In this episode, How Is Artificial Intelligence Used In Photography? Will AI Ever Replace Me? And also some more thoughts on the last episode, I Only Take Photos With My Phone – What Photography Stuff Am I Missing Out On?
Hi and welcome to Episode 143 of the Photography Explained podcast. I’m your host Rick, and in each episode I will try to explain one photographic to you in plain English, in less than 27 minutes (ish), without the irrelevant details. What I tell you is based on my lifetime of photographic experience. And not Google. OK – lots of research in this one, and not just from Google. More on that later.
First – here is the answery bit
AI is artificial intelligence. AI is used in photography to take technically higher quality photos. AI in photography is used to apply previous learning to the processing of images. AI in photography provides endless new opportunities to intelligently automate photographic processes.
But. AI cannot replace the human bit of us, our feelings, emotions, views, and beliefs.
So no, AI in photography will not replace us as photographers. Well not completely. And not yet.
But one day…. Who knows…
You can listen to the episode here
Or keep on reading. Or do both. Entirely up to you!
That was my answer – here is the talky bit
AI – artificial intelligence. Let’s not forget that. Artificial Intelligence. Rather than human intelligence. AI in photography terms can also be called computational photography. It is computers that use real time data to make decisions, and also these machines learn from previous calculations.
AI is trying to copy what we humans do, and do it quicker and better, and without us.
Hmmmm, now this might sound scary, and it is.
I need to say here that this is not a technical analysis of AI in photography, far from it. You wouldn’t want me to do that anyway.
No, I am introducing AI in photography certainly to me, and to you as well dear listener.
I am going to say AI rather than artificial intelligence for the rest of this episode, which I hope you will agree is a smart move….
The human brain.
The human brain is a wonderful thing. So wonderful, so powerful, and yet to be equalled by technology. And that in itself is remarkable.
So do we even need AI? Well you could argue no, we do not. But that would be taking away AI stuff that we are already using, day in, day out, without even thinking about it.
So it’s a bit late to say no. A bit like it is too late to say no to erm, the wheel, cars, electricity? You know what I mean.
My first experiences of AI in photography.
I started using AI consciously with the Luminar 4 AI Sky Replacement tool. The good folks over at Skylum created the AI Sky Replacement Tool, which knows which bit of a photo is sky, and allows me to quickly swap a dull, grey English sky for a much nicer one.
I said consciously then, as this was a conscious decision I made to use AI to do something. And do you know what? It was, and still is, absolutely fantastic.
Phew, that’s a good start!
How is AI used to take photos?
Well, there are a few very clever things out there right now.
- Focus tracking on moving objects
- Focussing on our eyes
- Face recognition
Yes these things already exist.
Cameras can track fast moving objects, and can find peoples eyes in a composition. Scary?
Well not really. Tremendously helpful I say.
When we are photographing people, the eyes are the thing that need to be in focus – so if tech can help us do this that has to be a good thing right?
And cameras can work out where a face is in a photo, and focus and meter on that. This is technology helping us to take better photos.
And this is being developed all the time.
Eye control AF
OK – this is bonkers. You can use Eye Control AF to focus the camera where you are looking. It works with subject tracking, so once you have caught your cameras attention it will actually track what you are looking at, even when you are not looking at it.
I cannot get my nut around that one.
I photograph buildings. I don’t need this stuff. But it is incredible what camera manufacturers are coming up with these days. Absolutely remarkable. And just because I don’t need it now does not mean that I will not need this stuff in the future. Nor does it make this stuff any less valid.
Other devices
You can buy devices that connect to cameras that add AI functionality. This is gear on steroids and well beyond my range of well, not expertise but more like well beyond any basic knowledge that I may have.
And now some more good stuff from another podcast.
I did a search for AI in photography, and came across “Putting the AI in ImAge with Aaron Hockley – TDS Photo Podcast“. This is “The Digital Story” podcast, by Derek Story. I used to listen to this podcast years ago, and I am delighted to be reacquainted with it again.
