I opened PhotoShop to work on some portraits I shot last week. Some nice headshots for an exec I've always gotten along with. When I opened the program Adobe invited me to download a beta of PhotoShop that contains a thing called "Generative fill." Like most of the other generative A.I. programs out there it uses text descriptions to make up backgrounds, extend frames and do images from the mystical vapors.
I tried it. I pulled a test image I made a while back when I was working out at a tech company and needed a stand in. (Thank you! Mr. Self Timer).
The frame was me against a gray seamless backdrop. I selected myself and then typed in: put a mountain landscape in the background of the image, behind the main subject. I pressed "generate" and ten seconds later I had three different versions of the image to choose from. My total elapsed time? Five minutes; most of it spent looking for an image of myself to play around with.
This is the first trial, first time "out of the box" with no instructions or tutorials. Will this change the face of photography? I believe that we're standing on the very top of a roller coaster just waiting to start the ever accelerating downward plunge. Remember this though. If you do photography for fun you don't have to care, don't have to participate and don't have to change the way you've always enjoyed doing things.
But this blog is the property of a commercial photographer who writes about business stuff as well as fun stuff. To not acknowledge this would be like stuffing cotton balls in my ears, putting black duct tape over my eyes and plunging my head deep into the sand. This stuff is here now. Not "maybe next year."
Fire up your beta copy and check it out. But keep both feet firmly on the ground.
All the best, Kirk
Added on Sunday morning: https://apple.news/ACb96kuZTQJeBn2h9K08ymQ
18 comments:
The face fungus suits you but maybe lose the eagle, put a parrot on your shoulder and one those peaked sailor caps … oh, and lose the Christmas tree and you’re sorted….. :exit hurriedly.
They've got to come up with a category for images created in this way. I'm not so narrow-minded as to not see the artistic potential here. But it's not photography. Another vote for the beard. What does B think?
Aargh! Luckily when I updated to the latest Photoshop it told me my GPU was no longer supported, so it's either buy a new PC (mine is only 6 years old) or live with the previous version of PS, sans AI. I choose the latter; pass the cotton balls and duct tape!
Dick
Love the beard. And what is that hair thingie?
Glyn Dewis has some examples in this video of PS AI that can be used to a photographer's advantage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ePrevpfB2A.
Use the beard photo on the back cover of your next book.
Many, many, many years ago (or at least it seems that long) when Jerry Uellsman was making prints with trees floating in mid-air in the wet darkroom and Photoshop was new I remember a Shutterbug magazine cover that touted the possibilities of digit. The cover image had all sorts of things defying gravity, even Greek columns. I remember thinking "What's the point?". Basically, it was a pointless image created 'because they could'. Photoshop has become a useful tool when used rationally and I suppose the same will eventually prove true of AI. At least I hope so. There is potential for great mischief though.
If it is any consolation (probably not much) I think AI is going to have a deleterious impact on many creative careers: photography, film-making, marketing, journalism, writing, software engineering ... the list goes on. And if Photoshop and digital have massaged the truth sometimes, then I think AI will take it outside and beat it to a pulp. At least we can tell that your montage is not real; I'm no so optimistic about our ability to discern the truth in the future. I hope I'm wrong.
Like the beard, but you need to find another perruquier.
Mike, I told her the highlights in the braids were a bit much. She slapped me with a crusty baguette.
Lol. For that 2nd photo, did you add "...and make it weird" to the prompt?
It's been said elsewhere that some fears of AI are, at heart, fears about capitalism. I agree with this. As you say, you can ignore AI in your hobbies if you want, but AI is going to "disrupt" labor in places without safety nets. It doesn't have to kill the industries to do this. Just ask Flint, MI how it's doing even though we all still drive cars.
And Chat GPT approved this message.
unlike everybody else LOL, i am not in favour of you having a beard IRL :-) but hey you do you! love the experiments! i don't know anything about "AI" other than it's going to lead to a lot more "premium mediocre" content ! i've worked in the software business for over 3 decades first as a software developer now as a support engineer and is this a fad or something that sticks? i don't know! i am guessing it sticks but it's not life changing for software developers for at least 2 years. for everybody else i wouldn't try to pretend to guess its impact.
Voting for beard. But leave the curlicue mustache to politicians.
That beard would add enough drag to take 3/10 of a second off your lap times...just sayin'.
The top photo looks like a guy standing in front of a poster at the local travel agent, if we still had travel agents. In other words, not real. It would be slightly better if you could almost imperceptibly fuzz up the mountains. It somehow seems like a shot that couldn't be taken with a single lens.
JC, since the program provides everything in layers it's trifling to make the background out of focus with either a gaussian blur filter or, dipping into the "neural" filters one could even better use "depth blur." I chose to present my future award winning construct just as the machine delivered it to me. I figured the software knows best.....
Clearly needs more giraffes.
As the default animal in the first background Luminar correction software.
Porn is gonna get a lot weirder.
The AI "find subject" has already proven useful in the world of making photographs for clients for money. Makes it a step easier when cutting out and dropping someone into a common background when doing say headshots for companies.
And it could make it easier for me to say, light up a headshot in a glass conference room with the power-towers of commerce showing out the windows with no regard for where my lights reflected and with no concern for playing Photographer-Find-Waldo in the glass. Then issuing the command to drop in the clean, big-photo-lights-off image plate of just the view behind the person. Instead of having to do it by hand.
But this AI explosion will certainly devalue, immediately, the perceived value of those skills in the client's eyes. We already were at a point where it was nearly impossible to charge clients for keeping a set of backgrounds that they like or that were of their offices, at the ready to drop their people's headshots into. I mean, all I was doing was "Photoshopping" it according to them.
There is a favorite funny poster from a company that makes fake versions of those office motivational posters.
A bear is standing at the top of some rapids and a salmon is about to leap into its wide open jaws. The caption reads "Sometimes a journey of a thousand miles can end very, very badly".
Feeling, as a full time photographer, at this moment like I may be able to eke out advantages for some months in post production due to AI. Feeling more like I'm now at mile 997 in that 1,000 mile journey and a big bear is waiting.
Mitch, I absolutely feel your pain. And the bear is lumbering closer by the minute....
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