AI Imagery & Beyond
This week I posted my first AI-generated imagery. I needed a post of a boat on Lake Tahoe with a full moon. I went in knowing it would be a composite. To line up a shot like this is a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of the stars and moon. Let alone the lenses to capture a full moon. If you haven’t tried just hold your phone up on the next full moon and try to capture what you see. It’s a lot harder than you would think.
I used Adobe’s new Firefly. In under 10 minutes, I had a post-able image. I had to put in another 15 minutes cleaning up the ocean nautical buoys it kept adding. In Lake Tahoe, the nautical markers are much smaller. Other than that it worked beautifully.
I’ve played around with Dalle AI with less than stellar success but I attribute that to driver error more than AI inability. This time around I asked the AI to do specific tasks that I am capable of but take up a lot of time and skill. Within minutes I had success. These are the tasks that you go to Fiver for, the meticulous mundane rabbit holes we creators seem to jump down on a regular basis, for this AI is a valuable tool.
Today my kid showed me what’s trending on TikTok. AI regenerated animation scenes. Immediately I could see the difference in the original Disney animation and the AI enhanced. AI increased the detail of the main subject and decreased the background detail which gave an immediate depth and drew your focus into the subject like a magnet. Remind me to pay a bit more attention to my aperture next time I shoot. AI capabilities are coming to the small post-house video editing world soon but it is not available today. I can replace a sky but not well, there are a lot of ghost glows around the edges. You can see them around the canoe above. I’m wondering what it would do with a wide shot of a landscape vista. Without a main subject, I bet it would get confused and muddle it up.
The future is open for skilled AI prompters. What I mean by skilled is people who know the process of creation and are able to give AI the information to get from point A to B. On Monday I asked Bard to assemble a list of Businesses in the 96161 area code. It says it’s still compiling and will be delivered as soon as possible. If I had 6 days 24/7 I would have had it done by now. Again driver error, something is wrong with the prompt. I asked Chat GPT and it was an out-and-out no, it will not do the task. Noticed how I used the word “will”. There is a stop on this type of prompt built in for reasons I do not understand yet.
Is AI evil? No. In as much as my washing machine that has freed me from squatting by the creek beating the dirt out of my clothes. When clothes are ruined in the wash I feel it was on purpose but once again it comes down to operator error. Dry clean does not involve water. I find this same bias in social media platforms. Many people blame the algorithm when their posts don’t perform. So far there has always been a reason.
Top 3.
The content was inappropriate or hurtful
Held no value for viewers.
Against platform policy.
I had no idea until today that TikTok will not stream extreme skiing. It tags the content as imitateable and a danger to viewers. Go figure. Meta’s big no-no's? Housing, employment, and politics. These are special categories and will shut your accounts down in one mishap. Handle with care and respect. Pull the tagged post first, and argue later. Banned or outlawed - It took me two weeks to find out why my local tourist boat ad would not run. It kept saying age-inappropriate. Had to be over 21.??? Stumped me for days. Then I realized that Riverboats on the Mississippi are gambling havens. Once I informed Meta that The Tourist Boat has no gambling and is a sightseeing boat for all ages the ads ran. YouTube and Google are a bit trickier. They will always take your money, the skill lies in knowing if the results are expected or a waste of ad dollars because they will always take your money.
I laugh when people ask me what my editing qualifications are. What school did I go to? When I started there were no schools, I was in the early beta days of Non-Linear Editing (Digital) that paved the way for all these young master creators. We early adopters wrote the textbooks. When I call Apple Pro app support they still answer the phone. I’m known for my bug-catching skills. Little buggers bite me every time there’s a new update. The early days of new tech are exciting for a nerd like me to be a part of, I’m not missing this one.
Bottom line AI is just another tool. One that I am committed to learning.
If there is a topic you’d like to hear more about by all means comment below or direct message and I’ll do my best.
Nothing better than a good question to jump into.
Reach out for a talk over coffee or a hike I give information freely. I only ask to be paid when I do the work. tgold@bigwaterci.com
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Trina Gold
Master Creator