Quote from: Uncle Pete on November 01, 2023, 11:34

"the sales rate is almost negligible" says it all. Plus, $300 a year for hosting?

Hi Uncle Pete!

the point is, through the agencies I sell pretty well; thus my "almost negligible" (compared to that) is enough to pay for the hosting and leaves me something for a cup of coffee too ;-)
Not to mention that my huuuge options come in very handy to develop and test my customers' websites before delivering them, and to host there a few E-mail accounts for friends and relatives.
Thus all in all, though paradoxically, it's still convenient - or at least no waste :-)

And in case anyone else or you think I'm being at all critical, I admire your effort and the work that went into the site, making it function as it should, and wish you continued success.

I think stills work too, like doing a panorama, but you need to cover the 360. The AI fills in bits you miss. As I only found out about this a few days ago, I'm no expert, but some of the things I saw on YouTube look amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbR-Wj3fG9E

Thanks, looks like fun. The reason I asked in advance, I did a 360, walking around a car, and had tried to paste it together. That was in 200# something. The software was supposed to stitch the image as inside a barrel. Didn't work.

If I can find that set, it could be fun.
Thanks!

I need of a slide scanner for old Diapositives and -negatives. Any recommendations for a decent scanner plus software?

this is the solution for photographer, I am doing Illustrations only, I don�t have a camera...

Get a camera?  And the slide copier attachment.  Seriously, if you are going to buy something to do this work, the camera is still the easiest. If you are looking for the lowest cost, a flatbed scanner will do just fine.

Are these all standard slide film size? When I read the variety and your question, I just wonder. If I see right what they are, it's illustrations for displaying with a projector, that at direct positives, not negatives. Just plain old, that's what slides are. However if yours are "illustrations" they could be drawings, charts or anything else. If they are illustrations, then a flat bed will be more than good enough as they aren't "photos" with fine grain and details.

Any scanner will make positives and you just invert the image colors and you have a negative. Or more along what you might have, if you scan a negative, you just invert and you have the positive. So virtually any software will do that. Least expensive answer is flatbed scanner.

By the way, the Epson can do multiple images at once using the included software, it does auto alignment and rotation if you want. But still, the answer depends on what you are doing and wonderful do these need to be.

How large do they need to be? How many do you need to convert? A moderate camera will do nice 12-20MP images one at a time. A flatbed can do 4 at a time.

Epson V series, look around. You can find one for around $179, maybe less. I still have a V200 and it works fine. They are currently selling V600 around $349

I use the Nikon ES-2 with a Z7II works very well but might work better with a D-850.

https://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-products/product/miscellaneous/es-2-film-digitizing-adapter-set.html

That sure looks like the top answer for simple, cost effective and high quality. 

https://petapixel.com/2023/10/29/ai-and-me-how-image-generation-is-changing-my-role-as-a-photographer/

One photographer's perspective on use of genAI images, including composites where the "set" is genAI and the studio is used to shoot the model who will be photoshopped into the set.

Interesting use, nice colors and designs.

There are also some Escher stools in the bar photo, three legs, and even with an allowance for "art" some of the one leg versions look physically unstable. I think the one the girl is sitting on might be impossible to balance like that, or at least, very uncomfortable.

2008 thread without the links or most of the people who posted to it?

I have quite a few more panoramic images, but they don't seem to sell as well.

Same for mine, but sometimes I make landscape cropped versions from the same. Not a large demand but they are interesting and a challenge to make.

Quote from: Evaristo tenscadisto on October 26, 2023, 04:51

Hope it helps you. 

Thank you very much Evaristo for taking time to explain, really interesting!

Ditto to that.

Quote from: SuperPhoto on October 24, 2023, 07:25

...
So it is SUPER easy to simply add "contributor-id" (which can be the name/URL/etc or an actual number that contains all that information). And then SUPER easy to associate WHICH contributors file(s) were used in creating a "composite" image (i.e., an "ai" generated image).

