During Adobe MAX 2016, the company gave a behind the scenes look at a new technology that they’re developing called SkyReplace. The new software makes it very easy to replace the sky and even adjust the overall look of a photo with little to no Photoshop knowledge.
Adobe says SkyReplace uses deep machine learning to automatically figure out where the boundary lines lie between the sky and the rest of the elements in the photo such as trees, mountains and buildings. It can then not only swap out the old sky and insert a completely new one, but it can also adjust the rest of the photo to take on the same look and feel as the replaced sky by adjusting color, light and contrast thus creating a more realistic look.
I view some of my photography as art and have sold it that way. Ansel Adams freely admitted his darkroom enhancements. I can enhance a sky just by manipulating luminance sliders in lightroom. How many of you use the LR clarity slider as It improves the look of pictures. And what about the transform function to straighten buildings. My question is where does one draw the line. I worked for a paper never changed a picture and didn't have time anyway because of deadlines. I was in a home today where I looked at an artists paintings of the inlet she lives on. They are nice but they all are her pure invention. It is called art. The same can be done with photography and also be called art. In the over thirty years I have made photographs both professionally in my business and as a hobby the medium has changed enormously. It will be what it evolves to not what some of us would like it to be. There is room for all sorts of experimentation in producing images.
The question then becomes where do you draw the line?. Who draws it? It is clearly drawn in written guidelines in the print media. Certain edits are allowed. Look up the Reuters guidelines. Photographers have been manipulating skies for years. The Adobe Sky enhancement will make it easier as it currently takes some time to do it now as I have done it. Ansel Adams long ago described his dark room manipulations. What do purists think about that?
Honestly, 9 out of 10 images that have a sky in 500px have had the sky swapped. This just makes it easier for anybody to do that. The line between "great photography" and photoshopping say already blurred.
The masking technique, if it's as good as is claimed, could be very useful in certain situations, but unfortunately, like many "special effect" techniques, it will be drastically over-used, and used in totally unsuitable circumstances. Before long, every photograph published anywhere will have an azure sky, complete with fluffy ice-cream clouds, and of course a nice bright oversaturated rainbow. Just like reality!
Very bad things come twice. This is just one big step towards photography with total lack of credibility. Now, everytime we see a photo with a nice sky we'll have instant doubt or disbelief. Another very sad day.
folks were replacing skies in the days of glass plates. Nothing new here. Making it easier is better as long as desired results are achieved. I love adobe for time saved in removing wires and other objects in a scene, just another tool in the toolbox.
Loved the girl's moaning as well...but really, I can't wait until they come up with the subject removal tool, for times when you could care less about your subject. And a few years after that, the photo removal tool, whereby a new photo is "created" because of the photographer's ineptitude (this will replace the delete key on most computers, I say most because Apple users will have their computer decide for them).
After a few days shooting an airshow with a gray background while getting great exposures of the aircraft (no shadows) I put a blue sky with clouds background on one. It is hanging in my office. Photography is not a religion. There is no dogma as there was no dogma for Salvador Dali. Unclench where you are tight and live and let live.
Why even bother going to the airshow? Just download some aircraft PNGs and paste them into the Adobe sky (akin to the Simpson's Sky) and then glue your photo to your office wall!
Having done newspaper work I know what it means to be accurate. I think there is room for all genres and for free expression. All of it "is in the eye of the beholder" not in the eye of the photographer. Dali is still revered. We will see what survives.
Babe, or not...all that mindless woohooing and clapping just made me want to yank that woman out of her chair. Adobe must have mindless woohooing budgeted for their product roll-outs.
Ansel was part of the problem. Once he removed all color from the world he was dead to me. From what I hear, Photoshop will also remove all your color using their special software. B@st@rds!!
This is really fascinating, and is probably the future for photography. Software solutions might replace needing better cameras, better lenses, or even better skills!
And a special note to Adobe....... the blonde girl who kept shouting "wooooo" and clapping was completely unecessary in this video.
So place fake objects and nature into a photograph. That takes away skill. Soon we will see amateurs with their own portfolios in galleries, showing their fake photos.
"... blonde girl who kept shouting "wooooo" and clapping was completely unecessary in this video. "
Oh, no... I know what that was all about ThighReplace
"... Special tools to add customized female companions to your vacation vids. Pep up bits and bobs of your old flame or paste in a completely new one. Premiere plug-in coming 1st quarter 2017 ..."
So, I am pretty sure the clapping lady is a construct
My do I miss the days of slide photography where "what you see is what you shot" and the skills of the photographer were predominant... not the skills of the software developer. When I captured an accurately exposed image of a rainbow, you can be assured that there was really a rainbow there, and that I had the skills to expose it properly, and that my composition and crop were the result of years of work and art.
CameraCarl is talking about *slides*, that the keyword.
> Should we call him a cheater?
