Pearls

A forum to ask questions, post setups, and generally discuss anything having to do with photomacrography and photomicroscopy.

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Adalbert
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Pearls

Post by Adalbert »

Hello everyone,

Something different this time :-)

Namely, some of my macro photos, but slightly rendered by Stable Diffusion:

1. Stable Diffusion pearls, seeded by Compound eye of a fly in 50x
Image

2. Stable Diffusion pearls, seeded by Spider 10x
Image

3. Stable Diffusion pearls, seeded by Green weevil 2x
Image

4. Stable Diffusion pearls, seeded by True bug 10x
Image

5. Stable Diffusion pearls, seeded by Ladybug 20x
Image

6. Stable Diffusion pearls, seeded by Jumping spider 10x
Image

7. Stable Diffusion pearls, seeded by Poinsettia 50x
Image

8. Stable Diffusion pearls, seeded by Scales of the green weevil 80x
Image

9. Stable Diffusion pearls, seeded by Compound eye of the fly 50x
Image

10. Stable Diffusion pearls, seeded by Long scales of a green weevil 50x
Image

11. Stable Diffusion pearls, seeded by True bug 10x
Image

12. Stable Diffusion pearls, seeded by Compound eye of a fly in 80x
Image

Started in the following thread:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=45575

Best,
ADi

[Admin edit, rjl, to clarify the labeling of these images}

MarkSturtevant
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Re: Pearls

Post by MarkSturtevant »

These are a marvel! Have fun with your new skill-set! =D>
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

rjlittlefield
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Re: Pearls

Post by rjlittlefield »

For sure these images are a marvel of CGI -- computer generated imagery.

But also for sure they are not marvels of photography and they do not reveal info about the original subject. This puts them at odds with the longstanding core interests of photomacrography.net .

The admin group is currently discussing how to handle this new form of computer induced aberration.

In the meantime I have moved the thread into Technical Discussions, versus its original location in Technical and Studio Photography. I have also admin-edited the post so that the image captions accurately represent what is being shown. With luck, this will keep too much nonsense from being picked up by the search engines.

--Rik

MarkSturtevant
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Re: Pearls

Post by MarkSturtevant »

rjlittlefield wrote:
Fri Jan 13, 2023 12:59 pm
The admin group is currently discussing how to handle this new form of computer induced aberration.
--Rik
Being much inspired by Adalbert, I had prepared a cgi picture to share. Would that arrangement be ok with the original included as context? The cgi thing is fun, btw!
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

Adalbert
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Re: Pearls

Post by Adalbert »

Hello Rik,

Sorry for the inconvenience!

Yes, this is indeed an interesting topic.
Are these images still macro photos or not anymore?

I know that such AI images are not suitable for scientific documentation.

Reactions to such images are very different.
Some find them great others reject them completely.


I have only been playing with AI for a few days and have little experience with it yet.
But it is really fun, and especially in winter when there are no macro-motives.

The future will show if AI-photos will establish themselves in photography.

But they are already on an upward wave in social media.

Best, ADi

Adalbert
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Re: Pearls

Post by Adalbert »

Hi Mark,
The cgi thing is fun, btw!
I can only confirm that :-)
Best, ADi

rjlittlefield
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Re: Pearls

Post by rjlittlefield »

MarkSturtevant wrote:
Fri Jan 13, 2023 10:11 pm
Being much inspired by Adalbert, I had prepared a cgi picture to share. Would that arrangement be ok with the original included as context?
Yes, but for now please post in Technical Discussions.

--Rik

Gilles Benoit
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Re: Pearls

Post by Gilles Benoit »

CGI illustrations are fun to play with but are not a photographic process. They would be better suited in an illustrator’s or graphic arts forum.

