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A Guide to Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is beginning to play a major role in education, art, technology, and other areas. This guide provides information and resources about different types of AI.

Photo Restoration Tools the Use AI

Adobe Photoshop is a premier photo editing software. It has moved further into using AI to assist with tasks such as photo improvement and restoration. Other tools are also available and will be discussed in this guide. The following will demonstrate how you might use these tools for restoring old, blurry, or low-resolution photos. Photoshop is available for use in the IDEA Hub Makerspace located on the main floor of the Reinert Library. Other tools are available either free or for modest costs. Be aware that these are some simple fixes, and Photoshop has many more tools that can improve the quality of your photo restoration projects even more. These ideas are for some quick fixes and do not include the many other available tools.

The examples provided here are only a few of the many others that are available. You may be interested in exploring others!

First, if your image is physical and unavailable in digital format, you must convert it. The following provides information on that conversion.

Restoration Tools

Photo Scanning

If you want to restore older photos, you may not have them in digital format. All the restoration tools discussed in this guide use software or online resources, and therefore, the photos need to be in digital format to use these tools. You can convert physical photos into digital photos in a couple of ways.

First, if you have a photo scanner, you can certainly use it. The Reinert Library has two scanners that are available. Assistance on their use is available from Access Services. Using these types of flatbed scanners will likely give you the highest quality results.

Second, Google has an application for your phone that works very well. It is called PhotoScan and is available for both iOS and Android devices. The following video demonstrates how to use that app. Your results will vary depending partially on the quality of your phone camera, the background surface on which the photo has been placed, and the lighting. Lighting can be a challenge. Make sure you have sufficient light to get a good image, but watch out for reflections. If you are unhappy with the results, try photographing on a different surface or with better lighting.

Photo Restoration: Photoshop

Once you have the photo in digital format, you can import it into Photoshop and make some initial edits to improve the result. Depending on your photo, it may need to be cropped, upscaled, scratches fixed, and imperfections removed. If the photo is not in color, you may even want to colorize it. Upscaling involves increasing the photo resolution. It is probably the one thing that will provide the greatest improvement in a photo. Many of the older photos have poor resolutions and may even be blurry. With the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence apps associated with photo editing, the end results can be amazing. Remember that AI applications change quickly. Some come and go. Others are in it for the long haul. Photoshop is one of those.

The following video provides some basic guidelines on photo restoration in Photoshop. The new photo restoration tool uses AI.

Photo Restoration: Colorize

Once the image quality of a photo has been improved, you may want to try colorizing it. There are many tools available for doing this with varying degrees of success. In this example, we will use a photo with the Photoshop Restoration tool applied to improve the quality. In the following video, we will demonstrate how colorization may be done using a couple of applications and how it can be improved using other Photoshop tools.

Photoshop: Spot Healing Brush

The following short video demonstrates how to use Photoshop's "Spot Healing Brush Tool" to remove small blemishes and scratches on photos.

Photoshop: Clone Stamp & Other Tools

This five-minute video demonstrates an additional tool, the Clone Stamp Tool, that may be used when repairing photos. The Spot Healing Brush Tool, the Photo Restoration Filter, and conversion to sepia are also demonstrated.

Photoshop: Change Eye Color

One of the problems with colorizing old photos is that the eye color can be wrong. The following YouTube Short demonstrates how to do this followed by written instructions of the process. It can take a bit of practice, but the results can be good.

https://youtube.com/shorts/11wV-199AQs?si=lWlNOGOldcjYaXtn 

Here are the steps:

  1. Select the elliptical marquee tool. Use it to select the eye. You can hold on to the space bar to move the selection while creating it. Make sure that the selection includes all of the iris.
     
  2. While the tool is still selected, hold the Shift and Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac) keys and drag over the eye. It will cut off the top part (eyelid) so that it will not be changed in color. This can take some practice, but watch the video to see how he does it.
     
  3. Create a new group by selecting the "Create a new group" icon.
    Create New Group
     
  4. Apply the selection as a layer mask by selecting the "Layer Mask" icon.
    Layer Mask
     
  5. Create a layer by selecting the icon for "Create new fill or adjustment layer icon" and locating Hue/Saturation.
    Create Hue/Saturation Layer
     
  6. In the Properties Panel that appears for Hue/Saturation, select "Colorize" and move the sliders for Hue and Saturation to get the eye color. The lightness slider does not work well for the eye color.
    Select colorize and slide hue and saturation to get the eye color.
     
  7. To adjust the lightness/darkness of the eye color, create a new layer from the the icon for "Create new fill or adjustment layer icon" and locating "Levels..." Move the slider to make the color lighter or darker.
    Levels to change lightness/darkness of eye color
     
  8. Repeat for the other eye.
     

Example of Before and After

        

Photoshop: AI Camera Raw Filters

You may not be interested in restoring old photos, but what if you have a photo you really like and can't replace, but it's unfocused or "foggy" looking? Photoshop has some other AI filters under Camera Raw that can greatly improve some of your photos.

The following photo was taken with a phone camera attached to a spotting scope. It was not attached correctly and the resulting photos turned poorly. Let's see what can be done using some of these tools.

Here is the original photo.

Original photo of Monarch butterfly

 

The corners were unclear due to the way the phone had been placed on the adapter, so the photo needed to be cropped in Photoshop.

Cropped photo of Monarcy

 

Now we'll try using some tools from Photoshop's AI Camera Raw filters. In this case, The Dehaze tool was used and set to +78.

Monarch butterfly photo with Photoshop Dehaze filter applied

 

A photo that may have been a one-time opportunity to take goes from a throw-away to one greatly improved with simple Photoshop AI tools.

Even a photo that is pretty good can be improved. Here is an example. The original photo is below.

Original photo of a tiger swallowtail butterfly

 

The photo was opened in Photoshop, and the camera raw filters of dehaze and improved clarity were applied.

Dehaze and improved clarity filters were applied to the original photo.

Photoshop: AI Generative Fill Object Removal

Sometimes, you have a photo with an object you want to remove. Depending on the photo and object to be removed, it can be a relatively simple process in Photoshop. First, you select the item to be removed with the Lasso tool. Then you select the "Generative Fill" and "Generate." Using AI, it will analyze the surrounding areas and replace the deleted item with material similar to the area around the location where the item was removed..

The following short video demonstrates how to do this. Again, your results will depend on your photo and what you are deleting.

Photoshop: Straighten & Expand Image

Sometimes, you have a photo you would like to keep, but it looks strange because it is at an angle. Photoshop has a straightening tool that works very well. In addition, you can expand the photo by using its generative AI tool. This short video demonstrates how to do this.

Photoshop: Generative Expand

One of the newer tools in Photoshop is the Generative Expand tool. It used AI to expand a photo. In the following video examples of how this tool might be used are demonstrated.