AI picture generators urgently required

[nickbatz]

11 hours ago, drstreit said:

Adobe just announced that they will integrate AI generated content into all of their products as an standard tool: https://www.adobe.com/sensei/generative-ai/firefly.html

So I repeat my plea here: Serif, move it and be fast about it.

This "we have a timeline that is inflexible" is the Kodak way, please react to an industry trend that will be THE defining topic in content creation for the next years.

See, my reaction is that this crap is yet another reason to use Affinity products instead.

 

[drstreit]

1 hour ago, nickbatz said:

See, my reaction is that this crap is yet another reason to use Affinity products instead.

 

Check at least the one pager where they showcase some things Firefly will deliver at start. And then tell me, that this will not make you more productive.

Or dont. And be out of jobs because others ARE more productive.

My concern is, that they will loose the small market slice they have when they keep sleeping 😴. Would be a shame.

 

[pixelstuff]

8 minutes ago, drstreit said:

Check at least the one pager where they showcase some things Firefly will deliver at start. And then tell me, that this will not make you more productive.

Or dont. And be out of jobs because others ARE more productive.

My concern is, that they will loose the small market slice they have when they keep sleeping 😴. Would be a shame.

 

I would bet the majority of Affinity users are primarily here because they don't want to pay Adobe a monthly subscription. I doubt they will suddenly change their position just to get AI image generation built directly into the app. Most will likely have no problem waiting for the technology to mature and stabilize a bit before being integrated into the Affinity software.

Affinity still isn't' up to feature parity on some of the more simple tools that Adobe has like perspective crop.

Whatever audience they lose because of not being an early adopter of A.I. will be super tiny.

[nickbatz]

3 hours ago, pixelstuff said:

I would bet the majority of Affinity users are primarily here because they don't want to pay Adobe a monthly subscription.

Could be, although I bought my Affinity Photo license without even realizing that it was a Photoshop alternative.

AI is a filthy word to me. Machine learning to help with edits or something, great. It's the whole idea of text to "art" that makes me sick.

And frankly I don't understand why so few people even stop to think about what this incel techbro garbage actually means.

[ffrm]

I'd like to reiterate my preference for an sdk over direct integration.  I understand smaller teams are strapped for time.  Give us a way to access a network resource and your community will do the work.  As a software eng myself I'd have already made an automatic1111 plugin by now if it had been possible.

I also believe the generative tools are changing too quickly for small teams to really respond well.  Affinity has a loyal base that should be tapped!

I'm not a full time artist but I'm happily enjoying a new relationship with the visual arts thanks to stable diffusion.

[pixelstuff]

55 minutes ago, ffrm said:

I'd like to reiterate my preference for an sdk over direct integration.

Don't they already support Photoshop Plugins?

[ffrm]

Last I heard you needed a Photoshop license to be able to develop for it, which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid.  If I'm wrong I'm happy to start on that right away.

[Juan Garcia]

I also want more AI capabilities. Remove background and "select subject" seems so dah nowadays. I know how much we take complicated things for granted, but this is the main reason I use Pixelmator Pro more than Affinity. In less time I can edit my pictures very very very well. There are things Pixelmator cannot do and then I save it as a PSD and open it in Affinity, but for Affinity to be a good first option needs more AI functions. Apple has a lot of this in Ventura and in CoreImage. I know Affinity is a cross platform. But I dare to say macOS user base greater than Windows one and at lease it would be a start until the feature is rolled out to all platforms. 

[thomasbricker]

I agree, AI should be integrated with the Affinity suite of applications. The rise of AI has already taken place and will drastically affect not only the visual world, but the entire working world as we know it.

And with Adobe coming out with Firefly, I would really like it if Affinity could add in a similar capability. I would imagine that is fully in the works.

Which raises the question, is it?

[wirra]

I have viewed and learnt a lot from Olivio's many Affinity tutorials and I own the Affinity suite of products since CraftArtist. He has produced some great AI videos in recent times. He doesn't have his head buried in the sand. Serif needs to get on the AI bandwagon or get left behind. Whether one agrees with these AI processes or not, the genie is out of the bottle.

 

[wirra]

I have viewed and learnt a lot from Olivio's many Affinity tutorials and I own the Affinity suite of products since CraftArtist. He has produced some great AI videos in recent times. He doesn't have his head buried in the sand. Serif needs to get on the AI bandwagon or get left behind. Whether one agrees with these AI processes or not, the genie is out of the bottle.

 

[nickbatz]

My vote is for no AI. It's not art.

And yes, Olivio is great. We recorded a podcast with him on this very subject last year:

 

https://synthandsoftware.com/2022/10/robots-are-taking-over-your-synths-podcast/

 

[deepz]

Midjourney runs on a discord server right now. 🤨

It's screaming for a decent UI.
Something like Affinity Photo should integrate it.

It would lure all those midjourney-hobbyists towards Affinity, and would make Affinity really big.

Having said that, we're obviously missing AIs that are able to correct themselves, make changes to previously generated images in an orchestrated way. e.g. to just regenerate a small portion of an image. But once those are in place, I want it embedded in affinity. I won't be doing that on some discord server.

[drstreit]

3 hours ago, deepz said:

Midjourney runs on a discord server right now. 🤨

It's screaming for a decent UI.
Something like Affinity Photo should integrate it.