MarkSturtevant
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Re: Pearls

Post by MarkSturtevant »

Gilles Benoit wrote:
Sun Jan 15, 2023 11:41 am
CGI illustrations are fun to play with but are not a photographic process. They would be better suited in an illustrator’s or graphic arts forum.
It might depend. These certainly go way beyond what has been considered here before (although I still very much like them). But haven't there been occasions here where someone takes a micrograph and runs it thru one of the many special effects filters in Photoshop?
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

rjlittlefield
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Re: Pearls

Post by rjlittlefield »

MarkSturtevant wrote:
Sun Jan 15, 2023 2:28 pm
Gilles Benoit wrote:
Sun Jan 15, 2023 11:41 am
CGI illustrations are fun to play with but are not a photographic process. They would be better suited in an illustrator’s or graphic arts forum.
It might depend. These certainly go way beyond what has been considered here before (although I still very much like them). But haven't there been occasions here where someone takes a micrograph and runs it thru one of the many special effects filters in Photoshop?
I find it useful to think about these methods in terms of how they relate to the subject being shown.

The special effects filters in Photoshop do not care about the subject. They affect the rendering style, such as oil painting versus watercolor versus tile mosaic. But they are not designed or trained to recognize anything in particular and act on that recognition.

Some other tools, such as Topaz Sharpen AI, are subject aware and deliberately seek to enhance real aspects of the subject. They work by recognizing what is being shown in the original image, then modifying the image to show that same thing in more idealized form. If the original image looks like blurred hair, then the modified image looks like sharp hair; if the original image looks like a face with blurred eyes, then the modified image looks like the same person with sharp eyes. Critical in this view is the idea that the recognition is neutral -- the software figures out for itself what it is probably looking at, without guidance from a human.

Then we have these new tools, which work by "recognizing" parts of an image that somehow resemble whatever the tool is told to look for, then they modify those parts so they look even more like the target description. In other words they start with what what the camera captured, interpret that in some way that is different from reality, and then modify the image to be as consistent as possible with the different interpretation. (See that bright spot in the textured cuticle? Make it look like a pearl. In fact, make 'em ALL look like pearls! )

This is essentially the same process that happens when people experience hallucinations: the visual system starts with what it actually sees, interprets that in some way that is inconsistent with reality, and then elaborates the impression to be as consistent as possible with the misinterpretation. In fact a 2016 paper on the automated technique uses the phrase "computational hallucinations". This term seems wonderfully concise and accurate; I am saddened that it has not become popular.

With all this as background, perhaps I can say that I personally don't view PMN as being the right place to host hallucination parties.

That said, I expect there are other uses of the same technology that are more relevant to PMN's interests, either as tools to use or traps to recognize, or both.

For example, no great imagination is required to foresee a retouching tool in which the human says "This is a thicket of sparse hairs, seen from the side. Remove the haze so the hairs can be seen clearly." Or even better, a tool that automatically recognizes such hair and does the right thing by itself.

Of course this leaves open the question of what "the right thing" is, and how far we're willing to go with replacing objective reality by idealized forms.

The answer to that might be "pretty far", at least if the portrait photographers' collective fondness for zapping zits is any indication!

--Rik

Scarodactyl
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Re: Pearls

Post by Scarodactyl »

Yeah, the pearls are an amusing novelty but we'll definitely see more relevant applications, increasingly powerful sharpening, denoising and enlarging tools which will inevitably involve the possibility of adding realistic false detail. Kind of useful to keep the pearls in mind in that context.

Adalbert
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Re: Pearls

Post by Adalbert »

Hello everyone,
Yes, this is a very interesting thing.

Depending on the definition of truth, one could claim,
that any change in the pixels of the RAW file that was taken is a manipulation.
E.g. absolutely forbidden in a legal archive.

But what is allowed or not allowed in the creation of images for scientific documentation?
I don't know.

Who decides which changes are acceptable and which are not?
The changes that are not noticed so quickly are precisely the worst ones.

By the way, I am not an AI fan, but I find the topic quite funny.

Best, ADi

zeniki
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Location: Vienna

Re: Pearls

Post by zeniki »

Hello Adalbert, do you have to upload you picture on a server of some kind or does the rendering of stable diffusion run on you pc or mac?
Bets
Zeniki

Adalbert
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Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 1:09 pm

Re: Pearls

Post by Adalbert »

Hello Zeniki,
Everything locally on my PC under Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
Best, ADi

zeniki
Posts: 15
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Location: Vienna

Re: Pearls

Post by zeniki »

Thank you very much and do you know wether it would run on a mac as well?

I did find a "Stable diffusion" programm for mac but i don't know if this could do what yours does.

Best

Zeniki

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