Off Topic: Photography & AI... a gamechanger?

[Pylon1_Mark]

While doing my normal internet browsing, I came across something I've never seen before, but something that I'm going to check out, and soon. After looking for yourself, you'll probably come to the same conclusion as I did - we're about to see a lot of people employing this "technique" due to the ability to turn a sub-marginal photo into something it's not... so it seems to me to be a gamechanger and one not easily detectable.

So here is the link.... Topaz Photo AI - Maximize Image Quality with AI (topazlabs.com)

I'm actually in the process of printing out a ton of photos from the 90's early 2000's and some shots are ones I'd really like to print (for my personal use) like the Super Corsair, Pond Racer, ect., but slightly out-of-focus and wouldn't reproduce well. Happening upon this Photo AI software, it certainly appears that there will be a way to "recover" these images - something I'd thought impossible, until now. Regardless, I'll be adding a review here once I get the software & new computer (the hardware specs on the software are more than my current system can handle, so I will also need to upgrade my computer) but from what I'm gathering, it will be more testing to prove its effectiveness rather than to prove it works... it obviously does, and does so extremely well.

In that light, I would like to hope that anyone posting here using that type of software would make a statement or watermark indicating the photo is AI enhanced. I think some here will remember when a photographer posted photos here that were manipulated (adding prop blur) & the person posted it did not indicate such, and when outed became pretty controversial. That's fair... but what do you think? I just know for me, anytime I post an image that was AI enhanced I will indicate such. I'd like to hope others would do the same.

So Mr Wayners... should we adopt an official policy on this before it becomes a problem or wait until afterwards?

[Jukka]

Can you show us Mark how much "better" the pic is after enhanching it ?

Sorry the site already shows it.

I think this is progress.

[Pylon1_Mark]

Can you show us Mark how much "better" the pic is after enhanching it ?

Sorry the site already shows it.

I think this is progress.

You should see the progress it's making in video, which is what got me looking into this. I watch a lot of utube and came across some video of WWII gun camera footage that was AI enhanced. The clips shown I was familiar with, but the AI colorized clip was like watching it in HD... it was actually so much better I thought I was watching new, undiscovered footage. The addition of audio into the clips (you can hear the bullets flying and explosions) was a nice touch too.

But after doing a little more research it became obvious that we're soon not going to be able to tell "real" from AI modified works. It's a potential gamechanger in more ways than one, but one that I do think will also become mainstream very quickly.

[RAD2LTR]

Topaz Sharpen/Photo Ai is hit or miss on its ability to fix an image. I do use it, but it can't fix a really missed shot. If the shot is 98% there, it should get close to fixing it. There is still nothing better than good technique behind the camera.

Will

[Pylon1_Mark]

Topaz Sharpen/Photo Ai is hit or miss on its ability to fix an image. I do use it, but it can't fix a really missed shot. If the shot is 98% there, it should get close to fixing it. There is still nothing better than good technique behind the camera.

Will

I didn't think it could do much if the shot isn't there, but most of what I'd be using it for would be as you described... 98% there. The prints actually look good from 2 foot away on an 8x10 - I'd just like it to be a bit sharper. Back in the early 90s when the shots were taken I was just learning about shutter speeds and the bad things that happen when you slow em down for the prop blur (my panning wasn't as smooth as it needed to be) and since most of those planes are no longer with us, kinda stuck with what I got. That being the case, I'm gonna try to make em look as good as possible.

Thanks for the info Will!

[AAFO_WSagar]

While doing my normal internet browsing, I came across something I've never seen before, but something that I'm going to check out, and soon. After looking for yourself, you'll probably come to the same conclusion as I did - we're about to see a lot of people employing this "technique" due to the ability to turn a sub-marginal photo into something it's not... so it seems to me to be a gamechanger and one not easily detectable.

So here is the link.... Topaz Photo AI - Maximize Image Quality with AI (topazlabs.com)

I'm actually in the process of printing out a ton of photos from the 90's early 2000's and some shots are ones I'd really like to print (for my personal use) like the Super Corsair, Pond Racer, ect., but slightly out-of-focus and wouldn't reproduce well. Happening upon this Photo AI software, it certainly appears that there will be a way to "recover" these images - something I'd thought impossible, until now. Regardless, I'll be adding a review here once I get the software & new computer (the hardware specs on the software are more than my current system can handle, so I will also need to upgrade my computer) but from what I'm gathering, it will be more testing to prove its effectiveness rather than to prove it works... it obviously does, and does so extremely well.

