All posts by jnack

Luma UNI-1 promises layered creation

AI/ML

When can we get this (or equivalent) into Photoshop??

On a conceptually (though not necessarily technically) related note, the LICA dataset may help model makers train layered generation:

Photoshop drops Rotate Object!

3D, AI/ML

Speaking of spinning right ’round, check this out:

Check out another view, from Paul Trani:

Runway promises 100ms (!!) HD video generation

AI/ML

Five years ago, I spent an afternoon with a buddy watching Disco Diffusion resolve a weird, blurry, but ultimately delightful scene over the course of 15 minutes. Now Runway & NVIDIA are previewing generation that’s a mere ~90,000x faster than that. Ludicrous speed, go!!

Pass the Craic pipe: It’s St. Paddy’s!

Photography

Now throw your shoulders back and go effin’ nuts. 😀

And for some more blog-appropriate content: Here are some fun pics & vids my son Henry & I captured on Saturday during SF’s wonderfully diverse & quirky St. Patrick’s Day parade:

Bonus: here’s a gallery of Irish wolfhounds, if you’re into that kind of thing. I couldn’t quite get these good boys to align like Cerberus, so I resorted to telling Gemini my hopes & dreams—as one does.

Tips: Getting great text from Nano Banana

AI/ML, Nano Banana, Typography

Structuring your prompt well turns out to be key in avoiding garbled text. As the presenter says, “It’s not about writing more. It’s about writing in the right order.” Check out this brief overview.

In this tutorial, you’ll see how to use Nano Banana Pro and Kling 3.0 Omni together to solve one of the most common pain points in AI product video: text that blurs, warps, or drifts mid-motion. We’ll walk through a practical workflow for maintaining legibility and visual consistency in product shots, so your labels, logos, and copy stay clean from the first frame to the last.

Antigravity 360 drone spins me right ’round

Photography

Hey, remember the pandemic? We sure made some impulse buys then, didn’t we?

For me it was Insta360’s bizarre, modular 360Âș camera plus the elaborate mounting kit that promised to strap its shards onto the top & bottom of my DJI Mavic, enabling some magical, drone-less captures. Suffice it to say the thing was a complete POS—dysfunctional even as a handheld action cam, much less as a bunch of theoretically interconnected pieces thousands of feet in the air.

And yet… who doesn’t love the promise of capturing immersive footage that enables crazy post-processing camera moves? Insta’s on it, releasing their first 360Âș drone, the Antigravity A1:

Some cool details:

With Antigravity’s proprietary FreeMotion technology, the drone — together with the Vision goggles and Grip controller — enables an immersive flying experience that feels both natural and intuitive. Pilots can fly in one direction while looking in another. This level of immersion enables more freedom to explore. The 360 immersion doesn’t end just because the drone lands — recorded footage can be viewed in 360 over and over again, letting users discover new angles every time they watch.

Using AI to save pets

AI/ML, Illustration

Long dog walks are for nothing if not visualizing whatever silliness pops into my head—which today happened to be our puppy Ziggy becoming an impossible object called a “Ziggule.”

I shared this with my cousin Alicia, who does a tremendous amount of work sheltering & rescuing dogs in Austin, and she requested a portrait of their current foster pooch (Tesseract). I was of course all too happy to oblige:

As it happens, folks at Google have had the same idea, and they’ve been putting Nano Banana to work helping zhuzh up pics of shelter pets in hopes of helping them find their forever homes. Let’s hear it for using AI & old-fashioned human creativity for good!

Adobe Research shows promising “Vidmento” tech

AI/ML

As you’ve likely heard me say, I’ve gotten psyched up too many times about AI video-editing tech that fell short of its ambitions—but I’m hoping that this work from Adobe & Harvard collaborators can deliver what it describes:

We present Vidmento, an interactive video authoring tool that expands initial materials and ideas into compelling video stories through blending captured and generative media. To preserve narrative continuity and creative intent, Vidmento generates contextual clips that align with the user’s existing footage and story.

