Experimenting with AI

Over the course of my career in technology, I gained an appreciation of the use of 'accelerators' — utilities, tools, and techniques that help get a task done more quickly than doing the same task by hand. Although I am retired now, I have various personal projects that involve some form of coding so accelerators are still useful. A new option that has really been a game-changer is ChatGPT. By describing the logic I need, it can sometimes provide complete, working code. At worst, it offers a foundation I can adapt, significantly cutting down the time it takes to create a new script or automation, especially in languages that I didn't use professionally like Python.

With the integration Microsoft has provided between ChatGPT 4 and DALL-E 3 under the covers of Copilot (previously Bing Chat), I decided to try my hand using it as an accelerator for creating images. For a few years now, I've had the idea of having a blog title image that highlighted the various interests I write about on this blog, primarily astronomy, photography and sailing: a nighttime seascape with a sailboat and the Milky Way arching overhead. As I have never received a response to my post seeking help from an artist, I decided to experiment with Copilot to create the image myself.

One thing I learned along the way is that creating with ChatGPT and DALL-E isn't like painting with a tool like Photoshop... there are limits to the degree of control you have. My original intent was to have the horizon centered in the image with a pretty plain foreground and limited detail at the top so that I could crop the standard DALL-E square image down to a landscape orientation. The initial images often placed the horizon lower or higher than specified, and revising the prompt didn't always affect its position in the final image. Similarly, I originally had specified having a single-masted sailboat yet every image generated had a two or three-masted ship. Anyway, it appears you have flexible about the details of the generated image.

After numerous passes, I started from scratch with the following prompt which didn't include a reference to a sailboat.

Create a photo-realistic image of a night-time  seascape with a calm sea with a large foreground of water and no land visible, with the stars across the sky an do the Milky Way rising high the the sky on the right side of the image, a low line of clouds along the horizon with a few small lightning bolts in the far distance and a full moon just above the horizon on the far left side of the image.

Of the 4 images generated, I chose the one that was closest to what I had in mind and provided a second prompt to add a small sailboat off in the distance, along the horizon. Here is the result.

This image came close to matching my original vision. The unexpected rocks under the water in the foreground were easily cropped out, although I left a few visible in the final version. Similarly, the Moon was up high instead of on the horizon but, again, not something I minded cropping out. Although the sailboat was a bit smaller than I'd like, I think it works well.

The one issue with this version is the reflection on the water in the middle. It's obviously not the Moon as that's at top right but it's not clear what it is a reflection of. The brightness on the horizon looks a bit like a sunset so perhaps it is supposed to be the Sun behind the clouds. I decided that I'm fine with the sky brightness but the reflection had to go.

Picking the image in Copilot opened it in Image Creator where I could pick Customize which opened the image in Microsoft Designer, an AI-powered design app. One of its features is 'generative erase'. Basically, all I had to do was select the reflection on the water with a brush and Designer replaced it by filling in that space with something that looked like everything around it. This is similar to the 'generative fill' feature in Photoshop. As you can see, it worked pretty well.

If you read the post linked above, you'll see that my ultimate goal was to have an image like this animated as a GIF. My research suggests that using existing AI tools for this is feasible, but it's not as straightforward as just giving ChatGPT a prompt. It involves creating and compiling a series of images, then employing tools like Stable Diffusion to convert them into a video, which can subsequently be saved as a GIF. It sounds like that could even involve writing code. Eventually, I may give that a try but, for now, I'm satisfied with just cropping this image down and using it as the blog title image for a while.

Your thoughts? Whether you love AI, hate it or are ambivalent, I'd like to hear about it in the comments.

As always, just click on an image to see it full screen!

Seeking Artist for Blog Title Image

For awhile now, I have had an idea for a new image for this blog. The challenge is that although I have a little bit of artistic skill, this will be beyond what I can do on my own so I am seeking an artist interested in developing it.

I'm checking with friends for help in finding someone to work on this but to simplify sharing a description of the project, I am posting it here. Regardless of how you heard about it, if you have an interest in helping with this project, please post a reply.

Project Description

Title Image for Wind And Sky, a blog on my personal interests.

Primary theme: astronomy, science

Secondary theme: sailing, wind, weather

Across both themes: photography

Idea:

• Long run GIF (10-20 seconds)
• Have end of animation transition into beginning, making the change seamless
• Images:
• Day time, water foreground, sailboat (heeling over) at left with Sun above
• Day time image repeating with Sun and sailboat moving left to right
• Evening twilight, sailboat disappearing off horizon as Sun sets and Moon rises
• Night time with stars, Milky Way stretching across, Moon at left
• Night time image repeating with Moon, stars and Milky Way moving left to right
• Morning twilight, sailboat appearing over horizon with Sun rising and Moon setting
• Image dimensions (alternative is in case necessary to make image layout, transitions fit smoothly):
  800px by 150px
   Or
  800px by 200px
• Title text (to be layered over image, already included in blog design)
  WIND & SKY
  REFLECTIONS ON SAILING, ASTRONOMY AND PHOTOGRAPHY.
• Color formatting:
• Should fit, not clash, with blog background color: #000033
• Title text is white so shouldn’t disappear into the image
• Image background transition from a dark sky blue in daytime through purplish twilight to black night and back
• Image content and sequence should be reasonably scientifically accurate (no having Sun or Moon move wrong direction, Milky Way movement being unnatural, etc.)
• If animation and transitions problematic:
• Non-repeating GIF, i.e., start at middle of night image, run full animation back to that point and end without repeating
  - or -
• Instead of GIF, do image where it’s daylight with sailboat on left transitioning through twilight to night with Milky Way on right
• Optional:
• Possibly revise blog layout theme, making text (and title image) wider
• Meteor across night sky

Animation examples:

• Stars and clouds
• Milky Way, stars and clouds
• Reflection of stars in water