Monthly Archives: May 2022

Making the “Gaslit” Main Titles

“Not a single keyframe of animation was set in the making of the title, created by tweaking and bending the alignment knobs of a vintage TV,” writes Anthony Vitagliano. “Instead, I shot it using a vintage Montgomery Ward ‘Airline’ Portable Television, an iPhone, and a patchwork of cables and converters in my basement.”

Check out the results:

See Anthony’s site for high-res captures of the frames.

Mobile DALL•E = My kind of location-based AR

I’ve long considered augmented reality apps to be “realtime Photoshop”—or perhaps more precisely, “realtime After Effects.” I think that’s true & wonderful, but most consumer AR tends to be ultra-confined filters that produce ~1 outcome well.

Walking around San Francisco today, it struck me today that DALL•E & other emerging generative-art tools could—if made available via a simple mobile UI—offer a new kind of (almost) realtime Photoshop, with radically greater creative flexibility.

Here I captured a nearby sculpture, dropped out the background in Photoshop, uploaded it to DALL•E, and requested “a low-polygon metallic tree surrounded by big dancing robots and small dancing robots.” I like the results!

Meet “Imagen,” Google’s new AI image synthesizer

What a time to be alive…

Hard on the heels of OpenAI revealing DALL•E 2 last month, Google has announced Imagen, promising “unprecedented photorealism × deep level of language understanding.” Unlike DALL•E, it’s not yet available via a demo, but the sample images (below) are impressive.

I’m slightly amused to see Google flexing on DALL•E by highlighting Imagen’s strengths in figuring out spatial arrangements & coherent text (places where DALL•E sometimes currently struggles). The site claims that human evaluators rate Imagen output more highly than what comes from competitors (e.g. MidJourney).

I couldn’t be more excited about these developments—most particularly to figure out how such systems can enable amazing things in concert with Adobe tools & users.

What a time to be alive

The AP joins the Content Authenticity Initiative

Adobe & partners in fighting disinformation have continued to grow their ranks, and it’s great to see the Associated Press coming on board:

With reporting from 250 locations around the world, AP is a key addition to the CAI’s mission to help consumers everywhere better understand the provenance and attribution of images and video. 

“We are pleased to join the CAI in its efforts to combat misinformation and disinformation around photojournalism,” said AP Director of Photography David Ake. “AP has worked to advance factual reporting for over 175 years. Teaming up to help ensure the authenticity of images aligns with that mission.”  

Full-stack engineers: come work with me!

We are building some rad stuff (seriously, I wish I could show you already) and would love to have you join us:

We are looking for a versatile and passionate Senior Developer to join us and help drive full stack, complex component implementation. You’ll play a key role in architectural discussions, defining solutions, and solving highly technical issues. Our team builds both cloud services (Python, and C++) and web experiences (Javascript, typescript, web Components, etc …) . The winning candidate for this high impact role requires a deep knowledge about cloud-based architectures as well as a solid CS fundamentals.

Some key responsibilities:

  • Architect efficient and reusable full-stack systems that can support several different deep learned models
  • Design, architect, and implement multiple low-latency micro-services (we mostly use JavaScript, C++, and Python)
  • Building simple, robust, and scalable platforms used by many external users
  • Work closely with UX designers, Product managers, Machine Learning engineers to develop compelling experiences
  • Take a project from scoping requirements through the actual launch