Just when you thought renegade images were causing enough trouble, enter Photosketch. The idea seems unbelievable (and some people are actually calling “hoax” on Photosketch) but this program, developed by a team of computer science students in China, will composite anything you like into your dream photograph: taking direction from your rough sketches and tags, mining google images and doing some algorithmic magic to create final, realistic(ish) images.
If you’re feeling brave, watch this:
PhotoSketch: Internet Image Montage from Tao Chen on Vimeo.
As I trolled the internerd to find out what the buzz is about this I found lots of incredulity and this lucid, prescient comment on Gizmodo:
Wow, this is incredible. Next up is lighting recognition or even the ability to properly alter the shade of the images to match selected backgrounds.
I think a great way to make money off this is to encourage users to buy stock images that help create the picture a user is trying to make.
And, elsewhere, it was heartening to read that the commercial industry, albeit as excited and nervous as the rest of us, is already concerned about potential copyright infringement arising from this program. From the Creative Review blog:
The potential for producing quick storyboards without the need for any artistic talent is potentially boundless, although we’re not sure about the copyright implications of such a tool.
And from an accompanying comment:
I actually think this PhotoSketch thing is great idea. Imagine the time you could save when putting together inspiration pieces for clients…”Here’s what I’m envisioning, how do you feel about it?” It’s basically a simple way of getting your ideas out quickly.
I’m not advocating it taking anyone’s job, but Photosketch certainly has the ability to make those jobs slightly easier. As long as copyrights and trademarks are not being violated, it’s definitely a useful tool. Especially for creatives who don’t necessarily have the design chops.
Indeed.
I sent a quick note today to my brilliant and foreward thinking friend Gerald Schoenhoff who is currently the VP, Associate CD at Grey Canada. Gerald and I have made great ads together including this one:
William Howard” title=”picture-81″ width=”425″ height=”215″ class=”size-large wp-image-3431″ />
© William Howard
What importance does Photosketch have for an agency? Let’s ask Gerald:
Truth be told, I haven’t used photosketch but when I read about it, it blew my mind. How many hours have I wasted going through stock and tried to comp up things from multiple images. If I understand it correctly, the program kind of does that for me. How cool is that. I’d rather my art directors spend time thinking than building puzzles.
Like many things on the web, the usefulness of this tool could be mostly porn-driven, but I have faith in you, Dear Reader, to have some legitimate concerns and paranoia about Photosketch. Please share.
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Hello. Something I found interesting about this was one of the example Photosketch composites I’ve seen. It’s of a bear standing in a river catching a salmon. I’ve seen more than one stock shot of this very thing in more than one place, so actual photos with no need of compositing are out there already. And yet Photosketch still pulled together separate photos to produce its own version. That seems to me like quite a limitation. If Photosketch can’t (yet) recognise an image needing no manipulation because it already closely corresponds to the sketch you provided it with, is it necessarily going to find and use the best examples available of each single element of any composite it makes (if that makes sense…)? It might not matter, but if you were to use something like Photosketch for mocking up visuals, wouldn’t it be handy to know whether the imagery you’re imagining already exists somewhere (and possibly in a usable form)?
In terms of copyright… actual people take found photos and, so long as their usage involves some form of transformation, it’s considered acceptable. So what’s the difference if it’s a bit of clever software that does the transforming instead?
Anyway, I can’t see it being of any use to me personally but it is sort of fascinating… in a Frankenstein kind of a way…
Hoax. How silly.
One day we will all be replaced. Remember the books where robots did the works and we all sat around drinking Mai Thai’s? Can’t wait myself!
If someone were smart and evil they would build a massive image bank of items to be used with this type of program – Lots of objects on white and lots of landscapes. Sell sketchups at will and waive copyright. RF like creations. Like I said Horrible and Brilliant.
Yesterday I was told of software out of the Netherlands that automatically colour corrects images for printing in magazines (the backend stuff that happens to all images before press). Thankfully the technology is not quite there yet but you can bet it will be one day and then it will replace entire departments of digital people. Of course by then there will be two magazines left on earth but hey, they will be totally automated so they might actually make money!
The © implications are the same as they have always been with agencies taking swipes for layout and comps. The © is with the creator and compensation is owed for any and all uses… Of course, nobody pays for comps anymore.
It is a clever tool that I think would really help agencies comp their ideas, but of course, it is illegal.
Heather this is a joke I am sure
Looks like an abstract for someone’s research paper that illustrates the concept of the software. You’d think that if this actually existed then they show some screen grabs of the interface. Whatever it is, it likely isn’t ready for prime time… yet.
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