September 4, 2022

Lifehacker: Use This Free Tool to Restore Faces in Old Family Photos

Lifehacker: Use This Free Tool to Restore Faces in Old Family Photos. “This online tool—called GFPGAN—first made it onto our radar when it was featured in the August 28 edition of the (excellent) Recomendo newsletter, specifically, a post by Kevin Kelly. In it, he says that he uses this free program to restore his own old family photos, noting that it focuses solely on the faces of those pictured, and ‘works pretty well, sometimes perfectly, in color and black and white.’” I tried this tool with a picture of my great-grandfather sitting on the running board of an old Ford with his three kids. It worked okay, but I think it would work better on pictures where the faces where closer-up.

Useful Stuff 0
May 9, 2022

British Library Endangered Archives: New online – April 2022

British Library Endangered Archives: New online – April 2022. “In this month’s round-up we have a collection of portrait photographs from Lima, Peru (EAP1234), and two collections from Sri Lanka, palm-leaf manuscripts from the Jaffna, Vanni, and Mannar districts (EAP1056), and Tamil Protestant records from the Jaffna Peninsula (EAP971). You can read more about each of the projects below and follow the links to see the catalogued records, digitised images, and project information.”

New Resources 0
January 29, 2022

The Art Newspaper: Want to look like Mona Lisa? A new website turns your selfies into Leonardo da Vinci-style portraits

The Art Newspaper: Want to look like Mona Lisa? A new website turns your selfies into Leonardo da Vinci-style portraits. “A new website using artificial intelligence (AI) technology and sophisticated algorithms enables users to turn their faces into images in the style of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings. The Da Vinci Face platform invites participants to send in self-portraits which are then transformed into ‘Leonardo-style’ images.” I tried it. You do need to provide an email address. I uploaded a photo but I haven’t gotten anything back yet.

Research & Opinion 0
December 28, 2021

NPR: Intimate portraits of a hospital COVID unit from a photojournalist-turned-nurse

NPR: Intimate portraits of a hospital COVID unit from a photojournalist-turned-nurse. “To the frustration of health care workers, most new patients turning up at his hospital’s emergency room have not been vaccinated, he says. And as the nation braces for another deadly wave, this time due to the omicron variant, he expects the number of people seriously ill with COVID-19 to go up. With the permission of hospital officials, health care workers and COVID-19 patients, [Alan] Hawes began taking photos on his own time. Many of the images are showcased on the hospital’s Facebook page and have been featured in local news.”

COVID-19 0
December 8, 2021

MakeUseOf: The 7 Best Face Swap Apps

MakeUseOf: The 7 Best Face Swap Apps. “The smartphone has made it possible for anyone to easily employ advanced photo-editing tools, for which you’d otherwise need Photoshop skills. One such ability is to swap people’s faces in pictures. Face swap apps have made this as simple as tapping your screen a few times. Whether you want to perfect a face swap using manual manipulation or you want an app that does all the hard work for you, there is a face swap app available for that.”

Useful Stuff 0
September 26, 2021

A school photographer told a first-grader he could shed his mask. He politely declined: ‘My mommy told me not to’ (Washington Post)

Washington Post: A school photographer told a first-grader he could shed his mask. He politely declined: ‘My mommy told me not to’. “On the day of his first-grade school photos, 6-year-old Mason told his mom he was excited to show the camera his new ‘big boy’ smile. He recently lost four teeth. But when the photographer asked Mason to take off his navy mask before snapping his picture, Mason politely declined, his mom Nicole Peoples told The Washington Post. ‘My mommy told me not to take my mask off,’ Mason replied.”

