In this episode, I sit down with Justin Benson, co-founder of Aftershoot (and still an active wedding photographer shooting 10 weddings a year), to unpack what might be the biggest workflow shift photographers have seen in years. Aftershoot has officially expanded from an AI culling, editing, and retouching tool into a full RAW rendering platform with built-in gallery delivery — meaning you can now cull, edit, retouch, and deliver an entire session without ever opening Lightroom.

Justin and I get honest about Adobe’s stagnation, why legacy software giants can’t move fast enough to serve modern photographers, and where Lightroom still holds an edge (spoiler: masking and generative patch). We dig into Aftershoot’s new gated gallery access with face recognition — a game-changer for wedding guest galleries, school portraits, sports, and event photography — and why this could replace some pricey single-purpose platforms.

If you’ve tried Aftershoot in the past and walked away, or you’ve been clinging to your Lightroom-based workflow out of habit, this conversation is your nudge to reexamine everything. The cost of change has never been lower — and the cost of staying the same has never been higher. The photographers willing to rebuild their systems now are the ones pulling ahead.

Chapters

[00:00] Welcome

[02:15] Why This Aftershoot Update Is an Exponential Leap, Not an Incremental Step

[05:30] The Truth About Lightroom Loyalty (And Why It’s Not Earned)

[10:00] One Linear Workflow: Cull, Edit, Retouch, Deliver — All in One Place

[14:45] Setting Realistic Expectations With AI Editing

[17:30] What Lightroom Still Does Better Than Aftershoot

[19:30] Where Photographers Are Still Wasting the Most Time

[22:00] Gated Galleries & Face Recognition: A Game-Changer for Guests, Schools & Sports

[26:00] Why Now Is the Time to Reexamine Your Entire Workflow

[30:00] Why Big Companies Like Adobe and Canon Can’t Keep Up

Resources Mentioned

Aftershoot (AI culling, editing, retouching, and gallery delivery):
ShootProof
Dropbox
WPPI (Wedding & Portrait Photographers International)
Join the community

Full Transcript

BEN: All right, here we go. We are recording and we are going live in three, two, one. Forgot to press the native audio button to record. So now, now I’m really recording. Now we’re really recording. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Good. Good. So we’re going live in three, two, one. Hey, you’re listening to the six figure photography podcast with Ben Hartley. Each week, a new episode is going to air to help you grow your business by winning more bookings, maximizing your profits, breaking through your limit and beliefs. Welcome to the show. I am super excited that you are here with me and my friend Justin today. Today’s an exciting episode because I don’t know, every so often something happens. Like there’s a new piece of technology, a new piece of gear, a new piece of software that comes out and it actually like changes stuff. And I want to bring it up like that because I think a lot of, a lot of times we get the hype, we get like, Hey, this is good. This is going to change things. And then we get in there and we’re like, ah, I don’t know. I don’t know if it changed much. This is actually an episode where we’re going to discuss something that is changing like a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff’s changing y’all. So we’re going to be discussing it today specifically around your workflow, which is probably one of the most exciting things to see change because it’s where most of your time is lost is in the weeds of the workflow. And so we got Justin Benson from Aftershoot on the show, Justin, welcome on in.

JUSTIN: Thanks for having me.

BEN: So Justin, you are co-founder of Aftershoot, but you are still an active wedding photographer in the, in the pre-roll. My friends, I asked Justin, I said, so you’re still shooting weddings? And you said a little. And I said, Oh, okay, that’s okay. Fair. That’s fair. That’s fair. How many is a little? What did you say?

JUSTIN: I said 10. I got 10 weddings this year.

BEN: 10 weddings is not a little. For the wedding photographers out there, that could be a full year for them. And you are also actively involved in, in Aftershoot. And so that’s crazy, man. So for those of you who don’t know, Aftershoot is an AI culling and editing and retouching. And now, well, yeah, you guys should know, a gallery delivering software. And it’s in my, in my experience is absolutely leading the market in terms of what is possible. And so I think my first question for you, Justin, by the way, is it okay if we just skip all the story stuff? You’ve been on the show like three times. I’m like, yeah, we got it, Justin. Go listen to the old episodes. I just want to get right into the meat of stuff. So I think the first question I’m curious about is this new change with Aftershoot is is kind of like, well, it reminds me of an exponential leap instead of an incremental step. There’s been a lot of incremental steps within Aftershoot, right? Like a little bit of better this, a little bit of better that, a little bit more, a little bit less, whatever it is. And so now, now with raw rendering, raw editing, raw retouching with galleries, this is like a huge leap where you’re, I mean, you’re kind of removing something like Lightroom from the picture. Is that accurate to say?

JUSTIN: Yeah, I mean, we’re not we’re not replacing Lightroom yet. I mean, there’s still features that Lightroom has that we won’t have, but that’s kind of where we’re going. I mean, the whole idea is to take your workflow and kind of dump it on its head and make it faster and make it easier and just make it better.

BEN: Yeah. And so walk me through this. So now within Aftershoot, you have the ability to you don’t have to export the images and then bring them into Lightroom. You don’t have to do that anymore.

JUSTIN: Nope. You can keep it all inside Aftershoot. I mean, I delivered a full session. I shot at First Communion a couple weeks ago. I delivered the entire thing and didn’t open Lightroom once.

BEN: So like you’ve moved the sliders from Lightroom, essentially you’ve created your own Lightroom inside of Aftershoot.

JUSTIN: Yep.

BEN: That’s so crazy.

JUSTIN: You got sliders and, you know, masks and yeah, it’s in there. It’s all in there.

BEN: And so like the problems that you were originally solving for with Aftershoot, how have those problems changed or maybe or how have you guys changed in order to solve them? Because it feels like you’re solving much bigger, more complex problems now than when you first set out to just like help photographers call. Now we’re doing something just far more comprehensive.

JUSTIN: Yeah. So this was always in the plan. So like since day one, it was always we want to be a coloring, editing, retouching. We want to just be the tool you use as a photographer. You know, as a brand, I’m a photographer. So I want a company that I support, that I believe in, that is doing right by me, doing right by the industry. And obviously other companies out there, I won’t like talk poorly about them, but there’s a lot of other companies out there that just that’s not their goal. They’re not here to make the photography industry better. They’re here to make a billion dollars.

BEN: So I guess I want to talk about Lightroom because I feel like there’s a lot of Lightroom loyalists and myself kind of being one of them. And I don’t know if I’m actually a Lightroom loyalist because I’m actually loyal to the tool itself. Or is it more so like familiarity became loyalty? Like it’s well, in a lot of ways, it was really the only real solution out there from day one. And so like for the photographers who who, whether it’s just because it’s ingrained in us for the last 15 years or they really love the program, they’ve got deep loyalty to Lightroom. Like, yeah, where do you think that loyalty came from, maybe? Like, is it is it still earned?

JUSTIN: Earned is not I would not say it’s earned. You know, I think Lightroom is a legacy product. It’s something that’s just been around for so long and they keep pushing th...