He said nothing about "cheating"; why do you draw such far-fetching conclusions? There's huge difference between "not being real" and "cheating".
These modern tools are good and can produce spectacular if not stunning results. I for one have nothing against them -- as long as everyone understands what is what.
That said, I can definitely relate to what CameraCarl says; truth is, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, somebody has to pay. Almost always when you get something you have to give something else away. In this case, it's knowing what exactly you're looking at. And that's something I'm not willing to give up easily.
May be I was too harsh, sorry about that. But what I meant, is that you could do with slides some transformations that would change technically the captured reality. And frankly the painters existed long before the photography was invented. So let's separate the fine arts (and you pay not for the reality but for the stunning results here) and documental/journalistic photography. As for the latter it's now the reputation of the media and the editors that should matter - to trust or not to trust. That's why many of them started to request raw files from the photogs.
To cut the long story short art is art, and reality is reality. We should taste them differently. That's my personal opinion.
It's only a matter of time before Facebook and Instagram include this. Not only will everyone appear beautiful all the time on with their PerfeclyClear(TM) huge eyes and perfect skin, but the weather will match, too!
Historians a thousand years from now will look at social media records and conclude we were the happiest generation of all time.
Historians tens of years from now, perhaps. And it remains to be seen whether the data will be "carried forward" for even that long, or whether much of it will be lost to the cloud and ultimately never seen again.
I know a lot of pros who are already doing it. However, I prefer seeing the scenes I take into picture with my own eyes. The memory that comes with my shots later is much more important to me. Plus, I generally have a story about how I got the shot.
This sort of thing happens with bad real-estate photography (or maybe "good" photography because it sells more pictures) where the interiors are all overexposed, and yet the windows will all be showing a fictional blue sky with clouds. This in preference to a view that has been clipped to "full white" or that shows the vague details of some pale external scene that would spoil the fantasy if preserved.
But the real-estate business has never been too concerned with the matter of communicating reality, of course.
There is a large difference between essentially documentary photography and digital art - but there is also a spectrum that connects them. And there are two separate skills sets - capture and post-process. The problem comes when there is no zebra on the White House lawn but there is a rainbow that, hey, might have been there. And all the lighting has been cleverly adjusted to be consistent with the new sky.
I have no problem with calling that a beautiful image (if it is). Just don't tell me you took that picture. Tell me you created it.
I've got a novel idea ... How about learning how to capture a REAL beautiful scene?!?! Not sour grapes ... just so tired of people calling THIS photography. THIS is deceipt and fakery packaged and marketed as Imaging.
Rex, I'm an astrophotographer and I take my own scenes. You can too mate. That way you have complete control over what YOU want. Not sure how good this new program will be with trees up close so the stars can be seen in between the leaves and branches. Cutting out trees is one thing but hair.. oh boy, it's a challenge, but then who doesn't like a challenge? LOL..
Brilliant. Choosing the right sky comes down to artistic talent of course and the best artists know how far to move the slider so business as usual then .... I am not a talented artist so I'll no doubt muck this up, but I will certainly have a go at it!
What's with all these cheating options? Where did the true merits and talent of the photographer go? However convenient, this is by and large detrimental to photography, because it will be misused, and thus diminish the overall credibility of photography as such. Yes, I know, you can postprocess in sw already, but the easier cheating becomes, the worse it will get. I find this development somewhat saddening, to be honest. Sorry for raining on the parade... :/
But so are any other auto features like automatic white balance, automatic exposure, or automatic focus. The entire concept of photo editing could be considered cheating too.
This is just one more nifty tool that you can use or not use. Another reason to pay Adobe $10 a month for the rest of your life. Personally, I am still using CS5, and converting raw files to DNG if they come from a newer camera that isn't supported by CS5.
The difference is: It's is one thing to dodge oR burn IN the sky, or changing the white balance, or sharpen the pixels, but a whole different thing TO REPLACE OR MOVE PIXELS.
I will get myself two models, a male and a female one and I will ask him to kiss her.
I will paste a silly sailor hat on the man and morph the girl into an awkward back-bent position, after having digitally-dressed her into a cute nurse uniform.
A stock shot of Times Square will make for the perfect backdrop.
The final touch will be this little digital gadget.
I will hunt for the most mesmerizing of glorious skies and I will, unrepentantly, past it into the little two bits of dull skies, above the converging streets.
I will have make myself the dandiest of photography classics.
Next will be the replace the model feature, the mow the grass feature, the autoremove bystanders feature and the renovate the old building feature, all in await for the render the whole picture feature. ;-)
This will be great for graphic artists working on advertising where a false sky won't be the biggest lie being told in the ad. :)
I work with the sky God gives me for better or worse and 99.9% of the time, I find a way to process that sky given the existing tools in PS. I am not negative about the feature because I'd rather have it and not need it than need it one of these days and not have it.
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