nezumi

Great example of AI superiority when it comes to cropping. One click and done. If you dont needed that hat and leg that is... 🙃

Its more like "would you still buy a car without plushy mascot dangling from the rear-view mirror and screens on the back of your front seats?"

Thats great example actually. I have no clue about coding. Out of curiosity I have generated myself script to use in Maya. It didn't worked first time, I have asked chat to fix it and it did worked. Extremely simple thing but I could not write it myself. Neither I have knowledge to say if it could be improved. BUT I DONT CALL MYSELF A PROGRAMMER

When I see prompts super creative prompts with words like "Artstation Trending" or my favorite "Masterpiece" plus few real artists name thrown to the mix to directly rip style from I only want to laugh. Yeah, thats totally the same like writing your own scene.

The thing with musician, choreographer, director is that those people are actually steering the project, correcting it as it goes, they all are doing the work, shaping its final form. None of it goes into writing prompt. There is no involvement in the process. Its like writing prompt in image search and claim that you are an author of images that were shown to you. Or like calling a singer somebody who just pretends that is singing, moving his mouth to the song that is played from recorder. Its ridiculous. And a bit sad. Because if you want to be an artist, a creator, a director.. whatever. YOU CAN. It will cost you time and effort but it will be worth it. Are people really that lazy? Have zero confidence in themselves that trying to find magic, low effort button? A shortcut to pretend that they are artists? Theres lot of possibilities in creative use of AI. If you are making some sci-fi corridor, wall of which is covered with random cables - well then by all means generate wall with cables if that speeds up bringing your vision to life. Thats not different from using a photo and doing over paint. Or like in 3D visualization using assets made by somebody else. You dont have to model and texture every book on the shelf to be able to claim that you are author of whole visualization. Because there is ton of additional work involved. So sure, use AI as a tool. Not as replacement for yourself. I am only talking about that cases where everything is generated with one click and the clicker feels like he is an author somehow. You're not. But you can be! Make an effort. You can be that person or reduce yourself to be disguised as that person. You want to be an artist - or cosplay an artist. Its your choice.

You want to be like director? Well, theres a position called "ART DIRECTOR". You cant become one by just saying "from now on, I will tell people what to do!". You are going through stages of your artistic career, creating art on your own, to finally reach the point where somebody - looking at your body of work - decides that wants to trust you with managing other people to keep the artistic vision consistent. But then again, there are level and details to everything. You can take bunch of kindergarten kids, tell them to draw an elephant and feel like you are, technically, art director. Technically. And again, if you personally feel that saying what you wants makes you.. well, somebody, then nobody cant stop you from doing so. Just dont be surprised if actual artists will laugh at you a little bit. Because it is funny, all that mental gymnastics involved in this make-believe charade.

Look, if somebody wants to feel like he is creating something by simply writing what he wants thats fine. If you want to consider a "tool" something that does everything - I cant stop you. People have all sorts of fantasies about themselves, all sorts of delusions and I will not judge that. But also dont expect me to call you a creator when all you did is telling what you want. By this standards you would consider yourself a builder because you said a guy where you want to have a window and he did it for you. An electrician - when you said to a guy that you want to have a new lamp hanging from the ceiling and he did it for you. A plumber - because you have pointed to the sink thats clogged. And so on. If you want to consider yourself a driver while sitting in the passenger seat thats cool with me. But please kindly dont expect me to join you in believing in that illusion. And by all means - have fun with your toy steering wheel making "brooom! brooom!" noises while somebody else is driving. Its important to have fun in life. Now if you excuse me - I need to catch a plane. I'm a pilot, you know. I told the person at the counter where I want to fly.