Per the site, Vidmento should enable:

  1. Story Discovery: Surface the stories within captured clips.
  2. Narrative Development: Suggest what’s needed to move the story forward.
  3. Contextual Blending: Generating visuals that align with real footage.
  4. Creative Control: Give creators controls to fine-tune the visuals and story.

Computer animation in 1971 (!)

Illustration

The older I get, the harder it is to get the Kids These Daysℱ to grok just what a road-to-Damascus moment the arrival of the Mac presented. I flap my arms like some conspiracy nut at his cork board, trying in vain to convey the idea that in the pre-Mac days, personal computer “art” consisted of pecking out some green ASCII blocks on an Apple ][. Okay, grandpa, let’s get you to bed…

Anyway, predating even me (heh) is this glimpse of how computer animation was painstakingly eeked out via data tape (!) back in 1971.

 
 
 
 
 
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A post shared by HUMANOID HISTORY (@humanoidhistory)

[Via Uri Ar]

From carbohydrates to polygons

AI/ML, AR/VR

Among the misbegotten “Oh, everyone will love this—but rarely will anyone actually use it” AR demos of 2017 (right alongside “See whether this toaster fits on my counter!”), imagining restaurants plopping a 3D model onto your plate was always a banger. Leaving aside whether anyone would actually want or value that experience, the cost of realistically modeling dishes was prohibitive.

This new tech at least promises to take the grunt work out of model creation, turning a single photo into an AR-ready 3D asset (give or take a tine or two ;-)):

Mograph: Canva Calls In The Cavalry

After Effects, Design

“Wow, that’s some really sharp After Effects work,” I thought last year, when my wife showed me some animation her Airbnb colleague had created. But nope—the work came straight out of Canva.

Not content to chill with their surprisingly capable foundation, Canva is continuing to build out the “Creative Operating System” and has announced the acquisition of up-and-coming 2D animation tool Cavalry:

In their blog post they seem pretty adamant that the acquisition won’t result in dumbing down the core app:

Built for professional motion designers

Cavalry earned its place in the motion design world by doing something different. Its procedural, systems-based approach prioritises flexibility, repeatability, and performance. It wasn’t built as a simplified alternative; it was built specifically for professional motion designers and the complex workflows they rely on. That professional focus remains central.

We’ve invested in Cavalry because of its depth as a professional-grade motion tool. The goal isn’t to simplify what makes it powerful, but to support and strengthen it. Professional motion design demands precision, flexibility, and tools that can scale across complex projects.

Much as with their acquisition of Affinity, however, I’d fully expect Canva to integrate underlying tech into the core design platform, radically simplifying the interface to it—including by providing agentic and chat-based touchpoints.

As with the myriad node-based systems that sprung up last year, I wouldn’t expect most people to ever see or touch the underlying data structures. Rather, what’s essential is that the main tool can understand & modify them, so that it can deliver brilliant results at scale. That necessitates a very approachable, and totally complementary, UX.

I’m excited to see what’s next!

Speak it -> See it, with Krea’s new voice mode

AI/ML, Illustration, User Interface

I try not to curse on this blog, doing so maybe a dozen times in 20+ (!!) years of posting. But circa 2013-2017, when I saw what felt like uncritical praise for Adobe’s voice-driven editing prototypes, I called bullshit.

The high-level concept was fine, but the tech at the time struck me as the worst of both worlds: the imprecision of language (e.g. how does a normal person know the term “saturation,” and how does an expert describe exactly how much they want?) combined with the fragility of traditional selection & adjustment algorithms.

