End of photography ? Do you agree ? 😊

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Not really an equivalent to AI in my opinion. Unless you would also contend that controlling subject movement with shutter speed, and depth of field with aperture are also equivalent artificial manipulations. I do agree though, that there is not a tight definition on this and the edges are blurred but in my opinion, AI is very different.

Moose Peterson had an interview with Tony and Chelsea Northrup some time ago where he contended that he never touched any of his in mages in post but that they all came from camera exactly as they were to be used by his clients and therefore had an immaculate authenticity. To be fair to him, his context was one of scientific accuracy but nonetheless, it proved to be a painful (and very funny) experience to watch and he did not come out of it well in my opinion. That is an extreme position with which I would not wish to be associated!
 
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David Burns said:
I think that AI may well have a catastrophic effect sociologically and economically. (snipped)

However, photographically, we still have our own integrity and sense of achievement that no-one can mess with. (snipped)

I have always done significant post-production on just about every photograph I have ever taken, either in the darkroom or on the computer but always to improve the image not to misrepresent the original scene.
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I believe there are four issues
1/ it is now becoming much easier to clone, use denoise et cetera to improve a perceived "defect" than was possible even three years ago

2/ up to now these improvements have primary been based on the content of the original photograph taken by the photographer.
The important new direction is using AI to change image content based on perhaps millions of photos - with the changes having nothing to do with the content of either the original photo or from a part of another photo taken by the same photography.
The boundary here has already been blurred with the ability to change a sky using a sky photo that the photographer has not taken.

3/ not everybody applies high moral standards :(
As a UK photographic judge I anticipate in the near future being presented with some images where significant parts of the image (other than perhaps a sky) have not been created by a photographer.
Going further - there are already high profile examples of winning images at international level being withdrawn as they are entirely AI created.

4/ It is now possible for you or I to go to some websites, to select "Reed Warbler feeding in sunlight" - and then have the choice of maybe 4 good images not directly photographically created - without using a camera.
 
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Just need a software to recreate a raw file based on those images, and there will be no way to know what's tru, what's false.
But here is the way. New revolution just beginning.
 
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Nothing that couldn't be done before. Just quicker (and in future possibly better). I am far more interested in the Remove Tool (also AI) than Generative Fill.

Few will be likely to subscribe to photoshop just to get this feature - photographers will use it to improve their own photography with improved editing

I am more worried about ChatGPT!
 
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Soon agencies will need less photographers ...
Designers will be able to do all this from their desktop and get precisely what they want without camera.

But, yes, we don't use wet collodium anymore ...
 
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Scott at Kelby One made a good point yesterday. Everything this update can do you could do in the past. The difference is you had to invest the time to learn how to do it and in some cases what now can take seconds might have taken hours in the past. At the end of the day if someone wanted to alter an image they already could. Now it’s just a matter of more people will be able to do it without having to take the time to learn how to do it or spend hours doing it.

Anthony posted this video and it’s not as perfect as some have shown. Granted it’s a beta product but it’s far from perfect.
 
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DavidT said:
Everything this update can do you could do in the past.
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I work in digital images. We can already make about what we want photorealistically (Not with a photo editor alone, of course and even without any photo).
It is only a matter of time and budget.

Now there will be not time, nor budget limitation. Nor need to have specific skills (i'm not talking about artistic skills, of course).
And this is only the beginning.
 
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Winston Churchill (Sir) said:
Nothing that couldn't be done before. Just quicker (and in future possibly better). I am far more interested in the Remove Tool (also AI) than Generative Fill.

Few will be likely to subscribe to photoshop just to get this feature - photographers will use it to improve their own photography with improved editing

I am more worried about ChatGPT!
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Yup. I asked ChatGPT if it could create an image containing a log cabin, lake and mountain. Its response was pretty amazing if not frightening. How could anyone possibly tell the response was not by human. Here is a SMALL part of the response.
===================================================================================
I'm sorry, but as a text-based AI, I'm unable to directly create or display images. However, I can help you visualize the scene through a textual description. Close your eyes and imagine the following:

You find yourself standing on the edge of a serene lake, surrounded by the tranquility of nature. In the distance, towering majestically, is a grand mountain peak, its snow-capped summit piercing through the clouds. Nestled along the shoreline of the lake is an old log cabin, weathered by time and blending harmoniously with the surrounding landscape.

