Sunday, July 16, 2023

Photoshop Generative Fill

The intranet has been buzzing about Photoshop's new Beta version that has a generative fill capability. There are many videos on YouTube that demonstrate the capability. Being curious I downloaded and installed the new software just to play around with the new feature. I think this is really amazing and wonder what it means for the future of photography. It is definitely cheating and taking photo editing to a different level.

There certainly are purists that will make a lot of noise about this fakery but then who of us don't cheat just a little. If we didn't there would be no need for digital cameras, cropping,  color correcting, or the dozens of other capabilities most of us use in Photoshop. I don't plan to use this much but do find it fascinating. 

The picture below is what I started with. It was taken last summer when in Scandinavia. The red fence really spoiled the image but I took the exposure anyway. But with generative fill... first I selected the area that contained the red fence and a perfectly acceptable fill was automatically created. Second I thought the right lower corner would look nice with some wild flowers... no problem. Finally I thought a few ducks on the path would help the make the picture more interesting and the composition more balanced. This all took only a few minutes.

If you consider this a photo illustration (not a straight photo) it is quite a nice image I think. What are your thoughts?

6 comments:

  1. Photography never was just a record of reality. It always has been an art, and your altered image is certainly the better image. Looking at Ansel Adam's darkroom techniques showed he greatly altered his prints from the raw negatives. Electronic techniques makes this altering easier.

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    1. My wife liked your original photo with the red gate better than the altered photo. Don't you just love a difference of opinion?

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  2. I would take the red fence photo over the duck one every day of the week. Not because the duck one is a “fake” but cuz, IMO, the red fence makes the photo a real winner. I’d hang on my wall.

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    1. Mark, your dislike of photo manipulation is not surprising and actually expected. My eye rejected the red fence/gate simply because it seemed incongruent due to its squared-off and prominent position in the frame. The diagonal of the stone wall is more interesting to me (and I frequently really like squared flattened perspective). This was only an experiment but, as TFG says above... everyone has an opinion.

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  3. I can see the two different photos. One is a photo of a red fence with a cabin in the background and the other is a photo of a cabin with ducks and flowers in the foreground. I can't say which is better but I can say that I prefer the first one. I printed photos from negatives and slides for years and I can say that there is no such thing as a photo that was not manipulated in some fasion in those days. Good photographers use all the tools available to them.

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  4. I'll also go on record as preferring the original image. As far as the generative fill tool in Photoshop, I look at it as just another tool in creating an image. The artist/photography still has some control over what is being manipulated to prepare an image that matches his vision. I'm not sure how creative I'd be in using it though.

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