There’s been quite a bit of activity on Twitter over the new MyHeritage feature – the Deep Nostalgia AI animate function.
Again this is going to be a Marmite moment. You are either going to love it or absolutely it. Sorry Paul.
I prefer the colourise feature on the MyHeritage app, but prefer Remini for the enhancement tool. Both of which I’ve blogged about before.
This new Deep Nostalgia feature is a bit of fun and I can see how these things are considered a gimmick but tech has to start somewhere. And to think this sort of thing would have taken hours years ago. Now just automated in seconds with one click. Again different settings on different images will give varying results, some better than others.
Lots of mine resulted in zombie like lazy eye portraits but every now and again the result is…. okay.
My usual go to test images are by Julia Margaret Cameron.
A tintype of Castro from the 2013 ECW event.
An old passport photo, God knows how old I am in this one, 18 maybe? Edit: more like 25 now I think about it.
As already mentioned you are either going to love it or hate it. Which are you?
Edit: This app is creating quite a discussion on social media in regards to authenticity, ethics and misinformation. It’s worth reading the wiki page on Deepfake as a start to the debate.
Aaaaagh!
Barf.
A colourized Cameron and this abomination on top of it, bloody awful.
I feel physically ill.
I took great pleasure in posting it for you š hope you enjoyed it. It was that or watching a pretty boring rugby match.
Oh, the damn purists. I think it is wonderful. It brings Cameron to life and makes her even more real. Just great!
You know, is a stick in the mud.
Keep it up.
Hi John, I can see all points of view. I like it as from a tech point of view, as a tool and there was a tweet where a mother animated her sons image, as he had died young, and it brought her to tears. Imagery is strong in all its forms.
Hate it. Cameron couldnāt be more ārealā in the original B&Wā¦.likeness is what she went to great trouble to achieve using enormous glass plates (which she coated herself) to produce life sized portraits she title āFrom Lifeā. Perhaps this is a generational thing, but as a 70-year-old it is colour photography that still looks āunrealā to me. The colorising (and I use the American misspelling deliberately) is hideousā¦nobody at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight could have achieved such a tragic Trump tan! Please, please, leave Cameron aloneā¦she deserves our heartfelt respect, which is more than she got from her male photographer contemporaries. If you need ātest imagesā, maybe exercise better taste in your selection. Thanks for asking.
Hi James, I thought you might not like it but it has started some very interesting discussions online. Its not surprising that most of the “haters” are academics, researchers and heritage imaging professionals.Although I sit in those groups I dont hate it. I see it for what it is, a tool or the beginnings of. Jo Bloggs public though are lapping it up. Discussions online about authenticity, ethics and false news are all very relevant but the popularity of such technology will at least highlight it as being “fact” to the general population and their visual understanding where they may cform another opinion.
As for using Camerons images, they were a good place to start when first looking at the Enhancement tools, if you need an out of focus image Cameron always delivers, so perfect testing material. I doubt I’ll be leaving the revered Cameron alone. As for life sized portraits, nope they aren’t. 10×12 inch plates mostly. “From Life”, then I’m sure Cameron would have delighted in colour photography if it was available, life is colour not monochrome, well unless you live in the North f England then its pretty grey most of the time. And as for the Trump tan, if achievable I guess the Isle of Wight would be the best place for it, often the sunniest place in the UK.
As mentioned you either Love it or Hate it, each to their own, at the very least its creating discussion which tended to be solely for academic conferences and seminars, but are now becoming discourse with the general public. Thats a good thing surely?
Thank you for replying – yes, it’s important to get this information out there. This is a rather less emotional, more reasoned response to colorisation, VR and AR of the archive. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/mar/10/australia-in-colour-recolourised-film-ushers-into-existence-a-new-kind-of-fiction
Hi James, that is an excellent article, thanks for posting it here. Strange new times are here with a new set of challenges.