Artificial Intelligence and Photography
We live in a world where we are surrounded with artificial intelligence. From using Google to plan our trip home, to listening to music on Apple or Spotify, it’s present in many aspects of our lives. In addition to banking, shopping and flying, it has also worked its way into the more creative fields, where we always thought a human mind is essential. So, let’s explore one of those, photography, specifically portrait photography.
As a old school photographer that trained in film and still struggle to make the transition to a mirrorless camera this is a scary subject. But as scary as it is, so exciting is it as well. In the last couple of months I’ve been introduced to a couple of ways that AI can support and enhance my photography as well as a couple that it tries to challenge my own future in photography so I thought interesting to share with you.
Let’s quickly look at the basics, what is AI? AI is the process of machine learning. It is the simulation of human intelligence in a computer. Programs learn and keep information as they progress and uses that in future tasks.
Portrait mode vs Normal
Ai has been integrated in photography for a couple of years. If you have a smartphone you’ll be familiar with features like Facial Recognition. Where your phone will scan the scene in real-time and identify faces which is will prioritize for focusing. Also Environment Recognition as you’ll find in Apple’s Portrait Mode where it will identify a subject in the foreground and blur the background to simulate a shallow depth of field.
We can also now find software that does a decent job at taking low quality images and refining them into higher quality images. You’ll see this in crime shows and spy movies and the technology is advancing so fast that it has now become a real option in photography software as well. There is an abundance of software and hardware options available, some good some not so much, but the options and capabilities are are growing faster than we think. From hardware that helps you take better pictures to programs that helps you to generate images, the list is long!
Enhancing an image using Topaz AI
Photo Editing with AI has been a time saver for most photographers and has been incorporated in programs like photoshop for spot removal and sharpening but it has now advanced in software like Asylum Luminar AI which can create composite edits for you. It also includes automatic face and skin editing. Adobe is not left behind though and they’ve developed editing tools called Neural Filters where you can adjust a person’s age and even facial expressions. Topaz Labs Photo AI has done groundbreaking work at Noise reduction, Sharpening as well as being able to enhance image quality.
Image created in Dall-E
Now AI has also been put towards creation and not just using what we supply. Dall-E 2 is an AI software program that will create whatever your heart desired from just a couple of words. It’s an AI image generator using your text and turning them into photo realistic images while Midjouney uses similar technology to create art. ChatGPT take it further where you can suggest the style, focal length and aperture. I don’t think it will take over traditional photography yet but it can create accurate stock images and the results are pretty realistic!
There are programs that can create product images for you, generate backgrounds and create art. I’ve even seen software that can create realistic wedding images from your engagement shoot!!
Now this is not too close to home but I have become aware of software that can generate headshots. Examples like PhotoAI and Hotpot needs a couple of high res images of you to create a selection of headshots in different styles and locations. That’s my job;). So you have to take a look at the competition so herewith some headshots.
Not bad from far! If you zoom look a a bigger version you can see where the technology still lacks. I’m pretty impressed with the way they used light. Some doesn’t look like be and some I’m having an amazing hair day! Not bad at all though.
I still think it’s missing a bit of a connection. Where I think a good headshot has it’s power is in the connection between the photographer and the subject. That I don’t think you’ll be able to get in this kind of headshot generation, so I think my job is still very safe;)
In conclusion, it excites me to see these advances in technology. In photography I don’t think we should shy away from this technology but embrace it, to be able to create a better product faster and to challenge our own abilities and dissolve our own weaknesses.