The Future of Photography??

mstphoto

mstphoto

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Last week we stopped off at Yorkshire for a couple of days on the way home from Essex.
Malham Cove wasn't too far from where we were staying so decided to take a wee trip there.
The light was terrible but I still took a few record shots.
I decided to try out this image in Luminar NEO to see what could be achieved.

Yorkshire 6a by Mike Stephen, on Flickr

I only clicked on one button and ended up with this.
They could have been taken on 2 separate days!!
Not sure if I like this or not :thinking:

Yorkshire 6 by Mike Stephen, on Flickr
 
Wow! That's remarkable. The AI in that thing has really gone to town. I mean it's impressive, in a way. But the way I see it is that every photo could end up looking uniformly good. And that's not good, if you see what I mean?
 
Boosting the colours a bit works (can work), but I really don't like this replacement sky lark.

Your picture now shows two separate days as each sky depicts a completely different air mass.

A nice pic though . . . :)
 
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It's certainly where most software is going. It used to take lots of skill and patience to use Photoshop to make changes to images, many steps and layers involved.
Now in the recent releases, its only a few clicks for sky replacement and associated lighting and tone adjustments to try and make it look like the sky was really like that.

It's a marmite thing! Some people like the ease of doing the tweaks others only accept what was actually caught in the camera on the day with no post-processing whatever. The majority I think are somewhere in the middle.
 
I'm looking forward to that Google app, rather like the view of roads and surroundings, with which you can (virtually) go anywhere, point your virtual camera in any direction, select a season, time of day, weather and take a photo! It'll cut out lots of faff and be very green for the planet.
 
I think I prefer the original. More natural colours and less "contrasty" - blending sky in from another image with the same dull lighting would have worked better.

For me though, adjustments like curves, saturation just bring out what's already there, and small cloning adjustments for fence poles etc I don't mind - but completely altering what's there kills the craft as we know it.
 
Just my 2p from a novice.

I like my photographs to look as close to the actual image as possible. I think over edited pictures take away from the original photograph for me personally, as it is not what was actually there and seen. Now I believe the additional editing is required for certain things / work and I get that everyone wants to produce an image how they see it / want to portray it, but for me, the more natural the better....also helps that I am pants at editing currently and only know the basics :)
 
SFTPhotography said:
I think I prefer the original. More natural colours and less "contrasty" - blending sky in from another image with the same dull lighting would have worked better.

For me though, adjustments like curves, saturation just bring out what's already there, and small cloning adjustments for fence poles etc I don't mind - but completely altering what's there kills the craft as we know it.
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Totally agree!!
 
I have been messing around with Denoise AI and it is quite amazing how good the tools are these days.
 
Plain Nev said:
Wow! That's remarkable. The AI in that thing has really gone to town. I mean it's impressive, in a way. But the way I see it is that every photo could end up looking uniformly good. And that's not good, if you see what I mean?
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I guess that depends on what you think makes a good photograph. ;)

IMO it'll only make it even more important what you point your camera at. Although I might argue that subject choice is always the most important choice.
 
Ed Sutton said:
I guess that depends on what you think makes a good photograph. ;)

IMO it'll only make it even more important what you point your camera at. Although I might argue that subject choice is always the most important choice.
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I think that's exactly right. Us humans know that there are a number of things that make a good photograph. But what we are seeing here is the AI equivalent of Prozac.
 
Plain Nev said:
I think that's exactly right. Us humans know that there are a number of things that make a good photograph. But what we are seeing here is the AI equivalent of Prozac.
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It looks to me as if it's making pictures look like the ones which get 'likes' on social media. Pictures which immediately catch the eye, but have little substance. It'll probably end up replacing entire landscapes with kittens!:D
 
mstphoto said:
This would be my usual edit in PS using a Luminosity Mask based on the greens, more dramatic sky added (sky shot taken on the same day & location) and a bit of burning in the shadow areas.

Yorkshire 6b by Mike Stephen, on Flickr
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Way better than the AI one. The craft is not dead.
 
The blue sky just doesn't work here, it's blended incorrectly and the ai here still has no clue about necessary shadows if it is about to succeed turning miserable into sunny conditions.
 
