Neurapix Review

Neurapix: Introduction

Editing your photographs is a key step in the image creation process and it can be immensely rewarding and satisfying. It can also be laborious, chewing up a huge amounts of valuable time and is often not very challenging. Much, of course, depends on the circumstances. Crafting a few Raws from an awesome landscape shoot is one thing, but working through thousands of shots from a black tie event or a big wedding is quite another. 

The thing with modern digital capture and high speed burst rates is that it’s very easy to rack up thousands of Raws on an afternoon out with the camera, so anything that makes for a smoother workflow can only be a good thing and this is where Neurapix potentially comes into its own. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can perform all manner of tasks, from the mundane to the very complex, and it does so quickly, efficiently and effectively. Neurapix is a German-based company that has developed AI image editing technology to speed up Raw processing working through Adobe Lightroom Classic. 

Speed is just one attraction and Neurapix AI’s editing skills are ‘trainable’ to produce your own editing presets so the processed images fulfil your vision.

Features

• Online Raw editing service 
• 1000 free edits when you register
• Direct upload from Lightroom
• Suits Lightroom Classic v9.0 and higher
• Flat rate and Pay-per-picture options
• Kickstarter needs 21 pictures for the project and 20 have to be edited to create a SmartPreset
• Free SmartPresets are AI-generated from your editing style
• Use 500+ edited Raws for ever greater consistency
• Free straightening and cropping for Flat Rate subscribers.
• Pay-per-Picture users it’s 1ct for additional features
• 24/7 customer support
• Neurapix.com/en

BEFORE

AFTER – This portrait was edited with one of my created presets with the addition of the Advanced Retouch & Soft Backdrop mask that comes with the Neurapix Lightroom plug-in. Neurapix has brightened model Caitlyn’s face really well. Image credit: Will Cheung.

BEFORE

AFTER – This image was processed with the Classic Depths black & white preset supplied with the Neurapix Lightroom plug-in. The Crop & Rotate option was also ticked and you can see the service has improved the shot by cropping out the bottom edge. Image credit: Will Cheung.

Neurapix: Features

How you work with Neurapix depends on your photography with the option of Pay-per-picture or Flat rate. 

Pay-per-picture means there’s no commitment and you only pay when you use Neurapix. At $0.03 per image and $0.01 for additional straightening and/or cropping, costs are very reasonable. An added attraction when you register with Neurapix is that you get the first 1000 pictures processed for free.

The Flat rate option means you pay a monthly fee, and for that, you can edit as many pictures as you like. Pay monthly and the rate is $79.95, but you’ll save 37% if you opt for an annual deal and the monthly fee drops to $49.95. Taking the annual Flat rate option makes sense if you process 3000 pictures a month. The Flat rate service means editing happens on your computer, so there is no time lost uploading/downloading files and image cropping and straightening is included. All quoted prices are subject to VAT.

There are other extra benefits in both options. The Neurapix plug-in comes with five free SmartPresets: Eternal Essence, Luminous Dream and Vintage Sunbeam, Classic Depths and Gentle Mist – the last two are black & white. There’s also the ability to use Lightroom’s AI masking skills. Three masks are supplied with the initial plug-in: Advanced Retouch & Highlight, Subtle Subject and Advanced Retouch & Highlight. 

A key Neurapix feature is the ability to make your own presets from your edited Raws in Lightroom, and we’ll be discussing that process next.

Creating a SmartPreset and applying it to your shots is a straightforward process and Neurapix turnaround in both cases is impressively quick.

The Neurapix plug-in does a great job of walking you through the preset creation and follow-up editing process.

Neurapix: Handling and Performance

To start using Neurapix, you need to register and install the Neurapix plug-in. The recommendation is to do this via Adobe Creative Cloud and this loads the plug-in into Lightroom. You can install it manually but whichever method you take, video instructions are on the Neurapix website. Once done, it is accessed via Library>Plug-in Extras.

Next, it’s time to make your own SmartPreset. There are two ways to go here: if you don’t have a portfolio of 500+ consistently edited images available for the regular creation option, choose Kickstart which means you need at least 20 edited Raws. However, the 500+  image option is recommended for greater editing consistency.

If there are any pre-existing edits on the selected Lightroom images, the plug-in detects this and you get the option to reset the images to their original imported state. Incompatible files such as JPEGs and TIFs are also identified and you get a running total of the number of suitable images.

Once you have the edited Raws, you send the images to Neurapix and a short while later, you get an email confirming that the preset is ready to use. I sent my test images at 17.03 and received an email at 17.09 informing me that the SmartPreset was ready. In my case, my Neurapix emails went into my Junk folder, so that is something to be aware of.

To apply the preset to the unedited images, go to Library>Plug-in Extras>Edit photos, give your project a name, make sure the appropriate preset and any required mask is selected, and then hit the Start editing button. The images are uploaded to Neurapix, a confirmation message appears in Lightroom and an email will arrive in due course to say the edits are ready to be downloaded. 

I applied my preset to 527 pictures which took 13 minutes to upload, and five minutes later I got an email confirming the pictures were all done. There’s the invitation at a couple of points to tweak the created preset to get the desired effect at no extra charge.

BEFORE

AFTER – I shot over 1500 images at Slimbridge Wetland Centre and edited the Raws through Neurapix with my created preset. The processed images were nicely warmed up and cropped competently. Image credit: Will Cheung

To see how long a bigger shoot would take I made a preset from my pictures taken at Slimbridge Wetland Centre. I edited the minimum 20 images and the created preset was applied to 1617 Canon EOS R5 Raws. I went for a nature shoot for this test to see how Neurapix would perform with a non-human subject. 

The upload took 31 minutes, I received an email that the files had been processed 16 minutes later and applying the edits took another 19 minutes. This was all done with Lightroom Classic running on an M2 Mac Studio.

So, in total the 1617 shots took 65 minutes to process. The initial 20 image edit to create the preset took around five minutes. It took eight minutes for the preset itself to be generated, so the whole lot took around 80 minutes. For most of that time I was baby-sitting the computer but normally I would have wandered off to get on with other tasks, and check progress periodically. Processing that number of shots by hand would almost certainly have taken longer. 

The results looked good. To be fair, I didn’t work too hard on editing the 20 Raws to create the preset but looking at the results across the shoot, I was pleased with the overall look. The cropping was good in many cases but not perfect. However, I didn’t expect that as cropping is a very subjective process. 

Overall, though, Neurapix did a competent job at a cost of around $49 (approx. £38) plus VAT.

BEFORE

AFTER – This image was processed with my own black & white preset. The Crop & Rotate option was also ticked and you can see the service has improved the shot with a tighter crop. Image credit: Will Cheung.