Generative Fill - A Game Changer!

Ashok Kandimalla has been in the photographic field for over three decades and has extensive experience in both film and digital photography. Being an electronics engineer by profession and a photographer, he possesses a unique and deep insight into the technical aspects of digital photography and equipment. He has published more than a 100 articles on photography and some of his writings have also been published in the well-known international magazine Popular Photography. An avid collector of photographic books and vintage cameras, Ashok has a keen interest in the history of photography and a passion for sharing his knowledge on photography through teaching and writing. He is the only Indian photographer to be featured on the Nikon Centenary website. He is presently working as a Management and Engineering consutant. He can be reached at [e-mail].

- Ashok Kandimalla

Day in and day out, you are hearing about AI (Artificial Intelligence) and its impact on practically every aspect of our daily lives. That being the case, does it also affect photography, and if so in what way? The answer is a resounding yes. A subset of AI called 'machine learning' is already being used in many cameras for improving autofocus and exposure calculations. Al has already made its appearance, though not in a big way, in many post-processing software packages like Photoshop and Luminar. While all these are significant advances, they pale in comparison with the newest feature introduced in the latest version of Photoshop. This is currently in the pre-release beta phase and is available as a free download to the current Photoshop subscribers.

Being a beta version, you may encounter bugs. Also, the complex computation that goes on to perform the operations is done remotely on servers, not on the computer sitting in front of you. So, a fast Internet connection is a must to use these features.

So, what is AI and how does it differ from machine intelligence? Microsoft defines it thus: "While artificial intelligence encompasses the idea of a machine that can mimic human intelligence, machine learning does not. Machine learning aims to teach a machine how to perform a specific task and provide accurate results by identifying patterns." The important part is "mimic human intelligence" and if you ponder over the concept, you can easily appreciate the profound impact it will have on anything and has the potential to change our lives (for good or bad), and not just photography! You may recall that Smart Photography which strives to bring to you all the latest technical developments has covered some of the already existing Al features like neural filters, sky replacement, etc. In all these cases, the inputs were defined. Consider two examples.