COVID-19 0
August 18, 2021

Smithsonian: Smithsonian American Art Museum Acquires Extraordinary Early Photography Collection From Larry J. West

Smithsonian: Smithsonian American Art Museum Acquires Extraordinary Early Photography Collection From Larry J. West. “The L.J. West Collection includes 286 objects from the 1840s to about 1925 in three groupings: works by early African American daguerreotypists James P. Ball, Glenalvin Goodridge and Augustus Washington; early photographs of diverse portrait subjects and objects related to abolitionists, the Underground Railroad and the role of women entrepreneurs in it; and photographic jewelry that represents the bridge between miniature painting and early cased photography such as daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
July 22, 2021

Virginia Gazette: Library wants help finding the faces in the photos of Williamsburg’s first licensed African American photographer

Virginia Gazette: Library wants help finding the faces in the photos of Williamsburg’s first licensed African American photographer. “[Albert] Durant, the first-licensed African American photographer in Williamsburg, photographed life in the area from the late 1930s to the 1960s. Durant documented life from an African American perspective, photographing many sporting, social, school and city events during that time. Now, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library is hoping to fill in some of the blanks in Durant’s photographs. The library is working with the Library of Virginia to provide a digital collection of Durant’s photographs for the public to transcribe.” Currently about 100 photos are available with more on the way.

New Resources 0
February 27, 2021

Gizmodo: ‘Deep Nostalgia’ Can Turn Old Photos of Your Relatives Into Moving Videos

Gizmodo: ‘Deep Nostalgia’ Can Turn Old Photos of Your Relatives Into Moving Videos. “It’s hard to feel connected to someone who’s gone through a static photo. So a company called MyHeritage who provides automatic AI-powered photo enhancements is now offering a new service that can animate people in old photos creating a short video that looks like it was recorded while they posed and prepped for the portrait.”

Tweaks & Updates 0
February 22, 2021

Lost and found: the photo project reuniting Moldovan villagers with their younger selves (The Calvert Journal)

The Calvert Journal: Lost and found: the photo project reuniting Moldovan villagers with their younger selves. “In 2016, film school student Victor Galușca found the negatives for thousands of photographs in an abandoned home in the northern Moldovan village of Roșietici….The incredible archive was made into a photo book, showcased at exhibitions in Chișinău and Bucharest, and is now available to view online. But the publicity also meant that people who recognised themselves in [Zaharia] Cușnir’s photographs got in touch with Galușca. The young photographer decided to embark on a new project: taking pictures of Cușnir’s former subjects with the black-and-white portraits of their younger selves.”

New Resources 0
January 22, 2021

LowKey cool: This web app will tweak your photos to flummox facial-recognition systems, apparently (The Register)

The Register: LowKey cool: This web app will tweak your photos to flummox facial-recognition systems, apparently . “The application, called LowKey, is intended to protect people from unauthorized surveillance. It’s based on an adversarial attack technique developed by University of Maryland boffins Valeriia Cherepanova, Micah Goldblum, Shiyuan Duan, John Dickerson, Gavin Taylor, Tom Goldstein, and US Naval Academy researcher Harrison Foley. It alters images so facial recognition systems can’t easily use the data to find the depicted person in another image.”

Useful Stuff 0
December 13, 2020

Engadget: Google used a 64-camera rig to train its portrait lighting AI

Engadget: Google used a 64-camera rig to train its portrait lighting AI. “Google’s Portrait Light feature can make some of your more mediocre photos look a lot better by giving you a way to change their lighting direction and intensity. The tech giant launched the AI-based lighting feature in September for the Pixel 4a 5G and Pixel 5 before giving older Pixel phones access to it. Now, Google has published a post on its AI blog explaining the technology behind Portrait Light, including how it trained its machine learning models.”

Research & Opinion 0
December 11, 2020

‘You can almost hear the music’: Bringing back the legacy of a Hampstead photographer (Ham & High)

Ham & High: ‘You can almost hear the music’: Bringing back the legacy of a Hampstead photographer. “Laelia Goehr was born in Russia in 1908, but fled the country during its revolution in the early 1920s for Berlin at age 13. While in Germany, Laelia performed in a cabaret duo, The Stone Sisters, and even played in the Moulin Rouge in Paris. However, Laelia was Jewish and later escaped Berlin for Britain in the build-up to World War Two. The move to London with her husband brought her burgeoning cabaret career to an end – but allowed her to start her prolific career in photography.”

New Resources 0

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