If you want to stretch it then anybody who had any idea ever technically was part of creative art. That will make literally everybody an artist even if they never actually created any art. Every commissioner, every client would suddenly become artist because he had idea - therefore took part of creative process, right? No, he didnt. Thinking about something and actually making it is whole different story. Anybody who have ever tried to draw something will quickly notice that bringing to life, to physical world this idea, that seemed so clear in his head is in fact very vague, missing details and his hand is not drawing at all what he had in mind. It takes many years of training (hey, its me, captain Obvious) to actually make ideas reality. If somebody commissioned a piece to an artist, or wrote a prompt - he is not creator. He commissioned it precisely because was unable to create. He can have all the philosophical excuses in the world, make all the mental gymnastics in order to convince others and himself that he also is the creator. But everybody knows reality. So theres nothing to argue really. If you have paid runner to win a race you are not partly athlete Its just absurd and quite sad to see people even bringing that silliness up. If you can do iy YOURSELF you are the creator. If you need to ask somebody/something to make it for you - you are not. Simple as that.

I would think so - otherwise why to change version number?

Well its not. I am stating fact. I live my life how I want to. I dont say its better way or that you should do that too. Its merely example that one doesn't have to emulate masses to live his life. I am. And tell me, how can I be "disconnected from the modern reality"? I am not eccentric millionaire, I have family to feed, bills to pay and jobs to do like everybody else. Market has a place for everybody. You dont need to follow main stream to be successful. Whats more - if you follow main trend you are placing yourself in the position of direct competition with the biggest brands. I dont know if you noticed but we are mostly using Affinity because its different from Adobe not because its trying to do the same. This is called "opinion" and has no influence on what is going to happen. Again - I said already that " If it becomes the way everything operates - we will all transition to it naturally." And if not then not. Simple as that. You are closing your mind to different possibilities for no reason. I call it that because its not AI. It is not artificial intelligence. They called it that because it sounds cool and is great for marketing. We cannot create artificial intelligence. You are creating in your head some vision of reality and blindly believing it without letting yourself open to other options. Just like you blindly believe AI is the only way to go forward you have created some vision of me as somebody who "feels superior" and "is condescending" but this is only your vision and has little to do with reality. In this particular case because if you will be honest with yourself we all feel superior then others at times. Thats why nearly everybody will agree when you say "people are so stupid", bot nobody thinks about himself as that stupid person. Its human nature to feel superior. You feel you are right and I am wrong, you just said about me that I am "disconnected from reality". You are accusing me of things that you are doing yourself. Also quite common thing we all do, but I digress. For sure partly it is. Just like VR was. When something is new its popularity naturally is much greater then when we already know it, its potential has been proven, we know what to expect from it, where to use it and where not. Now AI potential is greatly inflated by our imagination. Reality will show to what degree REALLY this is useful. Of course YOU are the one who knows the TRUTH and the future. Poor folk like me, who have different opinion then you MUST be wrong. What was that bit when you accused me of "feeling superior" again? This is my favorite part. AI is simplest possible thing to use ever created. You literally write what you want it to spit. Then you modify request as needed. Thats it. Thats all the great knowledge of generative AI. And AI fans are saying this sort of thing like they posses some deep knowledge of complicated tool. It laughable. I know how to make character in 3D using ZBrush, Substance Painter, Maya, RizomUV, render it and put together video with Davinci Resolve. I am fairly confident I can on top of it make a selection and write "more grass goes here" for crying out loud

I remember that process of making something as simple as inner shadow in Adobe Illustrator was unnecessary long, manual task. You could make it by inner glow with black color but if you wanted offset you had to play with it making it awkwardly long process for something that simple. I haven't use Adobe Illustrator since Affinity showed up on windows, so I don't know if they added this simple effect easily achievable in Designer. Maybe somebody can confirm if they did. Because it would be hysterically funny if Adobe was adding AI gimmicky... I am sorry, I mean SUPER NECESSARY, FUTURISTIC+ tools to the software that cant even make inner shadow quick All that AI thing - although potentially very useful for now turned into mass hysteria. FOMO took over, people think that will loose a job if immediately will not start using something with AI in the name. It really is rather sad spectacle to watch. I guess society has been changed by social media into that mass of people mindlessly chasing what is "viral" at the moment. To put things in perspective - I still dont use mobile phone. I had it for some time like two decades ago then I just stopped using it. I have a job, people still can reach me - its all good. Many people would consider impossible to function without mobile phone, going mental if battery goes down, reaching for it first thing after opening eyes in the morning... It really isnt necessary. You can make it necessary, you can convince yourself you will be bloody forgotten if you dont have phone for a day or two. But its not reality. Same is with AI. If you give up to the mass hysteria, if you convince yourself you really cant do anything without it then you will make it necessary for you. I am not saying dont use your phone or dont use AI tools. All I am saying is that it is really not as necessary as you might think. Just because it is hot topic and companies will try to make a quick buck on this trend. You know that lead guy in Midjourney is the guy who was trying to convince everybody before that device called "Leap Motion controller" was the future and soon all the world will be using it? I dont know where it is now but I am still using mouse and stylus. And so do you I bet. Dont give up to hysteria, take a deep breath. Dont worry - youre not loosing your job because theres no "AI" in the name of the software you are using. If it becomes the way everything operates - we will all transition to it naturally. But for now deep breath in, deep breath out. World is not a train that will just leave you floating in space because you were too late to start writing damn prompts

