Education
Guest column: CEO of the Year Rajiv Bakshi shares his learnings
MUMBAI: Over the past few years, young executives and management students have reached out asking for advice on how to plan a successful and rewarding career. I am no certified expert, and I am still striving, grasping and improving each day; but I think I should share some learnings from my career. Hopefully, they come in good use in your journey.
Starting off as a young management trainee in 1999 to being awarded the CEO of the Year has been a fulfilling ride, packed with opportunities, surprises, failures and joy. In the first of the series (this is me being blatantly hopeful), seven notes for early stage professionals:
1. Do the small things perfectly, and primed for the big day: We are all excited and eager to lead the top initiatives of the company, often not realising that we are not yet prepared for it. The best use of your time would be to execute your daily tasks, however small and insignificant, with perfection. It will build the right attitude and character, and will lead you to scale high performance benchmarks. When you take over the big project, you should be 110 per cent ready.
2. Relax, you are not so important: Too much time is spent worrying about the reaction, perception or consequence of actions. In doing so, authenticity is sacrificed and opportunities are passed over. Every action will lead to a reaction. Chill and give your honest best to every task. Be consistent with your approach. Don’t self-judge, enough people will be doing it for you.
3. Break the Rules: Rules are often expectation benchmarks basis the past experience. In a dramatic and disruptive environment, how far can you go if just you adhere to the done and dusted rules. Remember, break the rules, not the law or trust. Take bold risks.
4. Only thing finite is time, use it well! You will not be 25 again. Most of the events may never get repeated. There is no undo button in life. The 1 per cent achievers have used time well. Plan your year, month, week and day as well as you can.
5. Be proud to be different: Let that be the biggest risk you take! We are all distinct. Our life paths have been unique. Our circumstances are contrasted. However, our goals and aspirations are quite similar. To realise them, don’t try to merge with the crowd. It reminds of something I read many years back, “we all want to go to heaven, but none of us want to die.” If you want to stand out in a group, you will have to do better than wear neon yellow. Let the real you shine up in the room. Be authentic and be proud of it. The world is craving for diversity. You will be helping their cause.
6. Life is a continuous trade off: Be ready to sacrifice! I learnt this from my HBS professor Sunil Gupta. Trade off. It’s a core ingredient in defining corporate and brand strategy. Wanting it all is a sure route for stress and anxiety. I am not suggesting that you have to ignore the important tasks, people and goals, except that you will have to learn to prioritise. Train your mind to be able to make those tough decisions, be it in personal or professional lives, especially when they come in conflict. What is more critical for your overall well-being and aspirations is a personal choice. Make that choice, and stand firmly by it.
7. It’s the companion,and neither the journey nor the destination that you enjoy most: When you commence a long journey – colleagues, friends and family will be your biggest asset. Value them and their contribution. Surround yourself with a group of well-wishers, critics, coaches and role models. Riding alone is quite a boring affair. There is no joy is reaching a destination alone. Even scaling the Everest is a group expedition.
(The author is chief operations officer – revenue at Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. The views expressed here are his own and Indiantelevision.com may not subscribe to them.)
Everyone has been turning their selfies into cartoon characters on social media lately. Our recent piece on how people are creating animated WhatsApp avatars for free proves just how fast these tools are catching on.
But beyond all the fun filters and fast effects, there’s a larger narrative at play here, and that is that AI is revolutionising the way people edit photos. What used to take hours or even days in the past can be done in minutes with a few clicks, and you don’t need to have advanced design skills to get the job done either.
Here’s a look at some of the best AI tools that are making photo editing faster, smarter, and more enjoyable whether you’re a creative or simply someone who is looking to have some fun with your photos.
- Photoshop’s AI Photo Tools: Speed and Precision
Most people know Adobe Photoshop as the go-to program for editing images, but its latest AI features take things to a whole new level. Photoshop’s new AI-powered features can automatically identify faces, exposure, and colour issues, fixing them with the click of a button. The neural filters are especially clever, enabling you to smooth skin, modify facial expressions, swap backgrounds and even manipulate lighting to make everything look more natural.
With the integration of these new tools, what used to take a seasoned editor 30 minutes can now be accomplished in seconds, freeing up your time so you can focus on the creative side of things. Whether you’re editing portraits, creating graphics or resizing images for social media, Photoshop’s AI photo tools help to achieve that clean professional finish without the hassle of manual tweaking. It’s one of the best ways to give your photos a polished, cohesive look, even if you don’t consider yourself a pro yet.
