Thunder & The Deep Blue Sea

Photography

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

AI/ML, Relighting

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

AI/ML, Ideogram

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

AI/ML, Relighting

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

Adobe Firefly, AI/ML

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

AI/ML

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

Idle Philosophizing

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

AI/ML

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/:

RIP Dikembe Mutombo

Miscellaneous

[I know this note seems supremely off topic, but bear with me.]

I’m sorry to hear of the passing of larger-than-life NBA star Dikembe Mutombo. He inspired the name of a “Project Mutombo” at Google, which was meant to block unintended sharing of content outside of one’s company. Unrelated (AFAIK he never knew of the project), back in 2015 I happened to see him biking around campus—dwarfing a hapless Google Bike & making its back tire cartoonishly flat.

RIP, big guy. Thanks for the memories, GIFs, and inspiration.

Zuck talks AR wearables & much more

AR/VR

I quite enjoyed the Verge’s interview with Mark Zuckerberg, discussing how they think about building a whole range of reality-augmenting devices, from no-display Wayfarers to big-ass goggles, and especially to “glasses that look like glasses”—the Holy Grail in between.

Links to some of the wide-ranging topics they covered:

00:00 Orion AR smart glasses
00:27 Platform shift from mobile to AR
02:15 The vision for Orion & AR glasses
03:55 Why people will upgrade to AR glasses
05:20 A range of options for smart glasses
07:32 Consumer ambitions for Orion
11:40 Reality Labs spending & the cost of AR
12:44 Ray-Ban partnership
17:11 Ray-Ban Meta sales & success
18:59 Bringing AI to the Ray-Ban Meta
21:54 Replacing phones with AR glasses
25:18 Influx of AI content on social media
28:32 The vision for AI-filled social media
34:04 Will AI lead to less human interaction?
35:24 Success of Threads
36:41 Competing with X & the role of news
40:04 Why politics can hurt social platforms
41:52 Mark’s shift away from politics
46:00 Cambridge Analytica, in hindsight
49:09 Link between teen mental health and social media
53:52 Disagreeing with EU regulation
56:06 Debate around AI training data & copyright
1:00:07 Responsibility around AR as a platform

Tangentially, I gave myself an unintended chuckle with this:

iPhone goes on safari

Photography

Austin Mann puts the new gear through its paces in Kenya:

Last week at the Apple keynote event, the iPhone camera features that stood out the most to me were the new Camera Control button, upgraded 48-megapixel Ultra Wide sensor, improved audio recording features (wind reduction and Audio Mix), and Photographic Styles. […]

Over the past week we’ve traveled over a thousand kilometers across Kenya, capturing more than 10,000 photos and logging over 3TB of ProRes footage with the new iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max cameras. Along the way, we’ve gained valuable insights into these camera systems and their features.

“Jurassic Park – 1950’s Super Panavision 70”

AI/ML

Chaos reigns!

I have no idea what AI and other tools were used here, but it’d be fun to get a peek behind the curtain. As a commenter notes,

The meandering strings in the soundtrack. The hard studio lighting of the close-ups. The midtone-heavy Technicolor grading. The macro-lens DOF for animation sequences. This is spot-on 50’s film aesthetic, bravo.

[Via Andy Russell]

Flux goes realtime with Krea

AI/ML, Typography

And if that headline makes no sense, it probably just means your not terminally AI-pilled, and I’m caught flipping a grunt. 😉 Anyway, the tiny but mighty crew at Krea have brought the new Flux text-to-image model—including its ability to spell—to their realtime creation tool:

iPhone 16 + AI: Quick helpful summaries

Mobile, Photography

Check out my friend Bilawal’s summary thread, which pairs quick demos from Apple with bits of useful context:

There are some great additional details in this thread from Halide Camera as well:

“Only Murders In The Building” titles

Illustration

Somehow, despite my wife being a huge fan of the show over the last couple of years, I hadn’t previously seen the delightful titles for Only Murders In The Building:

Salon has a great article that goes behind the scenes with Elastic, which previously created titles for “Game of Thrones,” “Watchmen” and “Captain Marvel,” among others.