We have software that can predict next word from database and other that can generate pictures. I think danger of extinction because of it is pretty slim I was raised during cold war. They need more to scare me then picture spitting software or chat.

The problem with these I have is that these are not the places and not the people from real world. What is the point of picture if then you change everything about it? Everything now will be fake? "Look, me on the top of the Eiffel tower, on the bicycle, wearing Armani suit, drinking coffee!"? Or "check out photo of my grandma - she looked nothing like this but AI improved the quality and blue eyes are looking better on her anyways! And here me with her on one photo - isnt that amazing? She died before I was born!". I dont know - technically its amazing stuff. You can make a redneck use suit. Very cool for some advertisement stuff. On the other hand now you dont need any skill to confuse the hell out of everybody. Which means all the stupid people have now tool to express their stupid ideas with ease. Before some effort was required which was surely great filter for lazy and unskilled people to polute internet with yet another meme. Now floodgate is open. I doubt that is good in any shape or form. But hey - "progress"... I guess what I am trying to say - its another razor given to bunch of monkeys. Man will shave with it, but what monkeys will do - I guess we will see on social media soon... @CM0 Theres significant difference between "I WANT" and "I NEED". Between "I can now do it faster" and "I wouldn not be able to do it before". Although when I think about it, in many cases AI will made things for people who otherwise wouldn't be able to do at all... So yeah, this might be true. They are still unable to do it themselves but can get it done for them with a single click.

I feel like we are standing over the dead body of the horse that used to be that conversation screaming GO BOY!, GO! We said everything there was - couple times around. Not trying to shut this conversation, but is there any other angle we can explore here? Personally I am way more interested in whats the plan for 2.2, what WILL be there. Rather then keep on discussing usefulness of features we know that will not be there anytime soon. Side note - it always baffles me how quickly people find absolutely necessary to use new stuff. Stuff they didnt knew is coming just few months ago. Some new feature is teased and immediately somebody screams "I NEED THAT!". Really? You NEED something you didnt even knew is coming? Your project - that you are making now - depends on feature that few days ago wasnt existing? Thats some amazing planning man. Good thing that feature showed up - you wouldnt be able to finish your project otherwise. And then you see the project, and you know it would take 10 minutes in Photoshop 4... 🤣

Since I completely switched to Affinity (and I am not planning to go back in the near future) I dont know how it works. I thought generation is done locally on your machine but for what you say it would suggest its done on Adobe servers? Its always online thing?