It would lure all those midjourney-hobbyists towards Affinity, and would make Affinity really big.

Having said that, we're obviously missing AIs that are able to correct themselves, make changes to previously generated images in an orchestrated way. e.g. to just regenerate a small portion of an image. But once those are in place, I want it embedded in affinity. I won't be doing that on some discord server.

I am with you there, Midjourney serves a certain niche. Much more important is Firefly (https://www.adobe.com/sensei/generative-ai/firefly.html : Adobe will serve content within Google Bard (like ChatGPT, only from Google) soon. Might be that Adobe in some years earns more with KI than with graphical tools.

There ARE managers that are not sleeping through industry revolutions, it seems…

 

[nickbatz]

1 minute ago, drstreit said:

There ARE managers that are not sleeping through industry revolutions, it seems…

 

And there are others who realize what a bunch of toilet water this whole stupid AI "art" thing is.

Those techbros need to find partners and spend their time engaged in productive activity.

[drstreit]

12 minutes ago, nickbatz said:

And there are others who realize what a bunch of toilet water this whole stupid AI "art" thing is.

Those techbros need to find partners and spend their time engaged in productive activity.

Sure. But who would want to live in a world without toilet water today? I expect with generative AI, it will be the same, soon…

That AI will exceed expert level in most activities within 10 years is already concluded, sorry.

[smadell]

For the most part, I’ve resisted putting my 2 cents into this argument, but I think my view on this might be shared by others.

1) I would love it if Affinity Photo would simplify my editing with commands like Select Sky, Select Subject, and so forth. Call it AI; call it machine learning – that’s just semantics. It takes the drudgery out of my editing by automating (and speeding) the process. I’m all for that.

2) Automated selection of photo elements (like those involved in automatic sky substitution) almost always get things close, but not close enough. They always seem to need fiddling with after the fact. And that takes the amazement out of it really quickly. I bought a copy of Luminar AI because of these types of features, and fell out of love with it within days (or was it hours?)

3) I have no particular beef with AI-generated art, even though I have no real interest in pursuing it. For me telling a piece of software “show me a purple cat hanging off the Eiffel Tower” or anything similar is just silly beyond words. I’m willing to call this kind of thing art, but there comes a point where it’s no longer reasonable to call it photography.

4) Given the size-related issues associated with being a relatively small company (specifically, Serif when compared to Adobe) it seems much more reasonable to introduce any truly AI-related features by means of scripting and the associated software hooks that might allow users to create panels and so forth. Add-ins like this would presumably not rob Serif of precious resources, but would make features accessible to those who want them.

5) I would be among those who are happiest if Affinity Photo remained a “photo editing software” application, and avoided becoming an “AI art generator.” Whether this is an “old school” attitude or not, I suspect it is an opinion held by many (though obviously not by all).

[nickbatz]

19 minutes ago, drstreit said:

 

That AI will exceed expert level in most activities within 10 years is already concluded, sorry.

^ One aspect that doesn't get nearly enough attention: it's so overhyped that there are lots of people who believe utter bollox like this.

No machine will ever produce art, because art is exclusively human (not counting Koko the gorilla) and no machine will ever have a human soul.

[nickbatz]

11 minutes ago, smadell said:

I’m willing to call this kind of thing art, but there comes a point where it’s no longer reasonable to call it photography.

It's neither!

13 minutes ago, smadell said:

5) I would be among those who are happiest if Affinity Photo remained a “photo editing software” application, and avoided becoming an “AI art generator.” Whether this is an “old school” attitude or not, I suspect it is an opinion held by many (though obviously not by all).

It's a photo editor and an amazing tool for art. 

[deepz]

Exactly, as you put it "They always seem to need fiddling with after the fact".

Midjourney generated this one for me last week.
Not bad, but let's be honest. It's too dark on the bottom, and the eyes are pointed inwards.

So, I generated some more variations, and got this one.

But now it looks like there's glue sticking to its fur.
No matter how many times you generate, there's always something unwanted.

It's great to have something that generates art. 
However, the next step, are tools to edit the results with the same ease.
As shown in the video of Firefly (which isn't real, but just a concept, a marketing video).

Smart tools, not just generation. But it could be a first step.

[deepz]

15 minutes ago, nickbatz said:

no machine will ever have a human soul.

We're going to be redefining what intelligence, art and self-awareness is.
The closer innovation will come, the more creative those definitions will get.
And when we run out of measurable arguments, we will be looking at spiritual ones.

[nickbatz]

48 minutes ago, deepz said:

We're going to be redefining what intelligence, art and self-awareness is.
The closer innovation will come, the more creative those definitions will get.
And when we run out of measurable arguments, we will be looking at spiritual ones.

I'm not going to be redefining anything, and the arguments were spiritual before this horrible idea started. And that's a good thing.

[nickbatz]

1 hour ago, deepz said:

But now it looks like

It all looks utterly execrable.

[nickbatz]

Have I mentioned how much I hate this whole concept?

[dcr]

I don't know the numbers, but I suspect a significant percentage of Affinity users are former Adobe users who did not want to pay monthly fees to use software tools.  And now people want Serif to incorporate AI tools that require a subscription into their software?