“The brief was this idea of a love letter to New York in a way and true crime and true crime podcasts,” Lisa Bolan, a creative director at Elastic, told Salon. “John really wanted to capture this romantic illustrative approach to New York, building on the magic of Hirschfeld and The New Yorker – illustrators who have abstracted New York in a way that’s beautiful and also speaks to these little glimpses of magic in the urban landscape.

Behind the scenes: DIY Deadpool

AI/ML

I love seeing how scrappy creators combine tools in new ways, blazing trails that we may come to see as commonplace soon enough. Here Eric Solorio (enigmatic_e) shows how he used Viggle & other tools to create his viral Deadpool animation:

See also some of his luchador moves, plus more on his various feeds:

Riffing on the world through Ideogram

AI/ML, Ideogram

I’ve been having a ball using the new Ideogram app for iOS to import photos & remix them into new creations. This is possible via their web UI as well, but there’s something extra magical about the immediacy of capture & remix. Check out a couple quick explorations I did while out with the kids, starting from a ballcap & the fuel tank of an old motorcycle:

AI news flash: People prefer paying for things that are actually good

AI/ML

I love this level of transparency from the folks behind Photo AI. Developer @levelsio reports,

[Flux] made Photo AI finally good enough overnight to be actually used by people and be satisfied with the results… it’s more expensive [than SD] but worth it because the photos are way way better… Not sure about profitability but with SD it was about 85% profit. With Flux def less maybe 65%… Very unplanned and grateful the foundational models got better.

We’re arguably in something of a trough of disillusionment in the AI-art hype cycle, but this kind of progress gives reason for hope: more quality & more utility do translate into more sustainable value—and there’s every reason to think that things will only improve from here.

Generative AI: Nuance > Sanctimony

AI/ML, Shit That Actually Matters

Listen, I know that it’s a lot more seductive & cathartic to say “I f*cking hate generative AI,” and you can get 90,000+ likes for doing so, but—believe it or not—thoughtfulness & nuance actually matter. That is, how one uses generative tech can have very different implications for the creative community.

It’s therefore important to evaluate a range of risk/reward scenarios: What’s unambiguously useful & low-risk, vs. what’s an inducement to ripping people off, and what lies in the middle?

I see a continuum like this (click/tap to see larger):

None of this will draw any attention or generate much conversation—at least if my attempts to engage people on Twitter are any indication—but it’s the kind of thing actual toolmakers must engage with if we’re to make progress together. And so, back to work.

PS—This, always this:

Reinterpreting classic instrument clusters in the age of CarPlay

Design, User Interface

“Tell me about a product you hate that you use regularly.” I asked this question of hundreds of Google PM candidates I interviewed, and it was always a great bozo detector. Most people don’t have much of an answer—no real passion or perspective. I want to know not just what sucks, but why it sucks.

If I were asked the same question, I’d immediately say “Every car infotainment system ever made.” As Tolstoy might say, “Each one is unhappy in its own way.” The most interesting thing, I think, isn’t just to talk about the crappy mismatched & competing experiences, but rather about why every system I’ve ever used sucks. The answer can’t be “Every person at every company is a moron”—so what is it?

So much comes down to the structure of the industry, with hardware & software being made by a mishmash of corporate frenemies, all contending with a soup of regulations, risk aversion (one recall can destroy the profitability of a whole product line), and surprisingly bargain-bin electronics.

