Is AI Replacing Photographers? Should Generative Fill Scare You?
With the recent release of generative fill in Photoshop. Editing and compositing photos has become easier than ever. Will these feature help photographers or replace them?
What is Generative Fill?
It has been a long time since an update to Adobe Photoshop made the mainstream news. However, in May of this year (2023), Adobe announced a new feature that changed that. Generative fill may not sound like a terribly exciting or unique feature, but once you see what it's capable of, you'll understand why it has received the attention it has.
Generative fill allows anyone with a Photoshop subscription to simply select an area of an image and tell Photoshop in words what should be inserted there. Not only does generative fill add this to the image, but it will integrate the object seamlessly into the background.
I've done my fair share of photo compositing over the years, but this amazed even me. Tasks that would be impossible or at least highly time-consuming for me could now be done in a matter of minutes, if not seconds.
Why is it so Scary?
Despite the potential for this tool to save photographers time in some situations, it carries with it a problem. It makes the once tricky task of compositing too easy. Suddenly anyone with a Photoshop subscription can open up a photograph and, in a few words, add a beautiful sunset or mountain range, or rare flowers.
Usually, capturing an image with many interesting elements took lots of scouting, patience, good timing, lots of experience, and a good understanding of composition. Now it can be added in with ease after the fact.
The Undeniable Truth
While this was far from a welcome addition in the eyes of many photographers, it is undeniably a very cool piece of tech. I knew that AI image generators were rapidly increasing in prevalence, but to see such an incredible implementation of such a tool was truly an accomplishment from the team over at Adobe.
Generative fill is also unique because it allows you to take a preexisting image and seamlessly replace or add new parts. This gives you much more control and input than generators that create the whole image for you.
A Bit of Reassurance
The more I looked into the generative fill, however, the more I found myself drawing parallels to what photographers must have been thinking when digital photo editing applications first arrived. In both cases, they facilitated people to take photos that were boring or contained imperfections and fix them after the photo was taken. In fact, the original release of photo editing programs was likely more concerning because they made compositing photos in this way possible, to begin with. Generative fill simply makes this process more accessible, and that's not to say it shouldn't scare photographers, but with any luck, much like compositing, It will become a tool for us to use and not the tool that will replace us.