See the grey hill far in the distance on the right. Unless you disappear that or clone that from sunny shot (just to prove the point) there is in fact no technical possibility to make it right for sunny conditions even with a very advanced AI. That's the thing I don't like about Luminr is all these pompous claims of instant AI magic and too many blindly fall for it and we see the results
 
Played with replacing skies many years ago some looked really good until on one occasion I didn't change the reflected part on the surface of a lake:headbang:
Felt quite stupid do don't bother anymore!
 
AI is definitely exciting. I don't use the sky replacement things as I can do it quickly in AP but I did buy Topaz Sharpen and ON1 No Noise AI and offer very impressive results. I find No Noise to be a little better than the Topaz version as the quality of the final image remains as close to the final image as you can get. Shame I need to upgrade my Mac for it to run perfectly!
 
I'm not really in favour of adding things to pictures, like skies or anything else really but I suppose for personal use it's ok and could get you a couple of keepers more in keeping with your mood from what would otherwise have been a drab day out.
 
EJB said:
Played with replacing skies many years ago some looked really good until on one occasion I didn't change the reflected part on the surface of a lake:headbang:
Felt quite stupid do don't bother anymore!
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From what I read Luminar Neo thinks about this as well! There is no doubt that AI is changing the way we edit photographs. People say they prefer making changes manually in PS/other software well just a few years ago that wasn't possible so that shows that over time attitudes to what is acceptable change and we accept new standards. You could say that digital processing has killed proper darkroom skills but that would be very backward looking!
It would be interesting to revisit this post in 5 years time to see how AI is perceived then.
 
Fordsabroad said:
It would be interesting to revisit this post in 5 years time to see how AI is perceived then.
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I would hope that the vast majority of members here would still feel exactly the same. What is the point of the hobby if you're just going to let AI take over?
Where is the fun in going out on a miserable cloudy day and end up with a perfectly light, golden hour computer generated image?

If all you are after is likes on Farcebook and Instagram then knock your socks off. It's not for me, never will be and I suspect many here will feel exactly the same.
 
I agree with you Elliot, If your going to be able to take any old crap photo and the camera makes it look fantastic then whats the point ! I'm a believer in the saying you only get out what you put in and if anything is easy then it's not rally worth doing. That said I was playing with some of the settings on my Sony a6000 and came out with this , amazing as it is it's still not a photo that I created !

8A.JPG
 
ecoleman said:
Where is the fun in going out on a miserable cloudy day and end up with a perfectly light, golden hour computer generated image?
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I suppose that might lead on to the question why you would use a digital camera at all?

I record scenes and actions that catch my attention. The more the camera or the computer adjusts the image for me, making it cearer what I saw, the happier I am. Once again it comes down to "different folks, different strokes".

BADGER.BRAD said:
I'm a believer in the saying you only get out what you put in and if anything is easy then it's not rally worth doing.
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I take the opposite view: if it's hard, why bother? To put it in context, why am I typing this instead of writing it on vellum with a quill? Technology increases what we can do and modifies how we can do it. To me, laziness is a high art form to be practiced in its own right! ;)
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
Technology increases what we can do and modifies how we can do it. To me, laziness is a high art form to be practiced in its own right! ;)
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Will we not get to the point where technology is doing it for you rather than helping you do it ? The way it's going we will be able to give a remote drone an instruction to take a photo of x then send it to you saving all the hassle of getting out of bed and using you acquired/learnt skills to achieve what you are aiming at. Will then you still be able to say I took/created that ?
I of course understand your way of thinking ie making it as easy as possible. In this instance I think we are probably just wired differently. But just how far do we take it ?
 
BADGER.BRAD said:
Will we not get to the point where technology is doing it for you rather than helping you do it ? The way it's going we will be able to give a remote drone an instruction to take a photo of x then send it to you saving all the hassle of getting out of bed and using you acquired/learnt skills to achieve what you are aiming at. Will then you still be able to say I took/created that ?
I of course understand your way of thinking ie making it as easy as possible. In this instance I think we are probably just wired differently. But just how far do we take it ?
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You may not even need the drone! This video is based upon AI use in creating digital art but how long before photos can be done in the same way?

View: https://youtu.be/704brywiyfw
 
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BADGER.BRAD said:
But just how far do we take it ?
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As far as we choose.

Some people love to ride a byke 5 miles into town. I prefer to take a bus. Others don't stir out of their village. It's wonderful to be able to choose which suits you.
 
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