Despite all that, talented folks continue to fight the good fight, and I enjoyed John LePore’s speculative designs that reinterpret the instrument clusters of classic cars (from Corvettes to DeLoreans) through Apple’s latest CarPlay framework:

Ahnuld’s Fables

AI/ML

My friend Nathan has fed a mix of Schwarzenegger photos & drawings from Aesop’s Fables into the new open-source Flux model, creating a rad woodcut style. That’s interesting enough on its own—but it’s so 24 hours ago, and thus he’s now taken to animating the results. Check out the thread below for details:

Pixel 9 adds on-device image generation

AI/ML, Mobile

It’s wild that capabilities that blew our minds two years ago—for which I & others spent months on a waiting list for DALL•E, which demanded beefy servers to run—are now available (only better) running in your pocket, on your telephone. Check out the latest from Google:

Pixel Studio is a first-of-its-kind image generator. So now you can bring all ideas to life from scratch, right on your phone — a true creative canvas.9

It’s powered by combining an on-device diffusion model running on Tensor G4 and our Imagen 3 text-to-image model in the cloud. With a UI optimized for easy prompting, style changes and editing, you can quickly bring your ideas to conversations with friends and family.

Days of Miracles & Wonder, as always…

Google Pixel introduces an interactive “Add Me” feature

AI/ML, Google Photos

Back when I worked on Google Photos, and especially later when I worked in Research, I really wanted to ship a camera mode that would help ensure great group photos. Prior to the user pressing the capture button, it would observe the incoming video stream, notice when it had at least one instance of each face smiling with their eyes open, and then knit together a single image in which everyone looked good.

Of course, the idea was hardly new: I’d done the same thing manually with my own wedding photos back in 2005, and in 2013 Google+ introduced “AutoAwesome Smile” to select good expressions across images & merge them into a single shot. It was a great feature, though sadly the only time people noticed its existence is when it failed in often hilarious “AutoAwful” ways (turning your baby or dog into, say, a two-nosed Picasso). My idea was meant to improve on this by not requiring multiple photos, and of course by suppressing unwanted hilarity.

Anyway, Googlers gonna Google, and now the Pixel team has introduced an interactive mode that helps you capture & merge two shots—the first one of a group, and the second of the photographer who took the first. Check out Marques Brownlee’s 1-minute demo:

For more details, check out his full review of Google’s new devices.

That’s all well and good—but wake me when they decide to bring back David Hasselhoff photobombs:

 

Uizard & the future of AI-assisted design

AI/ML, Design

Uizard (“Wizard”), which was recently acquired by Miro, has rolled out Autodesigner 2.0:

We take the intuitive conversational flow of ChatGPT and merge it with Uizard generative UI capabilities and drag-and-drop editor, to provide you with an intuitive UI design generator. You can turn a couple of ideas into a digital product design concept in a flash!

I’m really curious to see how the application of LLMs & conversational AI reshapes the design process, from ideation & collaboration to execution, deployment, and learning—and I’d love to hear your thoughts! Meanwhile here’s a very concise look at how Autodesigner works:

And if that piques your interest, here’s a more in-depth look:

A little birthday lunacy

Miscellaneous

I fondly recall Andy Samberg saying years ago that they’d sometimes cook up a sketch that would air at the absolute tail end of Saturday Night Live, be seen by almost no one, and be gotten by far fewer still—and yet for, like, 10,000 kids, it would become their favorite thing ever.

Given that it was just my birthday, I’ve dug up such an old… gem (?). This is why I’ve spent the last ~25 years hearing Jack Black belting out “Ha-ppy Birth-DAYYY!!” Enjoy (?!).

“Top Billing,” huge egos, and the art of title design

Design

99% Invisible is back at it, uncovering hidden but fascinating bits of design in action. This time around it’s concerned with the art of movie title & poster design—specifically with how to deal with actors who insist on being top billed. In the case of the otherwise forgotten movie Outrageous Fortune:

Two different prints of the movie were made, one listing Shelley Long’s name first and the other listing Bette Midler’s name first. Not only that, two different covers to take-home products (LaserDisc and VHS) were also made, with different names first. The art was mirrored, so that the names aligned with the actors images.

One interesting pattern that’s emerged is to place one actor’s name in the lower left & another in the upper right—thus deliberately conflicting with normal reading order in English:

Anyway, as always with this show, just trust me—the subject is way more interesting than you might think.