The log cabin stands sturdy and rustic........... yadee, yadee..ya:D
 
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Kumar A said:
www.techradar.com

This AI-powered Photoshop rival is the end of photography as we know it

When does a photo cease to be a photo?
www.techradar.com www.techradar.com
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There is a big difference between the needs for commercial photography vs. the needs of enthusiasts. Commercial photographers are about getting the image - regardless of how it is done. If the image is improved through AI, a pro photographer is expected to use AI and deliver the best work for the client. The people who use stock photos have remarkably little care for how the image was created and what tools were used. For all of these audiences, AI is a huge cost saver and will make it a lot easier to produce whatever you can conceive. There is a lot of commercial value in AI based image creation.

For enthusiasts and some professionals, the process of conceiving an image is in the field. It's based on turning what you see into the best possible image using the tools and experience available. It combines fieldcraft with technology and technique. In this case, AI may enhance an image but not at the expense of the experience.

Of course there is a lot of room to blur the lines between the needs of commercial photography and experiences. Artistic freedom suggests that as art, a photographer is free to create the image as desired. But not every artistic image should use the same tools, same development process, and generate similar results.
 
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I don't think it is the end of photography...as noted by many people, manipulation of an image as demonstrated by PS Generative Fill has been possible in the past, just not with the same speed/convenience and certainly not by the casual user of PS. I do believe that AI is, in may ways, concerning, not just with the rapidity that the technology is evolving, but with the potential for changing our world in ways that we haven't quite wrapped our heads around yet, socially, culturally or economically.
 
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EricBowles said:
There is a big difference between the needs for commercial photography vs. the needs of enthusiasts. Commercial photographers are about getting the image - regardless of how it is done. If the image is improved through AI, a pro photographer is expected to use AI and deliver the best work for the client. The people who use stock photos have remarkably little care for how the image was created and what tools were used. For all of these audiences, AI is a huge cost saver and will make it a lot easier to produce whatever you can conceive. There is a lot of commercial value in AI based image creation.

For enthusiasts and some professionals, the process of conceiving an image is in the field. It's based on turning what you see into the best possible image using the tools and experience available. It combines fieldcraft with technology and technique. In this case, AI may enhance an image but not at the expense of the experience.

Of course there is a lot of room to blur the lines between the needs of commercial photography and experiences. Artistic freedom suggests that as art, a photographer is free to create the image as desired. But not every artistic image should use the same tools, same development process, and generate similar results.
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I concur. And there will possibly be a rout at the lower end of the commercial market.

But at the high end, for the most talented creators, there will still be a demand. It is these very talented, and human creators, whose work is used to train these machines in the first instance.

And if you’ve ever publicly shown an image, it may well go into the training set for Chat-X. I am starting a class action suit to sue these companies for theft of intellectual property. Who’s in?

(Just kidding about that last part.)
 
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Kumar A said:
www.techradar.com

This AI-powered Photoshop rival is the end of photography as we know it

When does a photo cease to be a photo?
www.techradar.com www.techradar.com
Click to expand...
  • No
  • I was going to say Yes, but then realized nobody was twisting my arm.
  • We can already fill--this is just another method (different, better for some).
  • I take a lot of shots that do not require ANY kind of fill. This will not change.
  • I'm not a photojournalist, so there's nothing ethically wrong with using it on occasion. YMMV.
  • As a landscape photographer, I realize that some submissions to world-class galleries require no such edits be done. I don't see that changing, so I will continue to make submissions to such places without using such tools. <shrug>
  • Photoshop is used by a lot of content creators that are not photographers. You shouldn't feel threatened when a graphic designer gets a tool that a you would never use.

I recall watching one of Steve's videos a couple of years ago where he had a nice bird shot, but it wasn't framed quite right (to close to an edge, if I remember right), so he extended the canvas. This tool will make that kind of thing easier and will allow it to be done with a wider of background textures (currently, it's much easier when the background is in full blur).

Chris
 
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This concern has been expressed since the late 1800's when photographers would make a print using two negatives and one would be for the desired sky. Painters had been doing this for centuries as well with their choice of backgrounds for their primary subjects. Digital photography makes this easier to do with color images but it is nothing new.

Photographers create a two dimensional image of three dimensional scenes and subjects and pick an instant in time with a limited field of view and with the perspective distortion caused by shorter or longer than normal lenses and the use of filters. Even in the analog world an image is one person's subjective take and not reality as such.
 
