AI and easy editing

[brightncheerful]

Unable to use my version of Lightroom on my new mac, i have changed to ON1.

How about this for their new release?

https://www.on1.com/landing/photo-raw-2025-announce/#sneak-peeks

[scotview]

How about this for their new release?

I've been playing with AI image inhancement software. Below are after and before images of a humpback whale breach of a frame from one of my videos. I think this was on Topaz trial software and it does clean up the image.

My video editing software has an AI photo suite, Photodirector but I dont think it is as good as Topaz.

I use the free GIMP image software, it is good, but it doesn't quite match the one click AI of Topaz.

Is it cheating ? Not sure.

[brightncheerful]

Surely it's cheating whether you edit the "old fashioned way" or use "AI"?

[ReformedCharacter]

Surely it's cheating whether you edit the "old fashioned way" or use "AI"?

I agree with that but then I've never taken to digital photography. My father-in-law has all the kit and uses Photoshop with all the add-ons 'It's got AI now!' We have a nice picture of the silhouette of bird in front of a full moon. It's a nice composite image but it ain't photography IMO.

RC

[brightncheerful]

Photography is defined (Mac dictionary) as the art or practice of taking and processing photographs.

Digital photography doesn't need processing if the camera settings are what you like and the image captured meets your liking. But the fact that digital images can be processed, and often non-destructively, is an added attraction for those of us who would prefer to tinker for ourselves! As for HDR, if it were not for the processing, then all you'd have is at least three images, the same except for the exposure.

[servodude]

Is it cheating ? Not sure.

It's no more "cheating" than using a light meter, or auto focus, or any of the other sundry developments in the technology of capturing and processing images.

When we first domesticated horses I suspect there were those who tried to run faster but the sensible thing to do was learn how to ride.
Those that smashed the original printing presses live on in metanymy - which is useful because apparently some still folk still tilt agin windmills

It's a tool - enjoy it from your position ahead of the curve

Cracking photo too!

[GrahamPlatt]

Unable to use my version of Lightroom on my new mac, i have changed to ON1.

How about this for their new release?

https://www.on1.com/landing/photo-raw-2025-announce/#sneak-peeks

https://www.darktable.org/

A Lightroom alternative; free & open-source, and I’m reliably informed equally capable if not better (not beng into the art, I’m not qualified to comment myself).
Anyway, since it runs on a Mac, I thought I’d point it out to you.

[ReformedCharacter]

It's no more "cheating" than using a light meter, or auto focus, or any of the other sundry developments in the technology of capturing and processing images.

When we first domesticated horses I suspect there were those who tried to run faster but the sensible thing to do was learn how to ride.
Those that smashed the original printing presses live on in metanymy - which is useful because apparently some still folk still tilt agin windmills

It's a tool - enjoy it from your position ahead of the curve

Cracking photo too!

Yes, nice picture.

I'm reminded of a discussion I had with a fairly serious underwater photographer about 35 years ago who, when I suggested that his film camera would be superceded by digital, told me that digital cameras could never match film. And he was a scientist, not an arty type.

Now we have AI that can create realistic images 'from scratch'. Likely as not this technology will improve in the same way that digital photography has. At what point does photography become 'image creation'? Is it when cameras are no longer needed? Or is there a point where digital photographs are so removed from 'captured reality' by software that they no longer represent anything real? But maybe it doesn't matter. My father-in-law likes to take pictures of birds (the feathered variety ) and told me that his latest acquisition can focus on the eye of a bird in flight automatically. Skill has been replaced by software. Almost anyone can take a good photograph now and the world is full of them but I cannot help feeling that something of the art of photography has been lost. I find your comment 'your position ahead of the curve' to be rather depressing TBH, but you must excuse me as I miss the old days of photography as the interplay of optics, film and chemistry.

RC