Google Photos Gets New AI-Powered Image Editing Tools

[cjsuk]

I do agree that Google doesn’t do a perfect job either but from the beginning when google started with Magic eraser, they were doing a better job than Apple does now. I don’t understand why Apple released this feature before they were ready with it.

The problem with this, and a lot of current AI technology, is that people's ignorance is high while their standards are low. The tech companies are getting away with shipping crap. You're objectively saying you're happy with Google's crap but not Apple's crap. That means Google won and another step backwards for us.

They are both crap and they should both bugger off 🙂

(LLMs belong in that as well)

 

[iPhoneFan5349]

One area that you would say android is better than iOS, being able to update the app without waiting for a system update.

Dude, Android is better in every aspect except for privacy.

 

[Fuzzball84]

This era of fakeness is just a symptom of the times

How refreshing it is when someone shows me a photo that is real and unaltered except for the relatively minimal processing by iPhones (or others) built in processing algorithms

There are some people I know who seem to filter every damn photo they have taken. And now increasingly they modify, adding and removing objects that were never there, including people. It’s weird and my opinion of them plummets. They are fake ass people in their fake world that revolves around themselves.

The sickness of social media. It’s expectations, and consequences.

 

[contacos]

I agree entirely with this. It's mostly playing into the usually dishonest portrayal of your life that appears on social media. The desperate effort to present things how you want them to be perceived rather than how they are. It's fakery.

Recently I was unfortunate enough to have decided to go for a day hike somewhere which featured on TikTok without realising it. This ended in wading through piles of people taking the same photo over and over again, replicating what was shown on TikTok. Whilst sitting on a wall, a friend and me looked at what people were posting on Instagram. Well lots of heavily edited stuff which had people removed all the other people from it. Urgh.

I figured I'd preserve some reality. At least these folk didn't give up on the first hill (oh hikes are harder than they look on tiktok when you eat KFC, watch netflix and vape all day - who'd have thought it?).

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In some places I've been such as Sorrento and Santorini, there are literally queues to take the same photo/selfie which will no doubt have anything remotely human edited out to make it look sanitised.

Even worse, all this does is make everything look uniform. This is then used to train more models which generate more crap and eventually all signal and art degrades into a fuzzy mush of beige, soulless crap.

What people 🙃

 

[Fuzzball84]

Erasing things and people who were really there, changing the sky to a perfect clear blue, adding a field of flowers or a pile of autumn leaves that weren't there... and of course make it look like people are 5 years younger and 10 lbs lighter, etc., etc., etc. What value does a photo have it's not real?

I would love social media platforms to develop filters that give people the ability to not see faked AI images if they want.

Maybe they should Use AI to tag AI altered photos and put a banner across the top that the photo may not depict reality 😂

It’s actually sometimes shocking to compare the social media photos of someone and how they look in reality. It’s actually embarrassing as you’re wondering if you’re talking with the same person or not.

 

[Fuzzball84]

I must admit some of the same techniques have been used in the modeling industry, admittedly without the help of AI but professisonal image editors.

What makeup and image editing can do for a model and especially a super model is mind blowing.

Ever seen a super model in real life? They are not as perfect as the media would have you believe.

But there are naturally stunning people who are/ and are not models. And beauty is not always objective, it’s in many cases subjective.

 

[cjsuk]

What people 🙃

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Haha 🤣

Glaringly obvious though. The amorphous black blobs on the break, the strange uniformity of the grass on the left both on the ground and sticking up.

 

[cjsuk]

I must admit some of the same techniques have been used in the modeling industry, admittedly without the help of AI but professisonal image editors.

What makeup and image editing can do for a model and especially a super model is mind blowing.

Ever seen a super model in real life? They are not as perfect as the media would have you believe.

But there are naturally stunning people who are/ and are not models. And beauty is not always objective, it’s in many cases subjective.

That is not about changing the subject as such or hallucinating stuff that isn't there. It's mostly about cleaning up both imperfections in the person and artifacts from the shot. It's not really photography if you immediately paint a different picture from the subject.

I mean there certainly are uses for AI stuff but it's a little more low brow. For example here in Lightroom I get a good equivalent ISO improvement on my DX format Nikon with denoise rather than having to pay for a full frame and really expensive lens.

 

[ThinkDifferentTim]

The Photos Mac app is cumbersome to deal with. It cannot do a lot of things you’d think it should be easy to do, especially if you need to change multiple photos at once, editing, metadata, finding duplicates, etc. This is where Apple Intelligence would have been useful, not Image Playground

You cannot even sort by size to delete big files. Basic needs. But I guess it’s intentional to let the cloud fill up more and sell higher tier plans.