In that light, I would like to hope that anyone posting here using that type of software would make a statement or watermark indicating the photo is AI enhanced. I think some here will remember when a photographer posted photos here that were manipulated (adding prop blur) & the person posted it did not indicate such, and when outed became pretty controversial. That's fair... but what do you think? I just know for me, anytime I post an image that was AI enhanced I will indicate such. I'd like to hope others would do the same.

So Mr Wayners... should we adopt an official policy on this before it becomes a problem or wait until afterwards?

Tough one Markers! Most of us have used photoshop (or other software) to do similar modifications, manually. I don't see a problem with making it "kosher" for people using Topaz stuff, but should we then do that same thing for using PS, or the editing features that camera manufacturers supply clients?

That said.... To me, the holy grail is manipulating an image by replacement of backgrounds, adding additional AC and worst of all FAKING PROP BLUR!!!

That act steps over a HUGE boundary for me! A LOT of people can make a clear shot at a high shutter speed, as we all know, the faster the shutter, the less image blur, desired! It also removes the sense of movement of the image by stopping the prop or having very limited prop blur. As our eyes see them, they are always a blur, unless you blink a bunch LOL.

Not an easy question to answer my friend.... Except altering the actual "image" as I mentioned above.



By edit.. looking into what Topaz does deeper, I guess it really does "alter" the original in that it analyzes adjacent pixels and in some cases, redefines the relationship with other pixels or even remakes a given pixel or batch of pixels...

Of course, this just throws the discussion into more of a quandry!

Good question Markers!

[AAFO_WSagar]

You should see the progress it's making in video, which is what got me looking into this. I watch a lot of utube and came across some video of WWII gun camera footage that was AI enhanced. The clips shown I was familiar with, but the AI colorized clip was like watching it in HD... it was actually so much better I thought I was watching new, undiscovered footage. The addition of audio into the clips (you can hear the bullets flying and explosions) was a nice touch too.

But after doing a little more research it became obvious that we're soon not going to be able to tell "real" from AI modified works. It's a potential gamechanger in more ways than one, but one that I do think will also become mainstream very quickly.

I posted a copy on Y-Tube of the TV show that Bob Avery produced in 2000 (which I was fortunate to have been asked to co-host!) and the quality sucks! I ran a few minutes of it through my 2008 HP lappy and what I was able to see before it crashed my computer was incredible! Not HD by any means but.. significantly better!

Guess it goes back to a mechanic is only as good as his tools...

[Pylon1_Mark]

Guess it goes back to a mechanic is only as good as his tools...

Gotcha ... an acceptable practice then. Just another tool in the toolbox. Sorry for the post, seems like this has already gone mainstream - obviously I need to get out more .

[RAD2LTR]

I guess I could do sort of a show and tell, using pics run though sharpen Ai and not run through sharpen Ai to show what it can and can't do. I can almost always tell when someone has tried to clean up a pic that was too far off to fix. The program does odd things with the backgrounds, or other areas of the subject that stand out like a whale on a beach.

This thread brings up a question, should we move the digital photography area on the forum up from the bottom so its more visible? That portion of the forum is totally underutilized.

Will

[Pylon1_Mark]

I guess I could do sort of a show and tell, using pics run though sharpen Ai and not run through sharpen Ai to show what it can and can't do. I can almost always tell when someone has tried to clean up a pic that was too far off to fix. The program does odd things with the backgrounds, or other areas of the subject that stand out like a whale on a beach.

That would be cool, like to see it actually. Thanks! . I was a little skeptical because all of the examples used have mainly rounded shapes and not straight lines, and we all know that artifacts get introduced into the image what you process it through filters - sharpening & the like (not color, gamma, ect.). After all, it's not terribly expensive, so I would assume it's results would be limited. A good look-see would be able to let me know if it is indeed worth while for my application.

No rush though... my main interest for this software would be for enlargements & upscaling for the same. I recently purchased a PlusTek 8300i slide scanner & Epson V600 flatbed scanner so I can enlarge my prints/slides. Most are just 8x10 so my old scans work OK for the most part... but the 16x24 & larger prints have to be spot-on focus and also require new scans (the 8300i will scan at 7200DPI, so it's perfect for what I need).

Anyway... looking foward to seeing what you come up with.

[RAD2LTR]

I'll try and come up with some examples. With panned shots, I've found that the background can do some strange things, or rather things in the background can. I still use Sharpen Ai vs the Photo Ai package, so the newer version might be a little better. That said, when I played with the early version of Photo AI, I didn't like the user interface. It made specifying the subject difficult.

Will

[AAFO_WSagar]

Gotcha ... an acceptable practice then. Just another tool in the toolbox. Sorry for the post, seems like this has already gone mainstream - obviously I need to get out more .