@CM0 everything is possible, true. But it would never reflect the real usage of particular image, nobody knows how many times image was used worldwide, nobody tracks that - they probably just said so to calm down public. In society that mostly reads headlines there is little chance somebody will actually think about details (not talking about you just in general). As for the AI - obviously when we are talking about "using AI" we mostly mean here generate picture or part of picture by AI, not some behind the scenes, obscure and involuntary kind of AI. Just like when people talk about using Linux they mean having it installed as system on their machine not some "ACTUALLY you are using Linux, because your toaster and fridge is powered by it not to mention servers you are connecting to when browsing internet" kind of thing I personally could use some quick AI to erase something from the picture or expand it. Its not vital to my work, sometimes client asks me for some banner or other little thing to promote main thing we are working on. I much prefer my time and effort go to main product then promotional materials. So for quick background or something I could use it. Once again - I really feel like AI tools mostly are done for general public to impress average joe who cant do much on his own. In 3D field I am waiting for years for some good auto-retopo. The closest we got is what ZBrush is offering. And its far from perfect, almost unusable for animation. Impress me there, make AI tool for that. Not some generative nonsense that will make a 3D blob with texture on it and call it a day. Make some AI for beautiful, automatic, straight and not stretched UVs - that will impress me. I will use it every day. Turning head on photo of a doggie... I mean come on. How to use that in production of something significant? Its good to replace Fiverr $5 jobs, you can generate social media motivational or some virtue signaling thing but it has no use in serious work. Or hell, I dont know, I am 46 now, working all the time in the graphic related industry and I cant think of anything I could use that "oh so powerful generative AI" now. Nothing significant anyways just some annoying stuff that I have to do sometimes and just want it out of my sight as quickly as possible (promotional, social media things). And for that - cool, I'll take it. But its hardly a revolution now. What is to come? We will see. I will not pretend I know the future - apparently nearly everybody now does I'll see where it goes. For now its in the realm of semi-helpful gimmick for me.

I dare to say most "prompt artists" lacks such ability And how that suppose to work? Will they track every generated picture? How they will recognize what was done for commercial work and what just for fun? Also - how this would make sense financially? Will you watch advertisement before using generation option? Or they plan on just giving away money? In that case if I was the creator of original work used by Adobe I would make a prompt that is likely to bring my picture in and ask few friends to push that "generate" button couple times daily. Ka-ching! Picture generator turned into money generator On serious note - in makes no sense I dont believe it.

@CM0 I apologize. Frankly you almost lost me at "show me podcasters" and I gave up on "piece I created" presenting generated image. Sorry I have seen too much of it to keep going first time around. Guilty as charged. Now I read it. In other part of this forum I have spoken about AI tool for tracing bitmaps. Works very well - most accurate tool for tracing I have used. I am using Davinci Resolve also with quite good AI tools. As a 3D artist I am of course using denoisers to speed up rendering. These are actually helpful tools not just "I will do that for you" image spitters and hell, I will happily welcome that sort of AI in Affinity too. I think sooner or later it will become norm. So I am 100% in agreement with what you said. I just really dislike generative AI spitting ready artwork. Its just... wrong on many levels and sad on many more. @v_kyrpart of the fun. Obviously nobody will change anything by posting on forum his opinion. Doesn't mean we cant have meaningless yet entertaining conversation for sheer fun of it.

Hahaha, why podcasters? Is that how you look at the world? Through YT videos? I just gave you examples of events that happened - entire portfolio sites filled with people that is against "AI art" for one reason or another. But lets ignore it all because podcasters And sorry but you have not created anything. You wrote what you want to have created FOR YOU. Plus added specific artist name.. Quite frankly that is sad more then anything else.

When it comes to customers AI fans think that it is lost opportunity if you dont use AI. Some threatening that they will leave to competition. But reality is that there is equally big group of users who is in principal against AI. And they are equally valid customers that will pay for tool without generative AI tools. The moment you leave Affinity for Adobe because they have AI - somebody from Adobe will come to Affinity because it doesnt have it Simple as that. Frankly I dont know if its not good marketing strategy for Affinity to say "NO SUBSCRIPTION, NO AI, NO PROBLEM!" hahaha Few months ago Clip Studio Paint wanted to add image generation tool - it was met with huge backlash from their user base and they rolled back those plans. Artstation didnt wanted to ban AI on their site and immediately we got great new portfolio sites that are not accepting AI like artgram or cara. Those two groups - pro and against AI are equally paying customers. You cant please both. Either you add AI tools or you dont. One of the groups will not like it. So really Affinity by not having these tools now is not loosing any more users then it would if they added them.

