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Old Photographs, Recognition, Handwriting Deciphering => Free Photo Restoration & Date Old Photographs => Photograph Resources, Tips, Tutorials => Topic started by: McGroger on Thursday 02 November 23 10:27 GMT (UK)
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One of the hardest things to do in restoring photos is to make them both smoother and sharper at the same time. It’s common sense, isn’t it? More smooth means less sharp; more sharp means less smooth.
And it’s particularly pertinent when faces are involved because human beings are conditioned to recognise the tiniest differences in faces. All but an unfortunate few people can easily distinguish, for example, one boy or girl from their similarly featured brother or sister.
Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI) which can both sharpen and smooth at the same time.
But AI has its own limitations. It achieves its sharpening and smoothing by “making it up”.
I imagine it as a very sophisticated “Identikit”. An AI app looks in its database to find bits of a face that closely resemble the corresponding bits of a face in someone’s faded old or low res photo. It replaces the face in the original photo with a face made up from those closely-resembling bits. (Probably the most obvious example of a potential folly in this is all the mismatched eyes displayed in so many AI-generated restores.)
It has been a hot topic for a while now, in two senses: Hot popularity, because it can do a job very quickly and very easily—and, at times, very well when used judiciously. It can also generate hot discussions when used injudiciously. To purists, AI “enhances”; it doesn’t “restore”.
It depends what you—and I’m talking to both posters and restorers here—want out of a “restore”: an enhancement or a restoration.
I’m not against the use of AI apps. I have one in my toolbox. I use it… sparingly.
But here’s a made up example of where I don’t think it has a place at all:
In 1928 my father travelled to Brisbane, Queensland as part of the New South Wales school athletics team, to compete against the Queensland team.
Now let’s imagine Dad’s team’s photo was put in the paper back in 1928, and then 95 years later—that is, tomorrow or next week—one of my distant cousins posted a low resolution snip of the photo asking Rootschat to “restore” it so they could have a better image of their distant cousin.
The first image below is a low res copy of my dad from the photo, such as you might obtain from a newspaper. The second is an AI’s attempt at a “restore” from that copy; the third is from my high res copy scanned from Dad’s original photo.
I honestly think we are doing posters a disservice by making up images of their ancestors. I would certainly not like to see my own descendants believing that my father looked like the middle image below, let alone perpetuating that image down to future generations.
My pleas regarding AI are these:
Posters: please post as good an image as you can within Rootschat’s 500kb limit.
Restorers: Please ask for better images before working on requests (2 kb? Really?). If you must do a restore where you scale up from 2kb to 500 kb, please tell the poster that the image is almost certainly not what the person actually looked like but a guess by an artificial intelligence app as to what they might have looked like.
Rant over. ;)
Peter
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It;s not a rant, Peter.
Thank you for giving such a clear account of what many of us have been feeling for a while now.
Gadget
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Well said Peter! Thumbs up to that one!
Specially this bit . . . . .
My pleas regarding AI are these:
Posters: please post as good an image as you can within Rootschat’s 500kb limit.
Restorers: Please ask for better images before working on requests (2 kb? Really?). If you must do a restore where you scale up from 2kb to 500 kb, please tell the poster that the image is almost certainly not what the person actually looked like but a guess by an artificial intelligence app as to what they might have looked like.
Wiggy :)
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I stopped doing facial restores because AI apps 'made up' better faces than my imagined ones. OK, they often misalign lips and eyes but they could be improved by human intervention, but still using educated guesswork and crossed fingers.
The time I saved by not doing Rootschat Restores has gone into Restoring a 1971 MGB GT and laying a paving brick driveway, so it's an ill wind, eh!?
cheers, Ian
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That's a great post Peter and accurately conveys the pitfalls of the use of AI. In restorative work. It does have its uses but in my humble opinion, photo restoration isn't one of them. Most damaged images that are posted here for repair, are historical photos of peoples' relatives. They need to be as accurate as we can make them, taking care to keep them authentic making sure that we with the utmost respect.
Thanks for posting Peter.
Carol
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"It does have its uses"
What, for example? I'll take the real thing over the artificial any day.
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Thank you so much Peter. I agree, well said.
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Wow Peter :D
Thank you so much for the link.
This is a superb thread, which I've just read for the first time and it has some great replies.
Thank you everyone ... and hello to anybody who remembers me from ?2006? when I first discovered restoration and began my journey, my first tentative steps in restoring, which became a passion for several years.
Eventually, life intervened and I stopped/lost interest, but now I think I might begin again.
There's so much I've forgotten and, goodness, AI has reared it's ugly head to further confuse me ;D
I well remember my very first venture into colourisation! Lol ... a really simple pic, requiring very few colours. It took me hours and hours and drove me nuts
;D ::) ;)