How to Choose the Best Images From an AI Campaign
The best way to choose images from an AI campaign is to judge the set, not just the individual frames. Your strongest image might deserve to stay, obviously, but twelve individually strong images can still make a pretty boring campaign if they're all doing the same thing.
Don't choose twelve winners.
Choose one winning set of twelve.
Give every image a job
You don't need twelve hero images.
One might establish the world.
Another gets close.
One makes the product obvious.
One gives you movement.
One barely shows anything but creates a pause between two louder images.
The question isn't only is this good?
It's what is this doing here?
If removing an image changes absolutely nothing about the edit, that's useful information.
Consistency isn't repetition
This gets messy with generative AI because once you find a composition that works, you can make another version almost instantly.
And another.
And another.
Eventually you have “consistency.”
Except sometimes you've actually just made the same image twelve times.
Keep the world, change the perspective.
Keep an eye on the weird one
There's usually an image that doesn't fit perfectly.
Maybe the composition is strange, maybe it's quieter than everything else, maybe you can't immediately explain why you keep coming back to it.
Don't automatically kill it.
Sometimes that's the image stopping the whole campaign from feeling too perfect.
Or too generated.
Look at everything together
This is why I don't love choosing campaign images entirely in fullscreen.
You need fullscreen to inspect an image, sure.
But you need the wall to understand the edit.
Are three consecutive images basically identical?
Does the product disappear?
Is every model giving the same expression?
Does everything have the same energy?
Does anything surprise you?
That's creative curation. You're deciding how the images behave together, not handing out medals to individual JPEGs.
And eventually, stop
There will probably be a point where you think maybe you should generate 50 more.
Sometimes you should.
Sometimes generating 50 more is just easier than choosing between the 50 you already have.
Know the difference.