THE 3rd event - Summer Gathering
Thursday 9th 2 26
It took a while to get the third one off the ground—turns out finding the right London venue is an art form in itself
—but Stanley's Post came straight to the rescue. Thanks to their support as our sponsor, the London Post Club came back for our biggest summer gathering yet.
And what a night. Despite the heat, the room was full from the moment doors opened, and honestly it was hard getting people to quiet down for the talks—everyone was too busy catching up, having a laugh, talking shop. Which, if you think about it, is the whole point.
On stage, Rankin was clear that he is a photographer first. He earns his living from photography, and AI images don’t really feature in his work. He isn’t an AI evangelist, yet his message to the room was to get into it anyway. FAIK came from that thinking: he wanted to know what AI really was, so he went all in, with a full art project, a magazine and an exhibition. It echoes what he has said elsewhere, that he wants to use AI and has used it, while still interrogating it, and that what you reject, refine or reframe is what sets you apart. For retouchers, that is good news. We have the technical skills, the taste and a habit of solving creative problems, so we are well placed to use AI as a tool and an ally, and to lead it rather than be led by it.
SpeakerS RANKIN AND KEN VREMAN
Ken Vreman from Figma Weave gave a live demo showing how retouchers can bridge traditional high-end craft with new AI pipelines. It was practical, not theoretical, which is what people actually want.
Weave, formerly Weavy, combines AI generation with traditional editing tools like compositing, matte control and relighting in one node canvas. Ken worked through it live. He started with image generation, then combined and edited multiple images and animated them, using the compositing tools inside the node tree to develop stills and animations alike. He also showed the powerful CGI workflow tools, and how the node-based approach lets you iterate, stay consistent, be madly creative and keep control, with every step easy to tweak. That is a big part of the appeal, since you can build a process once and revisit it again and again. For a room used to layers, masks and pipelines, the logic felt familiar, and it showed how retouching skill and taste can lead the AI.
To top it off, Figma Weave gave every attendee a generous batch of free credits to try it for themselves.
The feedback afterward was the best we've had—loads of people telling us it was the strongest event yet. Big thanks to Stanley's Post, to Ken and Rankin, and to everyone who turned up and made it what it was.