SUPER SUPER EASY. Just a matter of doing it, then fairly compensating contributors with the SAME RECURRING PERPETUAL INCOME REVENUE model that the agencies so desperately and greedily want for themselves, and trying to convince contributors that anything else is "fair" (which of course, it's not). Sharing the recurrnig revenue model, with opt-in/opt-out features so at ANY time the contributor can opt-out if they don't like the terms  - and assets going forward do NOT reference the input items - is fair.

i agree, starting from scratch, adding contributor id is the easy part, but given the number of possible contributors to each piece of an ai-gen image, the book-keeping becomes expensive - many thousands of entries for each image.

but the much larger problem you don't address is actually finding out who the author is and how to pay them as scraping only works if the image has the artist's verifiable info (and how to verify they're who they claim to be when opting out).  true, when agencies create datasets thery have info for payment, when they license these datasets who tracks payments? and will agencies actually sell data sets with the private info of their contributors?

your examples are great for explaining your proposal, but they don't scale up - the amount payable to any artist is 2-3 orders of magnitude less

Just a question, since I'm spinning with different views and claims.

Once the AI has used the image to train, it is not using the image again, when it generates a new image from a request. It's just using what it learned. I mean no direct access to the past or the training images.

Comparable thought. I write a reference book, and I'm paid for each sale. The buyer looks at the book and learns something. The author is not paid, every time the buyer opens the book again and reads something else, or the same facts over again.

I'm not against being paid more or making more for the use of my images, but I'm just trying to understand, if they are used a second time, after the training?

And if I was paid for reference, to my image, why would they have to pay every time the AI looks back at it?

Nightshade is interesting. Also reminder that AI can't be trained with AI or the process is poisoned or at the least, unreliable and diluted.

.0069 an image? I'd like to see how they arrived at that estimated number.

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on October 24, 2023, 06:06

No one called anyone a N**i though. It would be more accurate to coin a term for an "SJW" or "Woke" or "Neo-Marxist" Law. Far more likely someone's gonna get called that nowadays.

Anyway, I have nothing against Pete being an SJW or Neo-Marxist with politics of aggrievement for his racial group. Or that he is �woke� to the systemic policies of repression of the white man by the new world order. I make no judgement as to the validity of his aggrievement. I can't speak to the suffering he has suffered under the heel of whoever (though I can't remember anyone bringing up his race on this forum other than him? that could be a lapse in my memory?). But does it have to be forced down everyone�s throat? Can't we live our lives without these woke SJW people and their agendas?

I also don�t care if someone else believes in chem trails, that covid and climate change are a lie. Whatever, it�s just that there�s an off topic section especially for this stuff.

Ah, so you are just trolling? Okay, well - if you want to get back on topic, do so. You are the one who derailed it. Was it fun?

Get back on topic then.

Or... are you just demonstrating the usage of ChatGPT for producing a response, and showing how useless it can be/the gibberish it can produce ? If so, well xribtoks - there's a demonstration for you!

(Haha, just kidding photographer guy - if it actually was a legit response - who knows - you could have used chatgpt for that response - but, if you were just trolling lol, okay - get back on topic then).

Yes, I guess sometimes a bit of humor or sarcasm doesn't come through on a forum. My post was in support of your experience with Chat GPT have a leaning towards revisionist history, meaning, everything now is universal and multicultural and the old days were all controlled by horrible, nasty, mean, invading, racists. My favorite part was "Cultural Appropriation: The appropriation of cultural elements from minority groups by those in power can lead to the erasure of cultural identity and perpetuate harmful stereotypes."

And no I didn't really bring up my heritage? I'm an American. I was born here and so were my parents, But if anyone wants to actually understand, My Grandfather came over on a boat from Italy to escape persecution and poverty, to a better place. He wasn't a mobster, or associated with the Black Hand. And back then, Italians were persecuted in the US, got the low pay and crappy jobs.

"Anti-Italianism arose among some Americans as an effect of the large-scale immigration of Italians to the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The majority of Italian immigrants to the United States arrived in waves in the early twentieth century, many of them from agrarian backgrounds. Nearly all the Italian immigrants were Roman Catholic, as opposed to the nation's Protestant majority. Because the immigrants often lacked formal education and competed with earlier immigrants for lower-paying jobs and housing, significant hostility developed toward them."

Yeah, get over it. They adapted to the American life and culture and assimilated into society. Oh yeah, they all lived in an Italian neighborhood in Chicago and still spoke Italian at home.  I have cousins that still do. It's a choice.

