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Five Photo & Video Innovations to Look Forward to in 2025

Published January 23, 2025

We’ve entered into a new year, and with that new year often will come speculation about what advancements we can expect. You may have noticed a couple of weeks ago when we asked our staff members about their favorite product for 2024, we also included a graph regarding the most exciting advancements they’re looking forward to. It’s a broad range of choices and a conversation worth discussing. To do that, I’ve put together a list of the five most significant advancements we can expect in the photo and video world for 2025.

Third-Party Lens Development

To start, the list of the most exciting new advancements we can expect to see in 2025 is what we only first saw last year: third-party lens development. Many camera manufacturers have left popular third-party lens companies like Sigma and Tamron behind with the transition to mirrorless cameras. However, 2024 brought announcements by both companies regarding developing RF-mounted lenses. We can expect these developments to continue as they get more lens options (and affordable options) to these mirrorless platforms, helping Canon and Nikon round out their lens lineup, and leaving adapters in the past. One can only hope that some third-party manufacturers start developing lenses for the Fuji GF systems.

AI Tools in Retouching

In the past, I’ve discussed AI retouching on this blog and how it can help with your retouching process. I’m not interested in AI that can create art by a text prompt or AI that can write a generic thesis for you. However, I am interested in AI, which can speed up my workflow and help me work more efficiently. In the past, I’ve talked about retouch4.me’s series of tools and Adobe’s generative AI tools built within Photoshop. Both work exceptionally well, and many AI tools are at the forefront with broad appeal regarding retouching.

Tools like Evoto and Aperty have flooded your social media with ads over the last 6 months and are making significant changes to the retouching process through AI. My time with each of these tools is minimal, but so far, I am very impressed. As AI adapts and becomes more efficient, we can start seeing depth maps become a thing, allowing us to retouch more effectively while maintaining realism in our work. While my fingers are on the pulse, it’s still unknown how the software will continue to adapt and develop and potentially take some market share from the behemoth known as Adobe.

Color and Aesthetic Copy

Continuing on the post-production side, a color match that works as intended is much needed in photography and videography. What do I mean by color match? I would like to see a piece of software where I can input a reference photo and use tools to mimic better the color profiles used within the image. On the photo side, we’ve seen a couple of programs attempt to do this already, with varying degrees of results. Color Match by Retouch4Me attempts to recreate color profiles based on reference images. However, in my limited use of the software, it doesn’t work as well as advertised. Additionally, the latest editions of Capture One Pro share a similar color-matching system. While it works great for creating adjustments on a series of images from the same set, it struggles to take a reference photo and successfully mimic the color palette used to transfer to the other image.

On the video side, Canon recently announced software that will perform a color match based on various camera profiles. There is still limited information as to how effectively this will work, but as technology advances, I would love to see software that helps dial in your color more effectively.

Actual Working Lens Profiles

We may need to talk about lens profiles if we continue that conversation. If you’ve used Photoshop, Capture One, or Lightroom, you’ve likely seen that they have a long series of lens profiles that are designed to fix common issues with those particular lenses. The job of these profiles is to correct chromatic aberrations, barrel distortions, and vignetting that you might see common with a specific lens or focal length. However, in use, results generally vary. If there’s one thing that Lensrentals.com knows more than most, it is that two lenses are never the same. So, I’m realistic in my expectations for how lens profiles function. Still, with all this new AI technology, I hope to see these lens profiles being updated and have a purposeful use case when trying to batch-correct various problems you might run into when using specific lenses. A way where software learns the particular quirks of your lens and autocorrects those problems when needed would also have a significant use case.

LAOWA’s Continued Expansion of Obscure Lenses

We really love LAOWA and how much they’ve pushed the bounds when it comes to lenses. Since the release of their original Probe lens in 2021, we’ve seen this manufacturer, in particular, creating extremely unique and purpose-built lenses. From their SuperMacro lens offering 50x magnification to their brilliant and (fairly) affordable anamorphic lens kits, there is no manufacturer that is pushing the bounds of creativity quite like LAOWA. They are continuing that trend by announcing a probe lens expected to be released in Q2 of 2025. What makes this probe lens special? Well, for one, it has a 2.3x zoom – and for two, it offers a 35-degree version, allowing for even more unique shooting techniques.

And that is my short list of things I expect to become a reality in 2025. Is there anything for this coming year that you’re excited about? Feel free to chime in using the comments below.

Author: Zach Sutton

I’m Zach and I’m the editor and a frequent writer here at Lensrentals.com. I’m also a commercial beauty photographer in Los Angeles, CA, and offer educational workshops on photography and lighting all over North America.
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