I used to listen to loads of photography podcasts, but have got out of this habit. This is a combination of the pandemic and more working from home plus me listening to other, more business related stuff.
Anyway, Derek’s guest, Aaron Hockley, came up with these three great examples of AI in photography.
- Digital zooming/ cropping using computational stuff to enhance what is there, identifying and enhancing different parts and elements within a photo.
- HDR – no longer an add on to phone photography, but more like an in-built part of image capture applied to everything that we photograph. Rather than being a conscious thing that we choose to do this is just part of the image capture now.
- Masking improvements. I will get onto this in a bit.
Check out the podcast, which I really enjoy and am now following again.
Photo editing
Endless examples of AI in photo editing, which I would sort of expect to be honest. This is where the tech really has grown.
Sky replacement
This is where I first got consciously into AI in my photography, taking the decision to change the sky using the wonderful Luminar AI Sky Replacement tool. This is a great example of AI working for us photographers, getting rid of the need to mask the sky.
See I photograph buildings and construction sites, and masking around a large scaffolding is virtually impossible, but a breeze for the Luminar AI thing.
This has transformed my photography, allowing me to do shoots on cloudy days and make it all bright and sunny later.
And there is nothing wrong with this, weather is a real constraint to me.
Face recognition
Lightroom has face recognition. I don’t use it. Well I photograph buildings after all so I wouldn’t. But my iPhone spookily has a section called “People and Places” which has 12 faces, 7 family and 5 from the footballing world, including the former AFC Bournemouth Manager Eddie Howe who left well over 2 years ago!
See AI is already here and being used.
Red Eye reduction
This has been around for ages, just select the eyes and boom the red eye is gone. Impressive.
Masking is now a thing of the past
Masking is going from being a pain in the proverbial to a one click breeze with the development of tech. And the very recent Lightroom update introduced more of this which I am excited to use.
You can select a person or an object and Lightroom does the hard work of masking for you.
And you can do the same with the background.
And it also has healing with content aware remove.
Now this is pretty amazing stuff.
Adaptive Presets
Another brand new Lightroom thing, new adaptive presets use the select people feature and enhance portraits with a single click!
Fake or real?
The edges are blurring between fake and real. Using AI you can now create photos, well are they photos if they are artificially created? And these “photos” are good enough to potentially put an end to big parts of the stock photography world.
Yes why buy a photo when you can subscribe to an app that can create a photo using words that you type. Yep this stuff is here right now.
Do things have to be real?
See if you can create a photo using Ai that looks real who cares? Well if you can’t tell and don’t know how can you care?
This is a scary thing, the capability to create an image, that a better term than photo, to create an image out of nothing.
All this requires is the software and the thought process to tell the software to create something.
And this is the good news,
All of these things rely on one thing. A person to point the camera at something, to apply some form of processing to a photo that they have composed, or to even write instructions for software to create something.
See in all these cases AI is helping the human create something.
What about full automation?
This is a question that I need to ponder. And I will ask you to do the same, see what we come up with. If AI is left to automatically create stuff what would it create? What parameters would it be working to? Surely this would have to be based on stuff created by humans, or where/ what would the starting point be?
Fake news
Yep fake news is gong to get more fake as this stuff evolves and grows.
The photographers eye
This is the thing that gives me hope. AI cannot replace a photographer. It cannot replace the thought processes that we humans go to create photos. AI cannot apply emotion and feeling to the creative process of taking a photo.
Artificial intelligence cannot start the creative process of taking a photo.
We are fine, there will be a need for photographers, be it pros or with a phone, as long as there is a demand for humans to look at stuff that they want to look at.
What do you want to be?
Do you want to be creative, original, or part of the machinery. Yes I really wrote that. I do my thing, and am happy doing my thing. I use AI to help me, more than I thought to be honest.
Scratching the surface.
I realise that this is a very superficial entry into AI in photography. There is so much more to this, and there will be so much more year on year.
But AI will not replace us as creatives, artists even. And if it does it will only be by learning from us anyway so are we really replaced or making AI do something based on human thoughts?
Will AI replace me?