The other Grandfather escaped from Transylvania, under similar circumstances. Religious oppression, poverty and social stigma, as the Transylvanian Saxons were the lowest of the low.

So next time you make a joke about some gangster in the Mafia, or Italians that are all mobbed up or Dracula being a vampire from Transylvania, I want you to be politically correct and stop. No harmful stereotypes.  You wouldn't want to culturally generalize, stigmatize or appropriate either of those. If you continue my Cousin Mario will come with a baseball bat, and give you a lecture on how to be polite around WOPs and guinea hens.  Or the other kind of bat, will bite you on the neck, and you'll be forever sleeping in a coffin and only able to come out at night. (I never did work out how that garlic thing could be overcome, as just about everything I cook has garlic, oregano and basil in it. But that's supposed to keep away vampires?  )

Quote from: Uncle Pete on October 23, 2023, 12:44

Back on topic, it would be nice if AI could look at an image and say, here are keywords, for us. On the other hand, isn't that what keyword suggestions already do on Adobe, SS and DT, for example?

Midjourney has a nice option, to /describe an image for reprompting. You have to upload an image and you can obtain 4 different descriptions, descriptions that often contain useful specific terms and look good for chatGPT when you ask for keywording.
Unfortunately, the time to:
1- produce a good image
2- upload to midjourney and ask for descriptions
3- check descriptions and use them to obtain good keyword list from chatGPT
4- check the keywording ChatGPT job to find out how accurate is it, what to delete, and the right keywords order in alphabetical order

... is by far longer than simply do the usual semi manual keywording

Is the free Midjourney able to do this?

And just to be clear. Like others, I have standard sets of keywords, I attach them to images from groups, the easiest is my Racing keywords, which get dropped in. But I wouldn't be against at least looking to see what AI has to say. Maybe I could get some more. And last I checked, I removed some that were kind of distant and I had never seen anyone, anywhere, except us stock folks, use as a search or keyword. Why load up images with fluff that serves no purpose?

Does anyone here call an auto race a "motorshow" I'm cutting that one.

Maybe I could try to work around the obvious and use Chat Gpt and ask, "Please name some words that would be associated with motorsports and motor racing"

Glad you brought this up. Something for a snow day.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on October 16, 2023, 11:28

...

A computer can do some things, that humans have taught or programmed, but it can't reason or know function, or why. That's why 3 arms, 7 toes, or mechanical things, just get mashed into flawed and often impossible combinations.

a bit too optimistic - we already have ai translators which do not understand the languages they render - world class chess & go & Jeopardy apps that don't even know the rules of their games and many more. for now these work for specific problems but that will expand to include tasks now considered to require human consciousness. remember that once humans were defied by being the only species who used language

earle (1999) summarized his Chinese Room Argument  concisely:

Imagine a native English speaker who knows no Chinese locked in a room full of boxes of Chinese symbols (a data base) together with a book of instructions for manipulating the symbols (the program). Imagine that people outside the room send in other Chinese symbols which, unknown to the person in the room, are questions in Chinese (the input). And imagine that by following the instructions in the program the man in the room is able to pass out Chinese symbols which are correct answers to the questions (the output). The program enables the person in the room to pass the Turing Test for understanding Chinese but he does not understand a word of Chinese.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

Ah yes but I confess to being an optimist. One of my flaws, unless living in gloom and being a pessimist is just as ineffective?

I made a matchbox player, (AI or computer?) that could compete and not lose, at the game, in about 1960. Much like your example, the boxes didn't know the rules or the game and they didn't reason or think, they were just sliding drawers, where the decisions were learned and played.

Maybe I didn't state what I meant properly, or I'm still off somewhere else?  AI doesn't reason, it doesn't know function, and that's why there are the flagrant errors that we see as obvious. I'm not claiming that AI can't be trained or can't learn, just that there are some distinct issues without being able to reason how gravity works, or spokes on a wheel, or that people only have two arms, and most only five fingers or five toes.

This one I saved because it was nearly enough to give someone a nightmare and at the same time, rather humorous. AI just really gone bad.

Just how does that seat work? Wouldn't it be a little uncomfortable? And what about the seat post? Oh My!