: “In the contrasts was the beauty.”
Astra’s edit notes: The wide crop removes the foreground crossbar and the pipe entering at the upper left. It keeps the tugboat, boardwalk, person and warehouse door marked 5. Modest warmth, texture and a broad local light adjustment bring out the weathered materials while retaining the cooler harbour. The person gives scale to a waterfront that is still being used.
Hedge and Mountain
One more example of an editing brief fulfilled:
As background, when I was shooting the photo above, I was searching for the perfect elevated shot of Kyoto’s Golden Temple, as you do, and suddenly noticed that they’d trimmed the hedge in the foreground NOT flat as you’d expect, but curved so that it mirrored the contour of the mountain behind the temple. THAT, my friends, is Japanese attention to detail, for a singular POV of the temple. I told this to Astra and let it know I wanted to consider a 12×16 print. Look how Astra emphasized that hedge detail for the story value (using a mask and darkening the hedge to bring it out a little), but still, the subject of the photo is unquestionably Kinkaku-ji.
The things I’d emphasize:
- The memories changed the editing brief. “McKinnon-inspired banger” supplied an aesthetic reference at Fushimi Inari. At Onomichi, Astra noted that “In the contrasts was the beauty” showed which relationships mattered: working harbour, weathered materials, care and welcome. The hedge, again, prompted [sic] a tasteful edit.
- I could participate and interrogate the result. Virtual copies preserved alternatives, and the edit history let me examine how the light was shaped. I wasn’t limited to accepting or rejecting a finished image. I could ask why a patch of light was there, inspect the mask that put it there, decide whether it belonged.
- I didn’t need to have the whole brief worked out when we started. My explanation of U2 came after I saw an initial cut – and that conversation gave a few other Onomichi images a cohesive direction.
- Recognition and surprise were both welcome outcomes. For one image, it succeeded because it felt like being there. For another, it succeeded partly because I hadn’t expected to embrace a random warm stem of bamboo (see below).
- Explaining why I cared about a photograph is what really separated this from “clicking Auto-Tone on steroids.” It gave us much more to work with than just asking Lightroom / Astra to make the image pop.
I didn’t agree with every interpretation. In the bamboo forest I preferred a greener Canopy Light to a more dramatic alternative it offered because it felt closer to being there in mid-summer 35-degree heat. But with Bamboo Cadence above, I almost pushed back on a slightly warm stem (I’d considered using Hue-shifting to reduce its presence in the final image). Then I looked at how it worked among the other textures and decided to keep it.
Where does that leave us in September 2026? I’m still choosing photographs (unlike at a swim meet where I want AI help hunting ‘bangers’), defining and refining style based on what a photo means to me, questioning crops and deciding whether an edit feels right. Astra is making creative decisions too, and sometimes changing my mind.
Gotta say it: “giving up my computer” and letting Astra drive for a while is weird. It still feels like opening a mystery box when I come back and see what it did.
Six prints ordered, 2% of my weekly Codex allowance remaining. You all know the drill by now: Learn the art of the possible, then optimize.
What a world.
Appendix: More on the Fushimi Inari edit
The masks show how it responded to my brief about feeling like I discovered a secret pathway off the main trail. The red mask highlighted here is what it used to paint a warm light (exposure + temperature) on the path.
Note also how it dodged the bright sky – with Mask1 – but, imho, not in a gaudy way. It’s the sort of restraint I hope I would have shown doing similar by hand.
Look above at how it did a single Healing touch-up: I initially thought it used Generative Fill – but during a chat jamming on this with Scott Eaton I discovered that Astra in fact used a perfectly-sized and feathered Heal Spot to carefully paint over the lightbulb – and thus remove the one electric light in a frame about an epiphany moment at a Shinto shrine.