Now, however, generative tech can indeed interpret our language & effect changes—and in the case of Krea’s new realtime mode, in a highly responsive way:

Whether or not voice per se becomes a popular modality here, closing the gap between idea & visual is just so seductive. To emphasize a previously made point:

Remembering Aldus

Design

I got into the Mac scene just a touch too late to have interacted with Aldus (acquired by Adobe in 1994), and I’m sorry not to have known the late Paul Brainerd, who passed away a couple of weeks ago. To mark the occasion, some friends have been resharing this video, created when the company became part of the Big Red A. It’s fun to see a few familiar faces & to remember the tech vibe of those early days:

Weird wings: A five-engined 747

Design

Engine Engine, Number Five…

I had no idea that the ol’ girl had it in (er, on) her—but this is too odd & thus interesting not to pass along:

Meanwhile, speaking of odd: Having just visited the Mojave aircraft boneyard (see pics) and Spaceport, from which the weird creations of Burt Rutan & co. operate, I couldn’t resist trying this silliness:

Photoshop is totally cooked… except not

AI/ML, Photography

I couldn’t have contrived a better example of the power & pitfalls of generative imaging if I tried.

Here’s a pretty crummy cell phone picture I took yesterday from a moving train & then enhanced with a single prompt using Gemini. The results are incredible—if you don’t really care about the exact capacity of your jumbo jet! 🙂

The current state of AI-driven editing drives home the wisdom of that old Russian staying, “Trust… but verify.”

See also my previously shared example, in which Nano Banana quietly upgraded this propeller-driven plane into a jet:

AI + SVG: Vector all the things!

AI/ML, Illustration

When it rains, it pours: No sooner did I post about text->vector than I saw two new entrants in that space. The new Quiver AI is claimed to have “solved vector design with AI”:

Here’s my first quick test, in which Quiver & Illustrator utterly smoke direct chat->vector output in Gemini & ChatGPT:

Meanwhile, check out what Recraft produced:

Elsewhere, Hero Studio promises great image->SVG conversion. I’ve applied for access & am eager to take it for a spin:

Can AI finally generate useful vectors?

AI/ML, Illustration, Nano Banana

When we launched Firefly three years ago (!), we talked up prompt-based vector creation. When the feature later arrived in Illustrator, it was really text-to-image-to-tracing. That could be fine, actually, provided that the conversion process did some smart things around segmenting the image, moving objects onto their own layers, filling holes, and then harmoniously vectorizing the results. I’m not sure whether Adobe actually got around to shipping that support.

In any case, Recraft now promises create vector creation directly from prompts:

Meanwhile Gemini promises SVG creation right out of the box. My previous attempts to use it produced results that were, um, impressionistic…

…and based on what they’re showing vis-Ă -vis recent updates, I haven’t been in a hurry to try again:

Photo tips: “The formats of our memories”

Photography

My longtime Adobe friend Adam Pratt founded the media digitization & preservation company Chaos to Memories a few years ago, and now he and his team have really comprehensive overview of the various formats one may encounter:

Every photo project should start with gathering all these materials because it helps us grasp the scope of your project and work efficiently. To help you identify the different types in your collection, many common photo, video, audio, and digital formats are explained in the list below.

Creative technologist needed on the Flux team

AI/ML

I’ve really enjoyed collaborating with Black Forest Labs, the brain-geniuses behind Flux (and before that, Stable Diffusion). They’re looking for a creative technologist to join their team. Here’s a bit of the job listing in case the ideal candidate might be you or someone you know:

BFL’s models need someone who knows them inside out – not just what they can do today, but what nobody’s tried yet. This role sits at the intersection of creative excellence, deep model knowledge, and go-to-market impact. You’ll create the work that makes people realize what’s possible with generative media – original pieces, experiments, and creative assets that set the standard for what FLUX can do and show it to the world

— Create original creative work that pushes FLUX to its limits – experiments, visual explorations, and pieces that show what’s possible before anyone else figures it out

— Collaborate with the research and product teams from the start of training/product development to understand the core strengths of each new model/product and create assets that amplify and showcase these. You will also provide feedback to those teams throughout the development process on what needs to improve.

UI: Realtime generation & the undiscovered country

AI/ML, User Interface

Former Apple designer Tuhin Kumar, who recently logged three years at Luma AI, makes a great point here:

To the extent I give Adobe gentle but unending grief about their near-total absence from the world of UI innovation, this is the kind of thing I have in mind. What if any layer in Photoshop—or any shape in Illustrator—could have realtime-rendering generative parameters attached?

