Editing The Easy Way.

The Old Ruminator

The Old Ruminator

Well-known member
OK a spin off from Blast From The Past . Resurrected slide film.

Here is one of the worst as a digital copy at 2.03mb.



Here it is put through Palette a paid for programme that uses AI to construct a copy at high resolution. I use it for my local photo archive. It guesses colours so might make a green bus red. Its not a true archive but great for digital shows. 6.86 mb You can use a variety of filters.



Best of all and equivevelant to a phone image I guess ChatGBT. Just the instruction . Please improve my photo. This from the free version of Chat giving a res. of1.39 mb as a PNG.



Subject bailing Swildon's Mud Sump 1960's
 
So from something barely usable to a Chat conversion costing no time and no cost. OK the purists might moan about AI but its superb at resurrecting images that as originals are not worth keeping.

OK lets go again but remember to always save the unedited original.

Wet Ears Squeeze, Swildons . 1960's Digital copy unedited at 941 Kb.



Using Photoshop 18 haze filter and colour correction. 220Mb.



ChatGBT 1.85mb PNG. Make my photo better.

 
Now if there is a downside to Chat as a free version you can only do two images every four hours.

Now of course will present your image any way that you want. You have seen me as a caricature.

 
Ahh but now you might see a problem regarding honesty, expectation and contrivance. As I said some of my archive of historical images are coloured by Pallet and make great digital presentations. Yes but they are not of archival merit. Our green buses come out red as the programme believes buses are red. London maybe but not on the old Western National. So we have a similar problem here. Chat will present your edited image any way that you want. The caricature types are fun but the " problem" arises when you ask Chat " please make my photo look better ". Whilst I may do more Chat edited images it would be best to keep them filed as that. " Chat Edits ". Of course I could say " please make this cave nicer than it is ". Now reality may well fly out of the door. Along come the bots of which I know little. The " nicer " image gets sampled and off it goes to Google Image. My nicer cave image now becomes real as far as the viewer is concerned. Yes you can get programmes to tell you if its an AI construct and new European law has just come in to let you know if something has been modified by AI. Do you want to be an honest photographer ( come on few really are ) or do you want to show perfection as imagined by AI ? Gets a bit awkward does it not.

Somebody was manipulating my online archival photos. At quick inspection they looked great. Looking carefully you see the hallucinations ( is that the right word ? ) What AI could not read or see it made up. We had a tram changed to a shop front as it showed the tram windows. Words on shop fronts were changed. A confectioners became an ironmonger. Adverts on buildings were changed. One big shop name became Bovril. Well parts of the image were true and looked great other parts were in fact lies. Are we indeed creating a world where all images are false ?

Comments welcomed please.
 
AI's take on "AI problems" (my highlights)
Artificial intelligence presents major challenges including algorithmic bias, data privacy violations, massive energy consumption, and cybersecurity threats like deepfakes. Experts also warn of long-term risks such as autonomous weapon use, economic job displacement, and the rapid spread of industrial-scale misinformation.
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Well if you are interested cus the free plan allows basically two edits a day.

On the ChatGPT Go plan, you can typically edit or generate roughly 20 to 30 images per day. [1, 2]
OpenAI does not publish a strict, hard-coded image count for the Go tier. Instead, it uses a dynamic, rolling limit based on server capacity. [1, 3, 4, 5]
Here is what you need to know about image usage and editing limits on this tier:
Key Image Limits & Constraints
  • Dynamic Caps: Your real-time limit fluctuates based on system demand and server load. [1]
  • Action Types: Every edit request, image variation, or brand new prompt counts equally against your daily image allowance. [1, 2]
  • Cooldowns: If you submit too many editing prompts in quick succession, the system will trigger a short temporary cooldown lasting 1 to 5 minutes. [1]
  • File Upload Caps: If you upload your own images to edit them, each individual image file must be under 20 MB, and you can upload a maximum of 20 files per single prompt. [1, 2, 3]
How It Compares
If you plan on doing heavy graphic design or multi-image editing workflows, the $8/month Go tier can become a bottleneck. Users requiring high-volume output generally upgrade to ChatGPT Plus, which supports roughly 40 to 50 image actions every 3 hours (~180–200 images daily). [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Are you planning to edit your own uploaded photos, or are you looking to modify images that ChatGPT generates for you?
AI responses may include mistakes. Learn more
  • Go costs about $8 a month.
 
My mate has said " whats the point ? " Does not really have to be one does there ? For me a bit of idle fun and maybe adding a bit more time to a fading image.

Anyway I asked chat to colour my 1960's image of Pete Rose at Sump Four in Swildons.





I asked for a blue boiler suit. Like I said a bit of fun and Pete as I remember him 60 years ago
 
The Old Ruminator said:
whats the point ?
Click to expand...

To think about it another way, what's the cost?

How does ChatGPT know what a cave looks like in order to "improve" your photo? It's stolen vast quantities of other peoples photos of caves and learnt how they look, very likely including some of your photos! It's now charging people to access that knowledge, but the photographers won't see a penny. What does that do to creative industries?

Does it matter that the photos that you've posted aren't "real"? Are any photos "real"? It depends why you're looking at the photos I suppose - for me your original slides give an amazing insight into what caving would have been like when they were taken, whilst the edited versions are much less interesting, I've got hundreds of photos like that myself (but without the hallucinations).

