Fort Collins Digital Camera Club

The goal of our Fine Art Photography SIG is to help each other to create fine art from our photography.
The Fine Art SIG is a place where artists support each other and nurture creativity in others.
Unrequested criticism can feed an artist's fear of failure and stifle their creative growth.

ATTENDEES
Mike Barry
Judy Cannon
Heather Coe
Rich Ernst
Jim Fellion
Jim Limburg
Jack Lipscomb
Rich Roberts
Ken Sandberg
Jim and Joan Sayre
George Theodore
Albert Wang

OUR DISCUSSION TOPICS WERE "Fall Color", "Arsenal 2", "Adobe AI", "Photoshop Summit Week", and "PBNify.com".

1. "Fall Color"
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Fall Color includes trees, leaves, flowers... anything that pleases you, especially if it is colorful. Show and discuss images

2. Arsenal 2 - suggested by Jim and Joan Sayre
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What is it? Intelligent Camera Assistant, it examines the scene and suggests best camera settings, controls your camera to take the pictures, then combines all the images to create a final image (This is not Generative AI, more like machine learning based on 1000's of professional images) - create huge 2D panoramas - take multiple images over time and average them to create sharp long exposures - take multiple images with a range of focus distance, and combine them to create a single sharp image - take multiple images with different exposures and combine them to create an HDR image - take multiple images and combine them to create sharp night photographs - take multiple images of daytime scenes and combine them to remove moving objects (people)

3. Is Adobe conflicted about AI?
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Adobe's main goal is to convert your money into Adobe's money. Adobe is building AI into many of its tools, making them easier and faster than legacy techniques, and encouraging customers to use these AI enhanced tools. Adobe tags your images' metadata with "Made with AI" if you use some of these tools.

4. How many AI credits do you have left???
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Photoshop plan contains 250 credits per month and you can purchase 100 credits for $5.99. Each action on a 2000px x 2000px image costs 1 credit; what about larger images? total image size or just the generated area? I have 242/250 credits left I suspect that Adobe will follow the same pricing model that most other commercial AI generation software follows, hook customers with free or low cost pricing, then ramp up the pricing to make as much profit as possible.

5. Photoshop Summit Week
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Lots of good classes
Some were good reviews of topics like: blending modes, ACR, adjustment layers, brushes, smart objects, actions...
Most were about new features, mainly AI tools like: masking, PixelSquid (3D modeling), SuperZoom, Frequency Separation, outpainting, generative fill, background substitution...
Some were about creativity: light painting, visual appeal, pre-vizualization, story telling...
Matt Kloskowski used AI generation for outpainting, but it was only good for social media posts
Kristina Sherk used generative fill for multiple 1024px x 1024px areas to maintain details Kristina Sherk used generative fill for Frequency Separation
Lisa Carney used 3D modeling and generated images, but she was creating lots of "comp" images for clients, I don't know if she would actually use either one in a final product

6. PBNify.com
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create your own paint by number kit

RESOURCES (Where you can find sources of inspiration)

https://PBNify.com - create your own paint by number kit
https://witharsenal.com/ - Arsenal - the Intelligent Camera Assistant
Creative Cloud Desktop & click on your avatar in the upper right corner to display your number of generative credits

Constructive Critiques and Personal Projects (optional)
We looked at lots of images but didn't have any constructive critiques this time.

PICK A TOPIC FOR THE NEXT MEETING
We have decided to create fine are images from lighting for the next meeting.
Christmas lights, light painting, bokeh, ICM with lights... anything with lighting especially if it is colorful.

Suggested Future Topics
Photographing things thrown in the air
Macro and Closeup Photography
Something else...

AGENDA FOR OUR NEXT FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY SIG MEETING - Tue 12/17/2024 @6:00pm
1. The main topic will be "Lights".
2. Constructive Critiques and Other Personal Projects
3. We will pick a topic for the next meeting

Please email Mike, info@fcdcc.com, when you find mistakes, missing information or if you have suggestions for the Fine Art Photography SIG and I will try to address the issues.