I am old enough to use cameras with film also. I still have two old russian Cmena's, old Minolta and Zenit cameras. Digital cameras didnt made my head spin. Prices of decent camera did the trick AI is not making my head spin either. Quite contrary. Maybe because I worked on the computer all my life starting with ZX spectrum and C64 ages ago? So all the new things I take with a pinch of salt and dont join the hysteria every time something new appears? Dont want to sound rude but when it comes to so called AI people behave like some sort of primitive tribe looking at TV for the first time, amazed how all these small people entered this box 😮 . I wonder from where comes this absolute confidence that this technology will quickly develop into something AMAZING. So many examples of tech that was really promising in early days and then its development plateaued or even completely crashed. Remember the revolutionary, game changing movement sensor Kinect? "You are the controller!". Nothing will be the same again! Well... Or beginning of VR - soon nobody will use monitor! Everything VR! It is around, still developing, maybe one day will be more popular. But it certainly didnt took over in many years. How about self driving cars? So many news, future is here! Well, not really yet, but soon! You will see! That takes long enough too, doesnt it? Turns out its not that easy as we thought it might be. Recently I read that first 3D scanners were made in the... 60s. I dont even know what purpose it could serve back in a day where computers didnt even had... screen. 60 YEARS later 3d modelers still have jobs. Adobe is praised now for its forward thinking with its AI tools. It took about 30 YEARS to implement in Photoshop something as simple as symmetry - tool that was present in Deluxe Paint made in 80s. Forgive me if I am not joining the chant about how great that company is I am not against technology (clearly, my everyday work depends on it), I do not afraid of it or anything like that. But sorry - I am not easily impressed by random picture showing up inside of selection... I would absolutely LOVE to see the end of retopologizing 3D objects by hand. Do that, o great AI. Make retopology obsolete, please. And while youre at it do the same with UVs. I will be the most progressive, forward thinking AI supporter then. But spitting the image...? I can only quote Shania Twain and say "that don't impress me much"

@CM0 Whole lot of assumptions there - biggest one being that it is in fact extremely significant. For me its somehow significant at best. At this point in time you cant make anything in Photoshop that I cant make in Affinity photo. I mean some real work scenario not "but can you generate furry letters in Affinity?!". No, that I cant. I also cant generate pseudo-fox, not-a-falcon and out of scale street around tiny elk. I would just take a photo of real fox, photo of real falcon and I would place elk over photo of the street instead. But everything I saw to this point is really not that impressive. I'm sorry to say that but AI fans remind me teenagers who think they are so modern and different, older people know nothing. Kids chasing everything new ferociously, thinking that if you dont you stay behind loose a job and die homeless because you were not up to date with generating glasses on people or dragging their legs to change pose It all seems funny to me. Bottom line is - these are all EXTREMELY easy tools to use. There is no way to stay behind selecting something and writing what you want appear inside of selection. These are tools my grandma could use after 10 minutes explaining. If she was alive that is. Why dont we stop pretending this is some sort of ultra-revolution with sentient Terminator around the corner? Theres lot of problems with AI currently. Quality, randomness (you never know whats going to show up), copyright, ethics... Lets take a deep breath and see it for what it is. Interesting, potentially useful tools with plethora of problems. Or - of course - we can keep on panicking and running around like AI would be some sort of train that is leaving the station and if youre not on it then you are lost. Which is simply silly thing to do. You are partially right. I do lot of 3D so it influenced my line of thinking. I see it like that: not only light source matters but how light bounces in the scene. If sun is entering your room through window it will not only highlight the surfaces that it hits. If it was true your window would be bright and wall in front of it, rest of the room would be dark. Since photons are bouncing from walls all room is highlighted. Whats more - if light bounces from say green surface it would inherit some of the green quality. Well I dont want to write a book about indirect illumination, ambient occlusion and ray tracing here - you got my point though. I think situation on the original photo is possible if he was standing under some sort of roof thats out of frame or something. Light situation would be very different for him if he was out in the open. But then I start thinking (something that pseudo AI is not capable of ) whats would be more pleasurable visually. I knew I really didnt liked the guy who is somehow invasive to the picture, looking out of place. So I made one who looks like belongs to the scene. Equally possible situation with all the strong light bouncing off the surfaces around him. Maybe he had a wall behind, who knows. Just like in 3D or movies - lot of trickery is involved to create pleasurable illusion of reality. After all the end result is what matters. And of course you might like more what was spitted by AI, but somehow I doubt it. Not because big-old-me changed picture and my ego demands that you agree But simply because... Dude really looks out of place on this first one. If that was my work for the client I would certainly do the same. To ground him more into scene and kill that copy-paste look. After all we do not color grade footage to look more real, but to achieve certain look, convey emotion or atmosphere. edit: I just noticed the reflection on his protective helmet that shows open sky and some tree line/mountain range/wall in the distance. No way this guy would be standing in the open in so intensive sunset and look like he was on the AI proposition. Literally EVERYTHING on the photo has that "orangy" tint no matter the angle. Except for this guy.