No. It will not. See I am already quite old, and while technology constantly drives forwards there is still a need thankfully for humans.
What I do still needs a person – AI cannot, well not yet anyway, turn up and photograph a building and get all the shots that a client needs. AI cannot turn up to a construction site and capture great, original compositions.
And that is the thing. While AI can do all sorts of technical stuff, how can AI compose a photo in the same way that we can?
How can AI process an image to be realistic and pleasing. Sure it can produce technically correct photos, but to who’s standard.
And this is the real point. AI is using human learning, well it has to be based on something doesn’t it. And what human learning is that?
Right – talky bit over – what if I only use a phone?
Well there are AI features packed into phones these days. Phone cameras can take a load of photos and combine them to form a single image, getting rid of noise, blur, anything bad.
In fact they do that with every photo that we take these days, certainly with the latest phones. HDR used to be a decision to be taken, now it is just built in, in case you were wondering why you could not find that option anymore?
So use a phone to take photos and you are at the cutting edge of some pretty remarkable AI technology.
Resources
I had to do some work on this one. Plenty of Googling, and I would like to mention some key sources of information.
Tips From The Top Floor Podcast Episode 908 – AI In Photography gave me some thoughts and inspiration. This is another photography podcast that I used to listen to that I am absolutely delighted to be reacquainted with.
The Digital Story I mentioned earlier.
What do I do?
I use AI to change the skies in photos. But I decide which photos need the sky replacing. And I am sure that I use AI on loads of stuff that I don’t even know about. I have mentioned some of them in this episode.
And now I am going to start looking around and see what else AI is doing for us – I am going to do that right now.
My car tells me I need to take a break dependent on how I am driving and my reactions. How can this be so?
I talk about a product or thing and it appears in Amazon, in Google, very, very scary.
What else is AI doing that we do not know????
But AI can help us, much more than I thought, and at the moment AI is there to help us take and create better photos, which has to be a good thing. I don’t think that AI will replace me and what I do, well not yet anyway.
I don’t think that AI is going to replace us yet – but think about this – if it did, what would become of us??
What a great point to end on……
Blimey. That was interesting. And I enjoyed looking into this, and found some scary stuff in there, but also some good stuff that can help us.
Some thoughts from the last episode, “I Only Take Photos With My Phone – What Photography Stuff Am I Missing Out On?”
I just want to reiterate one thing. If you only take photos with your phone you are missing out on a whole world of good photography stuff, and you are limiting how far you can develop your photography.
Photography is drawing with light. And sure you can do that wonderfully well with a phone. And yes you can use a phone and take a deep dive into photography, of course you can.
But you are missing out on so much, starting with the simple process of taking a photo with a camera, which is different from taking photos with a phone. It just is.
But as we have found out in this episode, use a phone and you are at the cutting edge of lots of tech stuff, including AI.
Next episode
Photography Explained Podcast Episode 144 – How Technology In Cameras Helps Us To Take Photos. AI done, I want to get back to solid ground and look at how technology that is already in cameras can help us take photos.
And I am worried that this episode is going to get me wanting a new camera. Oh well, lets find out shall we. More work for me to do, which is good as I am leaning new stuff.
And my survey is still out there
My Photography Explained Podcast survey is still on the podcast website – just a few questions that should take less than a minute to answer – just head over to Photography Explained Podcast.com/survey. And thanks for your help.
Got a photography question you want me to answer in plain English, in less than 27minutes (ish) but still without the irrelevant details? You do? Great – just head over to PhotographyExplainedPodcast.com/start.
This episode was brought to you by, erm, a good old cheese and pickle sandwich and home crisps, washed down with a Diet Pepsi, all consumed before sitting down in my home-made, acoustically cushioned recording emporium.
I’ve been Rick McEvoy, thanks again very much for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast (it says here), and for giving me between 20 and 30 (ish) minutes of your valuable time. There you go, I have stopped saying 10ish minutes finally.
Take care, stay safe
Cheers from me Rick
OK – that was the podcast episode.
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Thank you
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Cheers from me Rick