 

[Fuzzball84]

That is not about changing the subject as such or hallucinating stuff that isn't there. It's mostly about cleaning up both imperfections in the person and artifacts from the shot. It's not really photography if you immediately paint a different picture from the subject.

I mean there certainly are uses for AI stuff but it's a little more low brow. For example here in Lightroom I get a good equivalent ISO improvement on my DX format Nikon with denoise rather than having to pay for a full frame and really expensive lens.

View attachment 2514660

I agree but in some cases imperfections and artifacts are left in and other aspects are enhanced.

This has led to a whole range of social issues, especially with younger people who aspire to certain expectations that even the models themselves can’t attain in reality.

There are uses for AI but as ever it’s about moderating usage and overcoming challenges that make society a better place, that’s where it needs to be.

Most social media users are not using AI for such low brow aspects. They are outright modifying the subjects and reality of the picture to an extent that it no longer is representative of that moment.

 

[Piggie]

What people 🙃

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Where are the Dinosaurs?

 

[cjsuk]

I agree but in some cases imperfections and artifacts are left in and other aspects are enhanced.

This has led to a whole range of social issues, especially with younger people who aspire to certain expectations that even the models themselves can’t attain in reality.

There are uses for AI but as ever it’s about moderating usage and overcoming challenges that make society a better place, that’s where it needs to be.

Yeah agree on all counts there.

 

[mattopotamus]

Totally agree. What's the point of sharing a fake world with each other, and passing it off as real?

I have news for you about social media 😛

 

[Kottu]

The problem with this, and a lot of current AI technology, is that people's ignorance is high while their standards are low. The tech companies are getting away with shipping crap. You're objectively saying you're happy with Google's crap but not Apple's crap. That means Google won and another step backwards for us.

They are both crap and they should both bugger off 🙂

(LLMs belong in that as well)

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but a little trash is still better than a mountain of it. When it comes to photo editing, powerful tools like Photoshop or Pixelmator are far superior to Google Photos' limited features. While Google Photos doesn’t always deliver consistent results, it’s still a step ahead of Apple’s solution.

 

[UliBaer]

What people 🙃

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You should have left the girl in the middle (with the really sexy legs! 😉) as an eye catcher!

 

[cjsuk]

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but a little trash is still better than a mountain of it. When it comes to photo editing, powerful tools like Photoshop or Pixelmator are far superior to Google Photos' limited features. While Google Photos doesn’t always deliver consistent results, it’s still a step ahead of Apple’s solution.

Give it a few months. They bought Pixelmator.

None of them are anywhere near Adobe's stuff though.

 

[applesith]

More tools to live in a fake world. It's going to get to the point where people don't even leave their home/immediate area or interact with others and canjust fake it for the photos.

 

[CocktailHour]

Google is updating the Google Photos app with a redesigned AI-powered editor that's designed to simplify photo editing. The updated editing tool provides AI suggestions to combine multiple effects for quick but eye-catching edits, plus it has a feature for tapping into specific parts of an image to get specific editing tips.

The updated interface will feature AI tools like Reimagine and Auto frame alongside standard controls like brightness and contrast. The updated editor in Google Photos is rolling out to Android users first, but Google plans to bring it to iOS users later this year.

Google is also making it easier to share albums from Google Photos with others, by allowing users to generate a QR code for an album. The QR code can be shared with people nearby, printed for group events, or sent digitally. Anyone with the QR code can view or add photos to an album.

The new features are coming in celebration of the 10th anniversary of Google Photos. Since it launched in 2015, Google Photos has become one of the most popular photo storage options. Google says that more than 1.5 billion people use Google Photos each month, with more than nine trillion photos and videos stored.

Article Link: Google Photos Gets New AI-Powered Image Editing Tools

If you want to live in a fake world, this is great!

 

[jonmannon]

Google Photos used to have a feature called "Creations" or something like that, where you'd get notifications with fun photo suggestions; like turning a shot black and white or doing a color pop effect. I loved that. It made the app feel more interactive and creative, not just a giant repository of every photo I’ve ever taken. I usually take tons of pictures on vacation, and while I do go back and delete the not-so-great ones, those "Creations" were a fun, engaging way to reimagine my photos without actually changing the memory itself.

I really wish Apple would do something similar in the Photos app. I love looking through my pictures, but to be honest, the app feels kind of boring. I'm not particularly interested in the automatically generated memory videos; they’re fine, but I rarely watch them. Something more interactive and visual, like what Google used to offer, would make a big difference.