Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Further Experiments with Deep Dreaming towards #HANDDRAWNPHOTOs

Yesterday I did a series of panoramas with two different cameras on the leap track in the southern part of Jells Park. This was primarily to test out the panorama stitching in the new version On1 Photo RAW 2019.2 (trial version). I was quite happy with the results, which managed to capture the quintessential nature of the Australian bush. This inspired me try some further experiments in using Ai methods to refine my #HANDDRAWNPHOTO idea. Basically I’m investigating different styles of photography and post processing that might allow the hand of the artist, his mark making/style to shine through and become part of the photograph.

So the first step for me was to create a simple semi-abstract sketch of just the shapes and textures I could see between the trees in my panoramas. This was made with sharpie pens, in simple blue, purple and black hues. (i wasn’t going to try and use the colours from my sketch just the tones). This is very loose and not too accurate but that was what I wanted.

I used this sketch as my default style in the Deep Style module of Googles Deep Dream, This involves a bit of time to process because the software has to create a neural network which will understand the key style elements, lines and shapes and how I draw them. The original photo is uploaded image at the generate screen. I have been constantly tweaking the settings under the style tiles. The important setting in these examples is preserving colours (from the original photo). Its trial and error from there and can take time, so enjoy it, have a coffee.

This pair shows the original photo above and the resulting deep dream below.

I think this is starting to look what I am after.