Ah yes. I am sure people who made this software from scratch and continue to improve it have no clue. But all the Joe Shmoes of the internet know best. Of course. Reminds me this song once again:

I often feel that people want this AI for sake of having something new because others are using it Video with dude generating fox and bird... Fox that is generated is not some specific species of fox that inhabits that specific region on the photo. Its mashed up, non existing, sort of fox looking creature. Pseudo falcon (because its shape looks nothing like falcon...) generated by AI is generated in completely wrong perspective to the photo. Its made from photos that are shot when bird was flying directly over the photographer - makes ZERO sense in that particular photo and looks awful. Unless that bird was starting vertically like a rocket Same as the elk on the street in Adobes presentation that is WAY too small. Its a travesty, a photographic equivalent to 5 YO drawing. Not specific, generic shapes roughly connected to the subject. So called AI has no idea about specifics - but for what I see (sadly) people who are using it neither. Dude generating different glasses on his face seems to not care that AI generates completely different eyebrows too... At some point, if you generate enough elements it isn't your picture anymore but some Frankenstein monster put together... Example with photo of construction worker looking at the ship... It looks exactly like quickly slapped person from another photo with little to none effort to match lighting... In Affinity Photo took me under minute to match it bit more.. "But you have the base quicker!". Maybe - maybe not. Because with AI you have no idea what will show up. Maybe you will be clicking half day and nothing matches. Depends on your luck really. Majority of this AI things looks like could be helpful but in the end its bit better content aware fill with image search inside of your software. Hardly something revolutionary to the level people describe it. Unless you are making things that can consist of kind-of, sort-of, not very specific, not very detailed stuff. Like that pseudo fox and pseudo falcon on the desert. Stuff that I was making as a young lad playing with Photoshop 3.0 ages ago.

As much as I do not like AI image spitters there are some areas in Affinity I would like to see see improved. For example content aware tools in Affinity. To be honest it doesnt have to be "AI, machine learning, super duper newestest tech #futureisours, "this changes everything forever and ever!!!" kinda tool. It could be achieved old fashion way. I would like to be able to define area of which content aware fill takes data from and protect other. So when I delete little mole on the face its not filled up with part of eye for example :D. Also ability to protect parts of the image from being stretched and distorted (say people on the photo) when I am stretching canvas. And the rest, unprotected part gets content aware treatment. That sort of things would be VERY helpful. It was in the very first tool with content aware ability, would love to see that in Affinity. Do I need AI to be used? No. Just better tools would be great. I admit some of the AI tools in PS look cool on presentation but then when I think about it - do I need it REALLY? Adobe bloats photoshop with everything they can. Doesnt matter if it makes sense or not. Let me just mention their previous great ideas - video editing, 3D and my personal favorite: 3D PRINTING from Photoshop. Because of course when you think 3D printing you think photo editor What they have now is definitely useful - lets not fool ourselves. But its not something that would make me switch from Affinity. I know how to cut out deer and place it on the photo of the street if you know what I mean. They did it with prompt I can do it with photo. Difference between me and them is maybe a minute. And fact that I would place deer TO SCALE because apparently neither AI or people making presentation for Adobe know how big of an animal it is