- Lightroom: Simplify Bulk Edits and Maintain Consistency
If you’ve ever wondered how photographers maintain the same feel across hundreds of shots, Adobe Lightroom is the answer. Adobe Lightroom is an industry-standard photo management and editing app built for speed, helping you organise, adjust, and fine-tune large batches of images without getting lost in layers or complex tools. Most if not all professional photographers use Lightroom to edit photos before the final shots are sent on to their clients.
Like Photoshop, Lightroom’s built-in AI editing tools can be used for a wide variety of applications, including automatically detecting your subject and adjusting the exposure, colour and tone so every shot looks balanced. You can even apply the same “look” to an entire collection, making it great for projects that rely on consistent visuals – think wedding photos, product shots for an eCommerce website, or social media posts.
And speaking of social media, Lightroom is especially useful for content creators who want a clean, uniform look to their Insta grid or feed without spending hours editing each image individually. In short, Lightroom keeps your workflow simple, but your results professional.
- Sensei-Powered Auto Tagging and Smart Search
Organising photos can become messy and annoying quickly, especially if you have hundreds of folders full of similar shots. That’s where Adobe Sensei comes in. You might not have heard of it by name, but you’ve probably used this tool without even realising you have. How so? Because Adobe Sensei is the AI engine that runs quietly in the background across Photoshop, Lightroom, and other Adobe Creative Cloud apps. This innovative AI engine is programmed to facilitate a wide variety of processes, including facial recognition, recognising objects, and sorting your photos automatically.
Alongside being used for auto tagging elements in images, Sensei is also adept at using image metadata to organise your photo library, and make it even easier to find specific shots with typed search prompts. Say goodbye to searching through dozens of files trying to remember what you named them — just type in something like “beach” or “red dress” and your shot will pop up instantly. For anyone who shoots a lot or manages content libraries, Adobe Sensei’s generative AI engine makes organising photos simple and stress-free.
- Adobe Firefly: Intelligent Background and Object Replacement
Sometimes you take a great photo, but there’s one thing that ruins it. Maybe it’s an awkward background, an annoying photobomber, or a sky that just looks a bit blah. That’s where Adobe Firefly comes in. With this generative AI tool by Adobe, you can simply highlight the problem areas in your images and type in what you’d like instead, and it will make the changes for you. You could trade a dull sky for a sunset, introduce a gentle blur behind your subject or eliminate distractions entirely.
But it’s not just about fixing mistakes. Firefly is also fantastic for experimenting. You can change the feel of a shot, create atmosphere, or build new visuals for marketing and social media all without starting again from scratch. It’s an easy trick that makes photos look more purposeful and artistic, even if you’re starting off with something that looks average.
- Camera Raw: Smarter Corrections Right from the Start
Every photographer or creator knows that editing starts well before you get to the fun filters. Camera Raw’s built-in AI tools quietly sort out the basics so you don’t have to. These innovative AI tools fix lighting, balance colours, and pull detail back from shadows or overexposed spots. It even cleans up grainy low-light shots and straightens out lens distortion without much effort on your end.
For photographers and hobbyists, using Camera Raw’s AI tools just makes image processing easier, particularly for images that require only minor tweaks and adjustments. The attention to detail of Camera Raw’s editing tools makes autocorrecting blemishes, red eyes, and other small details across digital photography quick and efficient, supporting photographers and content creators in getting their image assets publication-ready.
- Adobe Express: Quick Edits for Social Media
Finally, not every photo edit has to be a full studio production. As this tool’s name suggests, Adobe Express is designed to be quick: you can trim, crop, and colour-correct your posts for social media in a matter of minutes. The AI auto-adjust tools detect the subject and optimise brightness, sharpness, and background balance without you having to do much.
Adobe Express is perfect for influencers, small businesses or creators who post daily content, stories and want to remain active on social media without having to spend hours editing content. You can create multiple versions of one image for different social media platforms and keep everything looking cohesive across your feed. It’s simple, practical, and exactly what you need when you want to share something polished without overthinking it.
Use these AI Tools to Elevate your Photo Editing
Editing photos has never been easier. With AI taking care of the technical fixes like lighting, colour, and cleanup, you get more room to focus on the creative side. Whether it’s for work, social media, or just something fun to share, these tools help you turn everyday photos into something worth keeping.
What really matters is experimenting and finding what feels right for your style. The tech is there to make the process faster, but the creative choices are still all yours. So have fun, experiment, and you just might be pleasantly surprised with the results!