You've shared your AI generated content with the world. What does that do to how we communicate with each other? As Fulk points out, there are historical inaccuracies - does that matter? What is your motivation for "improving" them, and does the fact that they're no longer an accurate reflection of your experience make a difference?

When a skilled photo editor edits a photo they have a plan, an objective, they know what they're trying to achieve and use tools to get there. It's art, even though the photo they create isn't "real" it's the consequence of conscious design choices. Your "improve this photo" prompt removes all that consideration - we can't know why it thinks the output is better than the input, it doesn't "know" either. Is there any value, then, in doing it, if it's thoughtless?

Many camera phones now shove your photos through an AI filter by default, as the arms race of "our model takes the best photos" continues. What's that doing to the historical record?

We used to be able to trust that something had value because making it had taken effort. A book had taken an author years, a paiting an artist months. What happens to our systems of valueing things when anyone can churn out stuff at zero cost?

When will a photo edited by AI win a competition at Hidden Earth? When will a photo entirely created by AI win? How will we feel about that?

I'm no fan I'm afraid!
 
Yes I do actually agree with all of the mod comments. Sadly I don’t see a way out of most of it. I used Chat to " Improve " my images as a bit of fun. Of course it also contributes to the " reality " issue. Like I said honesty. The honesty boat has long sailed and the intuitive phone images will continue to " improve "what you get . Not by the skill of the photographer but by the generative AI in the programme. At least Facebook is noting AI generated images now. Of course we all want the easy way. Hence the name of the post. Maybe I should have said " a different way ". Its far too late unless we go back to Box Brownies. Maybe we should have a section for real film images. Un edited though I doubt you will get many posters. You already have AI photos at Hidden Earth I would say. Also the same in the mags. Nobody wants effort in the now world. They want easy results. A plethora of lotteries and silly competitions on TV testify to that. Only things earned have value but most want easy money to make themselves happy. Of course you could run all HE entries though an AI detection programme but that will never happen will it ? Welcome to the new world order. Maybe that should be called " something for nothing ".
 
A great many people use AI tools "for a bit of fun". @aricooperdavis mentions some costs above, but to my mind, the biggest is the horrendous waste of energy, and water. At this point in our history, we should be using all our resources with extreme frugality. Are we? Are we f***. Just throwing petrol onto the world as it burns. I freely admit the some AI applications are worth it (automatic identification of tumours in X-Rays springs to mind), but I don't think mucking about with photos is one, however impressive the results (and they are).
 
The EU Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act is the world's first comprehensive legal framework for artificial intelligence, regulating technologies based on a four-tier risk system. The law officially entered into force in August 2024 and is rolling out in stages. The most recent milestone occurred on August 2, 2026, when the European Commission's AI Office officially began enforcing mandatory transparency and deepfake disclosure rules.
 
Evening Ari, I don't quite get what you're trying to say in some of your comments; thus:

It depends why you're looking at the photos I suppose - for me your original slides give an amazing insight into what caving would have been like when they were taken, whilst the edited versions are much less interesting, I've got hundreds of photos like that myself (but without the hallucinations).
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Well, considering the original photo of 'Wet Ears Squeeze / 1960s'; yes , that does give an idea of what caving was like at the time (been there, done that, if not literally in Swildon's, then metaphorically somewhere else, wearing 'dry grots' with a crap belt-mounted-battery lamp and a ladder in my hand). However, it is obvious that the picture has suffered some deterioration over the years; I mean, caves don't tend to have a sort of pinky-purple hue.

Now the ChatGBT 1.85 mb PNG version seems to me to give a much better rendition of what the cave would have looked like (and presumably still does, with brownish limestone and 'gravel-coloured' gravel on the floor). Even the caver's kit strikes me as being rendered in more probable colours, although that is obviously a very subjective impression.

And yet you say that the edited versions are much less interesting; to me, this edited version is no less interesting, but it is more realistic. Certainly if I was giving a slide show – sorry, 'presentation' – these days I think that the latter (edited) version would give a better impression of what caving was like way back then than does the 'original' version. And what did you mean by 'the hallucinations'?
 
To my mind hallucinations are the visual things AI adds to the image because it cannot read the original image. In effect that’s the nasty bit with archival stuff. ( my other hobby ). Like I said a distant side view of a tram became a shop front with AI because that’s how it read it. Facebook is awash with AI editing programmes now so you could say its all common place. I do have Photoshop 18 sometimes using the haze filter and colour correction. So how is colour correction arrived at ? Does Photoshop delve into the image data or does it make it up ? If it makes it up we have the same problem. Aint real is it ? Pandora is well out of her box. AI editing is just as common in media as real images.
 
As I may have mentioned before, AI is a great tool for my dating apps. Before:
1786267996408.jpeg

After a little light processing:
1786268287767.jpeg

Fighting them off with a sh1tty stick! What's not to like?
 
Fulk said:
Evening Ari, I don't quite get what you're trying to say in some of your comments
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I guess what I'm getting at is the original photos are interesting to me _because_ the colour temperature is off, and the lens is muddy, and the lighting is poor.

I'm not that interested in an accurate photo of a caver in a puddle, but I'm interested in a photo from 1960s, and I like the patina that degradation has given it, which gives a feeling of vicarious sentimentality to the photo. I can feel that this is a memory of adventures from the OP with with the original photo, I don't feel that with the edited version.

All of this is of course very subjective - YMMV!
 
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