No "sorry" necessary! Actually I think this is a VERY interesting topic... We've all done image processing in "post" would using AI tools as they become available be OK..

Actually I gave this a lot of thought overnight tonight (could not sleep) If used for prints, I'd say basically anything goes, not so much for print publication and if posted online... we're back to confessing your "shopping" skills or just presenting the image?? REALLY good question if you ask me!

[wingman]

. We've all done image processing in "post" would using AI tools as they become available be OK..

Actually I gave this a lot of thought overnight tonight (could not sleep) If used for prints, I'd say basically anything goes, not so much for print publication and if posted online... we're back to confessing your "shopping" skills or just presenting the image?? REALLY good question if you ask me!

It's worth pointing out here that there is no such thing as just "presenting the image" as shot. "Out of the camera" is a fallacy, if you are talking about serious photography. I shoot raw files because they give the most leeway to change things to what I want to present to the viewer. These raw images often look like totoal crap out of the camera. In older times you had a negative that had to be printed -- often by someone else. My personal quest has alwys been toward more control over what is happening to my image. This AI stuff makes me nervous because it lets another entity make decisions about my image that I am not even privy to -- much less in control of. I tend not to like loss of control.

A photograph is a photograph, and not the original scene. Photographs are not reality -- they are filtered through the shooter's selection of angle, his conception of what the scene means, what he wants to emphasize, how he chooses to process it, etc. I constantly change color balance, cropping, relationships between sky and foreground, and on and on. I am making a photograph, not trying to recreate what I think I remember seeing...

I am very uncomfortable, though, with this software creating and inserting new pixels into my image without my control. I think this is where ethical issues come into play...

Neal

[RAD2LTR]

In the case of Sharpen/Photo AI, I don't think there is much AI happening, at least not in an online sense. From what I can gather, they used an attempt at AI to come up with an algorithm that "should" fix the blur in an image. That said, with a panned shot it gets the "fix" wrong every time if its left in auto. You have to go in and manually adjust the blur variation and find the one that produces the sharpest pic with the least amount of "what is that artifact?" in areas that it flat out doesn't know how to process (Like HAL 9000 being asked to lie). The program requires a stupid amount of graphics processing power. After my computer melt down after PRS last year I attempted to build a computer around the program, not really knowing how it utilized the processing abilities. I thought more RAM the better. 128GB of fast RAM later, and Sharpen AI is slow as cold molasses. Tried a different graphics card, and some areas of processing the pic were fast, and the export was even slower. (Scratches head, puzzled.) Okay I'll run it through the CPU.... Oh, no... that was a bad idea. Total system crash. Okay what the heck? Tried my old Nvidia Titan Xp, well, its faster in the import and processing, but still takes a good 60 seconds to export. Well, that is odd, but its actually the fastest of the 3 overall. I started with a Nvidia RTX3070, slow on the import, REALLY slow on the processing (took minutes) and would either crash or be pretty quick on the export. I found an Intel ARC A770 SE, this card shows promise, but it doesn't like my CPU, so it was quick to import, slow to process, but faster than the RTX 3070 and a little slower to export. With some research I found that it will pair with the current Intel I913900K or 149000K chips that have built in graphics processor that is designed to double up with the A770 and utilize both the CPU and computer RAM as well. Apparently this setup blows EVERYTHING out of the water in terms of import, processing and export speed. Sadly I do not have one of these processors at this time to give it a try for myself. I am planning to build another computer around this setup. (Have all the parts aside from the processor and CPU cooler now.) The current setup is an I9 9970XP (I think, can't remember) with 128gb of RAM, and my Nvidia Titan XP that seems to do the job better than the other combinations that I've tried. Its not fast, still takes a good minute plus to export an image, but processes the image in about 30 seconds compared to the minutes it took with the RTX and A770. I tried running Sharpen AI on my laptop and, well, it pretty much couldn't cool the GPU, and was too slow to utilize. (I think it actually nuked my GPU at Reno. The laptop wasn't the same after, and has been replaced. Needless to say it uses a lot of system resources. Depending on what its doing it will utilize every resource my computer has 100% for a brief period of time.

Will

[wingman]

This does not sound like anything I would be interested in -- the workload you are describing is totally unacceptable for something with so little real utility. The (very sophisticated) sharpening tools in current editions of Photoshop have served me well for decades now and I certainly see no reason to change to something that is this demanding of resources.

I remain seriously skeptical of all this AI push -- so far none of it seems to be improving anything other than corporate balance sheets. It has f##cked up Photoshop -- which is slower and more buggy than I've ever seen it. I'm always a late adopter of technologies anyway, and I plan to stay as far away as possible from all this sh#t...

Neal