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As shooting form my own pleasure, as opposed to commercially, AI cannot replace what I experience from viewing my photo books or my 'memory wall'. No one will really care about my photos after I'm gone, but while I'm here, the enjoyment my wife and I get from seeing and remembering where and how we took those photos is what it is all about. AI can never match that, AI creates pictures without soul or memory.
 
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Photography (without AI )is not close to what it was years ago.I started with film, then DSLR and then mirrorless and digital imagery. We are all taking photographs we couldnt even dream about then. You are going to be able to pull a single frame from a video and make an outstanding image. I suppose there is no standing in the way of progress. I remember being enthralled by HDR in the early days and then it became so overused that it made me gag when I saw an oversaturated HDR image .
 
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David Burns said:
I think that AI may well have a catastrophic effect sociologically and economically. British Telecom in UK have just announced the layoff of more than 40,000 employees, to be replaced by AI. Most of these are in customer services I believe.

However, photographically, we still have our own integrity and sense of achievement that no-one can mess with. If I take a photograph of a Reed Warbler, as I did the other day, I know that it took me three hours of waiting to get a clear shot in the few seconds that it showed itself. For the rest of the two hours and fifty-nine and a half minutes, it was buried in a reed bed, singing its heart out. It was a very difficult shot and to get it I used many years of learnt field craft and photographic expertise to do so. For me that was a significant personal achievement and the photograph is good- by my standards at least. If someone else produces a fabricated, AI image of the same bird, that they have never even seen, good luck to them. I don't really care because that holds no interest for me and certainly does not generate any respect from me for the producer. I would also be amazed if it gave the producer much if any satisfaction. Within a commercial context of course, things might be very different and I think there is a different discussion there. I suspect that in the near future, there may be some sort of statement, even within commercial contexts, that accompany photographs stating their authenticity and freedom from AI- or otherwise! Again there are complications. Is Topaz Gigapixel a significant AI manipulation? Happily, I am no longer in that world and am simply making photographs for me, with my standards applied and no pressures from outside influences.

I have always done significant post-production on just about every photograph I have ever taken, either in the darkroom or on the computer but always to improve the image not to misrepresent the original scene. I admit that the edges can get blurred here and there is a sliding scale but for me there is a point beyond which I would not normally go in natural history, documentary, sport etc. I know that many people insert skies into landscapes for instance and that is OK I suppose but it is not something I wish to do. Again, it does not really interest me. The creation of a completely false AI generated image certainly does not.
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WOW, BRITISH TELECOM STILL HAVE CUSTOMER SERVICE! Telstra in Australia did not need AI to get rid of customer service. They did it years ago like pretty much every major company in Australia.
 
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Kumar A said:
www.techradar.com

This AI-powered Photoshop rival is the end of photography as we know it

When does a photo cease to be a photo?
www.techradar.com www.techradar.com
Click to expand...
A lot of these features have been around crudely for a long while doable in Adobe etc as well as using Giga Pixel like software, essentially its just moving pixels around, they have just advanced software frighteningly fast and a long way, its flowing into mainstream use, Just rebranded AI, the young will gravitate to it fast, and people who live on Social platforms, Tik Tok Face Book Instagram will have a field day, another toy to play with.
AI is a tool, but to the masses who are into it, its just another version of digital cocaine.

Like everything in life, it can be used for good or bad.

Is it the end of still photography, that's a good click bait, tabloid headliner LOL.

Still photography in the larger picture has been and is slowly becoming more and more obsolete...........how do i know, the internet told me so, just look at the transition from stills to video adds and information.

a) the internet demands Video
b) still camera manufactures have been and are scrabbling into video rich gear and shifting margins and range into glass.
c) camera manufactures will largely be relegated to hardware of making lenses, Phones or products like phones will be eventually attached to such lenses in the short term, AI will eventually even be making big removable lenses obsolete in the future, don't you think.
d) scanning still and moving items will be the norm in the future, perfect detail light colour memory, captured in the palm of your hand rivaling anything we have even known..

Short answer....is still photography finished, a resounding yes and has been slowly heading that way for a while already.

Even Art is becoming artificial, food has already, we should never fear change if its for the right purpose, not just for control through addiction.

Only an opinion
 
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