Like, where are they? Don’t they want to lead? (It’s a genuine question: maybe the strategy is just to let everyone else try things, and then to finally follow along at scale.) And who knows, maybe certain folks are presently beavering away on secret awesome things. Maybe… I will continue hoping so!

Shooting up a storm

Photography

Supporting my MiniMe Henry’s burgeoning interest in photography remains a great joy. Having recently captured the Super Bowl flyover with him (see previous), I prayed that Monday’s torrential downpour in LA just might give us some spectacular skies—and, what do you know, it did! Check out our gallery (selects below), featuring one seriously exuberant kid!

I’ve also been enjoying Hen’s great eye for reflections, put to good use during our recent visit to the USS Hornet:

Nano Banana goes to the Super Bowl

AI/ML, Nano Banana

It’s hard to believe that when I dropped by Google in 2022, arguing vociferously that we work together to put Imagen into Photoshop, they yawned & said, “Can you show up with nine figures?”—and now they’re spending eight figures on a 60-second ad to promote the evolved version of that tech. Funny ol’ world…

Bad To The B-ONE

Photography

MiniMe on the lens + Dad in Lightroom/Photoshop, making the dream work. 🙂

 

Check out our gallery for full-res shots plus a few behind-the-scenes pics. BTW: Can you tell which clouds were really there and which ones came via Photoshop’s Sky Replacement feature? If not, then the feature and I have done our jobs!

And peep this incredibly smooth camerawork that paired the flyover with the home of the brave:

 
 
 
 
 
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A post shared by ESPN (@espn)

BTS: Choreographing today’s giant Super Bowl flyover

Photography

Through insanely good timing, I caught Friday’s practice flyover as the jets headed up to Levi’s Stadium:

Right now my MiniMe & I are getting set to head up to the Bayshore Trail with proper cameras, as we hope to catch the real event at 3:30 local time.

Meanwhile, I’ve been enjoying this deep dive video (courtesy of our Photoshop teammate Sagar Pathak, who’s gotten just insane access in past years). It features interviews with multiple pilots, producers, and more as they explain the challenges of safely putting eight cross-service aircraft into a tight formation over hundreds of thousands of people—and in front of a hundred+ million viewers. I think you’ll dig it.

Interactive relighting control for Qwen image creation

AI/ML, Relighting, User Interface

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned a cool, simple UI for changing camera angles using the Qwen imaging model. Along related lines, here’s an interface for relighting images:

Martini promises real creative control for filmmakers

Miscellaneous

This new tool (currently in closed beta, to which one can request access via the site)

Martini puts you in the director’s chair so you can make the video you see in your head
 Get the exact shot you want, not whatever the model gives you. Step into virtual worlds and compose shots with camera position, lenses, and movement… No more juggling disconnected tools. Image generation, video generation, and world models—all in one place, with a built-in timeline.

I can’t wait to try stepping into the set. Beyond filmmaking, think what something like this could mean to image creation & editing…

Adobe vets launch AniStudio

AI/ML, Illustration

My former colleagues Jue Wang & Chen Fang are making an impressive indie debut:

AniStudio exists because we believe animation deserves a future that’s faster, more accessible, and truly built for the AI era—not as an add-on, but from the ground up. This isn’t a finished story. It’s the first step of a new one, and we want to build it together with the people who care about animation the most.

Check it out:

GenLit enables animated relighting

AI/ML, Relighting

I’m excited to learn more about GenLit, about which its creators say,

Given a single image and the 5D lighting signal, GenLit creates a video of a moving light source that is inside the scene. It moves around and behind scene objects, producing effects such as shading, cast shadows, secularities, and interreflections with a realism that is hard to obtain with traditional inverse rendering methods.

Vividon promises breakthrough relighting

AI/ML, Relighting

I stumbled across some compelling teaser videos for this product, about which only a bit of info seems to be public:

A Photoshop plugin that brings truly photorealistic, prompt-free relighting into existing workflows. Instead of describing what you want in text, control lighting through visual adjustments. Change direction, intensity, and mood with precision… Modify lighting while preserving the structure and integrity of the original image. No more destructive edits or starting over.

