I spent all weekend trying to fix a single group photo

Getting started with a simple request

It started with a group photo from a birthday party last month. One of my friends looked decent, another had their eyes half-closed, and the lighting was just a mess. I remember thinking, ‘How hard could this be to fix?’ I used to just rely on basic filters, but this time I wanted to try something more specific. I started looking at these free background removal sites—the ones people call ‘nukki’ sites in Korea. It’s funny how they promise perfect results, but half the time you end up with jagged hair edges that look like they were cut out with safety scissors. I spent about two hours just clicking through different options, trying to mask out the background to replace it with something cleaner, but it always looked like a bad collage.

The endless cycle of free editing apps

I tried a few different free editing apps I found mentioned in random forums. Some were surprisingly intuitive, but others felt like they were actively trying to hide their best features behind a paywall. There was this one mobile app that was supposed to be great for detailed adjustments, but the interface was so cramped on my phone screen that I kept hitting the wrong button. It made me miss the days when I could just use a mouse and a proper screen. I honestly don’t know why I didn’t just ask someone who knows how to use Lightroom Classic properly, but I guess I just wanted to see if I could figure it out myself without spending money on a subscription. It’s that weird stubbornness where you refuse to pay for a tool you’ll only use once.

Trying to make sense of AI tools

Everyone keeps talking about how AI is going to solve all our editing problems. I played around with a few generative tools, thinking maybe I could just ‘re-generate’ the friend’s eyes that were closed, but it gave them these strange, glassy, synthetic-looking retinas that made the whole photo look like a horror movie. I even looked into those local workshops in places like Goyang, where they teach you how to use ChatGPT for image and music production, but that feels like a huge commitment for a task that is technically just a weekend headache. It’s strange how something that sounds so revolutionary, like AI image restoration, actually just creates more work when the result isn’t perfect.

Dealing with the audio side of things

After giving up on the photo for a bit, I got distracted by a video file I had saved on my drive. I needed to trim a few seconds of silence from the beginning and add some background noise, but I realized I didn’t even have a decent MP3 editing program installed. I ended up hunting down some browser-based tools again. The whole process felt so fragmented. I have these snippets of memories—a birthday party, a short video clip—that are all stuck in this digital limbo because I don’t have the patience to sit down and master these tools. I remember paying around 50,000 won for some editing software years ago, and I honestly think that was easier to manage than the current landscape of ‘free’ tools that are all just different versions of ‘please upgrade to pro.’

The unfinished result

I never actually finished the photo. It’s sitting in a folder on my desktop labeled ‘fix later,’ which is basically the digital version of a graveyard for projects. Maybe I’ll pick it up again when I have another free Saturday, but the thought of opening those menus again makes me tired. Sometimes I wonder if we’re just making things harder for ourselves by trying to do everything with these tools that are designed to look simple but are actually quite picky. I keep thinking maybe I’ll go to the Seoul Light DDP festival this weekend instead—at least there, the visuals are already done for you and you don’t have to worry about the background resolution or whether the light balance is off. It’s nice to just be a viewer sometimes.