A large portion of post processing in photography seem close to impossible to automate. Typically best studio quality pictures are retouched, where a lot of ey

A large portion of post processing in photography seem close to impossible to automate. Typically best studio quality pictures are retouched, where a lot of eyeballing is done - touched up until no further "issues" are left. Example of an issue resolution would be dodge and burning. It's a locally applied lightening or darkening of picture. It is used to tone map an image and apply make up, among others. Tone mapping itself seems like a good candidate to automate, cause most often it's used to squish down high dynamic range scene into a screen quality image. It can recover details that would otherwise be overblown or underdeveloped. Still, retoucher can selectively apply dodge and burn to guide viewers attention to main subject and away from distractions. That's near impossible to automate,the decision if it should or shouldnt be done for a particular image. Most often than not, a good post processing (or retouch) is those actual decisions, where to apply and what kind of change. Everything else can easily be automated