Identity preservation—that is, exactly maintaining the shape & character of faces, products, and other objects—has been the lingering downfall of generative approaches to date, so I’m eager to take this for a spin & see how it compares to other approaches.

AirDraw: Slick 3D drawing for Vision Pro

3D, Illustration

Check out this fun, physics-enabled prototype from Justin Ryan:

Here’s an extended version of the demo:

The moment I switched on gravity was the moment everything changed.

Lines I had just drawn started to fall, swing, and collide like they were suddenly alive inside my room. A simple sketch became an object with weight. A doodle turned into something that could react back. It is one of those Vision Pro moments where you catch yourself smiling because it feels playful in a way you do not see coming.

Of course, Old Man Nackℱ feels like being a little cautious here: Ten years ago (!) my kids were playing in Adobe’s long-deceased Project Dali…

…and five years ago Google bailed on the excellent Tilt Brush 3D painting app it acquired. ÂŻ\_(ツ)_/ÂŻ

And yet, and yet, and yet… I Want To Believe. As I wrote back in 2015,

I always dreamed of giving Photoshop this kind of expressive painting power; hence my long & ultimately fruitless endeavor to incorporate Flash or HTML/WebGL as a layer type. Ah well. It all reminds me of this great old-ish commercial:

So, in the world of AI, and with spatial computing staying a dead parrot (just resting & pining for the fjords!), who knows what dreams may yet come?

Krea is back with realtime creation—again

AI/ML

Those crazy presumable insomniacs are back at it, sharing a preview of the realtime generative composition tools they’re currently testing:

This stuff of course looks amazing—but not wholly new. Krea debuted realtime generation more than two years ago, leading to cool integrations with various apps, including Photoshop:

The interactive paradigm is brilliant, but comparatively low quality has always kept this approach from wide adoption. Compare these high-FPS renders to ChatGPT’s Studio Ghibli moment: the latter could require multiple minutes to produce a single image, but almost no one mentioned its slowness. “Fast is good, but good is better.”

I hope that Krea (and others) are quietly beavering away on a hybrid approach that combines this sort of addictive interactivity with a slower but higher-quality render (think realtime output fed into Nano Banana or similar for a final pass). I’d love to compare the results against unguided renders from the slower models. Perhaps we shall see!

Gettin’ deep with ML Sharp

3D, AI/ML

Apple’s new 2D-to-3D tech looks like another great step in creating editable representations of the world that capture not just what a camera sensor saw, but what we humans would experience in real life:

Check out what my old teammate Luke was able to generate:

Adobe’s “Light Touch” promises powerful, intuitive relighting

AI/ML, Relighting

Almost exactly 19 years ago (!), I blogged about some eye-popping tech that promised interactive control over portrait lighting:

I was of course incredibly eager to get it into Photoshop—but alas, it’d take years to iron out the details. Numerous projects have reached the market (see the whole big category here I’ve devoted to them), and now with “Light Touch,” Adobe is promising even more impressive & intuitive control:

This generative AI tool lets you reshape light sources after capture — turning day to night, adding drama, or adjusting focus and emotion without reshoots. It’s like having total control over the sun and studio lights, all in post.

Check it out:

If nothing else, make sure you see the pumpkin part, which rightfully causes the audience to go nuts. 🙂

“Keep the Robots Out of the Gym”

AI/ML

I keep finding myself thinking of this short essay from Daniel Miessler:

Think very carefully about where you get help from AI.

I think of it as Job vs. Gym.

  • If we’re working a manual labor job, it’s fine to have AI lift heavy things for us because the actual goal is to move the thing, not to lift it.
  • This is the exact opposite of going to the gym, where the goal is to lift the weight, not to move it.

He argues for identifying gym tasks (e.g. critical thinking, problem solving), and for those use just your brain (with minimal AI assistance, if any).

My primary metric for this is whether or not I am getting sharper at the skills that are closest to my identity.

The whole essay (2-min read) is worth checking out.