Monthly Archives: October 2024

Thunder & The Deep Blue Sea

Everybody needs a good wingman, and when it comes to celebrating the beauty of aviation, I’ve got a great one in my son Henry. Much as we’ve done the last couple of years, this month we first took in the air show in Salinas, featuring the USAF Thunderbirds…

…followed by the Blue Angels buzzing Alcatraz & the Golden Gate at Fleet Week in San Francisco.

In both cases we were treated to some jaw-dropping performances—from a hovering F-35 to choreographed walls of fire—from some of the best aviators in the world. Check ’em out:

And thanks for the nice shootin’, MiniMe!

Relighting via Midjourney

Check out this impressive use of the new “retexture” feature, which enables image-to-image transformations:

Here’s a bit more on how the new editing features work:

Ideogram Canvas arrives

I’ve become an Ideogram superfan, using it to create imagery daily, so I’m excited to kick the tires on this new interactive tool—especially around its ability to synthesize new text in the style of a visual reference.

You can upload your own images or generate new ones within Canvas, then seamlessly edit, extend, or combine them using industry-leading Magic Fill (inpainting) and Extend (outpainting) tools. Use Magic Fill and Extend to bring your face or brand visuals to Ideogram Canvas and blend them with creative, AI-generated elements. Perfect for graphic design, Ideogram Canvas offers advanced text rendering and precise prompt adherence, allowing you to bring your vision to life through a flexible, iterative process.

Project Perfect Blend promises game-changing compositing in Photoshop

Oh man, for years we wanted to build this feature into Photoshop—years! We tried many times (e.g. I wanted this + scribble selection to be the marquee features in Photoshop Touch back in 2011), but the tech just wasn’t ready. But now, maybe, the magic is real—or at least tantalizingly close!

Being a huge nerd, I wonder about how the tech works, and whether it’s substantially the same as what Magnific has been offering (including via a Photoshop panel) for the last several months. Here’s how I used that on my pooch:

But even if it’s all the same, who cares?

Being useful to people right where they live & work, with zero friction, is tremendous. Generative Fill is a perfect example: similar (if lower quality) inpainting was available from DALL•E for a year+ before we shipped GenFill in Photoshop, but the latter has quietly become an indispensible, game-changing piece of the imaging puzzle for millions of people. I’d love to see compositing improvements go the same way.

The ceiling can’t hold us stuffed animals

As I drove the Micronaxx to preschool back in 2013, Macklemore’s “Can’t Hold Us” hit the radio & the boys flipped out, making their stuffed buddies Leo & Ollie go nuts dancing to the tune. I remember musing with Dave Werner (a fellow dad to young kids) about being able to animate said buddies.

Fast forward a decade+, and now Dave is using Adobe’s recently unveiled Firefly Video model to do what we could only dimly imagine back then:

Time to unearth Leo & get him on stage at last. :->

Flair AI promises brand-consistent video creation

As soon as Google dropped DreamBooth back in 2022, people have been trying—generally without much success—to train generative models that can incorporate the fine details of specific products. Thus far it just hasn’t been possible to meet most brands’ demanding requirements for fidelity.

Now tiny startup Flair AI promises to do just that—and to pair the object definitions with custom styling and even video. Check it out:

In search of The Something Else

Late last night my wife & I found ourselves in the depths of the Sunday Evening Blues—staring out towards the expanse of yet another week of work & school, without much differentiation from most of those before & after it. I’m keenly aware of the following fact, of course:

And yet, oof… it’s okay to acknowledge the petty creeping of tomorrow & tomorrow & tomorrow. The ennui will pass—as everything always does—but it’s real.

This reminded me of the penguin heroine in what was one of our favorite books to read to the Micronaxx back when they were actually micro, A Penguin Story by Antoinette Portis. Ol’ Edna is always searching for The Something Else—and she finds it! I came across this charming little narration of the story, and just in case you too might need a little avian encouragement—well, enjoy:

Meta AI introduces conversational editing

I was super hyped last year when Meta announced “Emu Edit” tech for selectively editing images using just language:

Now you can try the tech via Meta.ai and in various apps:

In my limited experience so far, it’s cool but highly unpredictable. I’ll test it further, and I’d love to know how it works for you. Meanwhile you can try similar techniques via https://playground.com/: