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Archive for January, 2023

Errol’s Influence in Comics and on Comic creators

27 Jan

The first image is by Alex Toth,who would base his main character Jesse Bravo’s look in Bravo For Adventure off of Errol’s handsome self, and go on to base the looks of other characters he authored in Flynn’s likeness,including the infamous “Zorro”. Below that are two pieces of work by Flash Gordon’s creator Alex Raymond,with one being that of Captain Sudin (a high ranking member of Emperor Ming’s empire who would join the freemen against Ming), and the other is a poster Alex Raymond drew for Captain Blood.Last is a page from Mike Grell’s story Green Arrow:The longbow hunters,which would feature many images and references to Flynn,and a cameo by Howard Hill.

— Smordon Cluce

 
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Adobe Adobe Unveils Firefly, a Family of new Creative Generative AI

24 Jan

Adobe is Making its Firefly Generative AI Available to Big Businesses

Throughout his career, Cem served as a tech consultant, tech buyer and tech entrepreneur. He advised enterprises on their technology decisions at McKinsey & Company and Altman Solon for more than a decade. He has also led commercial growth of deep tech company Hypatos that reached a 7 digit annual recurring revenue and a 9 digit valuation from 0 within 2 years. Cem’s work in Hypatos was covered by leading technology publications like TechCrunch and Business Insider. He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School. Generative Adversarial Networks modeling (GANs) is a semi-supervised learning framework.

Adobe’s Firefly generative AI tools exit beta phase, now available for everyone – News9 LIVE

Adobe’s Firefly generative AI tools exit beta phase, now available for everyone.

Posted: Fri, 15 Sep 2023 12:54:09 GMT [source]

Future Adobe Firefly models will leverage a variety of assets, technology and training data from Adobe and others. As other models are implemented, Adobe will continue to prioritize countering potential harmful bias. We’ve augmented the model with a powerful style engine, to help you explore the generative capabilities and create photos, art, graphics and text effects with impressive style, color, tone, lighting and composition controls.

Adobe made an AI image generator — and says it didn’t steal artists’ work to do it

Adobe has the capability to pull off a rich generative AI experience and has the principles and guidelines in place to do it responsibly. But as David Wadhwani, president of digital media at Adobe, said, it is “A long journey from where we are now to where we know we can get.” I believe he is right about that. For one, the question of whether images produced using AI can be copywrited still needs to be answered.

firefly generative ai

We’re starting with images, text effects, and vectors, with Generative Fill and Generative Expand in Adobe Photoshop, Text to Image in Adobe Firefly, Generative Recolor in Adobe Illustrator, Text Effects in Adobe Express, and more. Each groundbreaking generative AI feature unlocks new creative possibilities, empowering users to play, experiment, dream, and create the extraordinary. Firefly will be made up of multiple models, tailored to serve customers with a wide array of skillsets and technical backgrounds, working across a variety of different use cases. Adobe’s first model, focused on images and text effects, was trained on Adobe Stock images, openly licensed content and public domain content where copyright has expired and is designed to generate content safe for commercial use. This new enterprise-level product isn’t an unexpected move from Adobe, especially if you’re already familiar with its Firefly AI model.

Want to learn more about Generative AI?

Artbreeder – This platform uses genetic algorithms and deep learning to create images of imaginary offspring. The most commonly used generative models for text and image creation are called Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and Variational Autoencoders (VAEs). Once a generative AI algorithm has been trained, it can produce new outputs that are similar to the data it was trained on. Because generative AI requires more processing power than discriminative AI, it can be more expensive to implement. Arguably, because machine learning and deep learning are inherently focused on generative processes, they can be considered types of generative AI, too. During the beta, creatives around the world have generated billions of assets with Adobe Firefly.

  • In this blog let us try to understand what Generative AI is and its applications and limitations.
  • Adobe has unveiled a new platform for its Firefly generative AI model that’s designed to help organizations address the growing demand for content creation across their workplace.
  • Adobe doesn’t have timelines on when any of these features will be released, but they’re among the examples that Costin says the company is working on.
  • After these are consumed, users are subject to slower content generation unless they buy additional credits.
  • With Adobe Express, we’re creating outstanding and brand uniform content in a way that’s scalable,” said Christina Lehnert, digital brand experience manager at Carl Zeiss AG.

Once customers have used their allocated number of Generative Credits, the ability to create generative AI images and text effects will remain, albeit at a slower rate. Customers can buy additional Generative Credit subscription packs, although Adobe has not provided information on how much these will cost. “Adobe Express has empowered our creatives to focus on high-impact, high-value work while equipping other teams with a powerful but easy-to-use design tool. We can bypass repetitive, manual tasks and save time without compromising our brand or creative output,” said Bridget Esposito, vice president and group creative director at Prudential Financial.

Yakov Livshits
Founder of the DevEducation project
A prolific businessman and investor, and the founder of several large companies in Israel, the USA and the UAE, Yakov’s corporation comprises over 2,000 employees all over the world. He graduated from the University of Oxford in the UK and Technion in Israel, before moving on to study complex systems science at NECSI in the USA. Yakov has a Masters in Software Development.

Are Adobe Stock credits and generative credits the same thing?

Everything is designed, from the ground up, to be embeddable into your existing workflows across Adobe Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, Experience Cloud and Adobe Express. Adobe is also planning to make Firefly available via APIs on various platforms to enable customers to integrate into custom workflows and automations. The number of monthly generative credits each user receives depends on their subscription. The consumption of generative credits depends on the generated output’s computational cost and the value of the generative AI feature used. Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that enhances creativity by producing amazing results from simple text prompts. Generative AI features powered by Firefly are now available in our core creative tools and the standalone Firefly web app.

firefly generative ai

Adobe’s “transparency in AI” message displays when users download an AI-generated image. Even though artificial intelligence has existed for decades, marketers should pay attention to the ongoing seismic shifts in this growing segment. According to a recent report, the value of the global generative AI market is estimated at $110.8 billion by 2030 (compared to $7.9 billion in 2021). Adobe Stock credits are used to license content from the Adobe Stock website as defined in the Adobe Stock additional terms or your customer agreement, as applicable. But Adobe has pushed Firefly despite these early issues, and its integration into Generative Fill at the end of May felt like the most impressive application of the technology yet. As a result, at launch, Firefly was woefully behind its competitors, especially Midjourney.

To this end, we want to make sure you see opportunities to benefit from your skills and creativity and protect your work. It is our intent to build generative AI in a way that enables you to monetize your talents, much like we’ve done with Adobe Stock and Behance. We are developing a compensation model for Stock contributors to benefit from Firefly and will share details once we’re out of beta. We’re also taking steps to prevent artists’ names from being used in Adobe’s generative AI actions and pushing for open industry standards through the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI). It’s critical that generative AI models honor a universal “Do Not Train” tag that remains attached to an asset wherever its used, published or stored.

firefly generative ai

At launch, Adobe is calling Firefly a beta, and it’ll only be available through a website. But eventually, Adobe plans to tightly integrate generative AI tools with its suite of creative apps, like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Yakov Livshits Premiere. Aside from its assured commercial viability, Firefly’s explosive popularity — largely fueled by its high-quality results — will likely hold plenty of appeal for businesses looking to explore generative AI solutions.

Adobe wants to ensure trust and transparency in AI-generated content

That’s one reason why people are worried that generative AI will replace humans whose jobs involve publishing, broadcasting and communications. DeepDream Generator – An open-source platform that uses deep learning algorithms to create surrealistic, dream-like images. If you have the full Creative Cloud subscription, which gets you access to all of Adobe’s software for $55 per month, you can produce up to 1,000 creations a month. If you have a single-app subscription, for example to use Photoshop or Premiere Pro at $21 per month, it’s 500 creations a month.

Adobe Firefly AI Is Out of Beta in Photoshop and Illustrator – Gizmodo

Adobe Firefly AI Is Out of Beta in Photoshop and Illustrator.

Posted: Wed, 13 Sep 2023 17:00:26 GMT [source]

— Kathleen

 
 

Passing of Great Star and Actress Gina Lollobrigida

16 Jan

The famed Italian film actress and International movie star Gina Lollobrigida has died at age 95.  “Lollo” (nicknamed in her native Italy) starred in 67 films, including co-starring with Errol Flynn in the under-rated, comic swashbuckler, “Crossed Swords” (1954).  Miss Lollobrigida was by far a finer dramatic screen actress then her rival Sophia Loren.  On top of that Gina displayed a genuine, natural flair for comedy in such films as “Hotel Paradiso” (1966) with Alec Guiness and Robert Morley, the hilarious “Buona Sera Mrs. Campbell” (1967) with Peter Lawford, Phil Silvers, Telly Savalas, and Shelley Winters, and wartime laughs in “The Private Navy Of Sgt. O’Farrell” (1968) starring opposite lucky Bob Hope, with Jeffrey Hunter and Phyliss Diller!

Gina Lollobrigida’s passing means that as of this date there are only four, surviving leading ladies of Errol Flynn.  Whom?   Do not include the charming child actresses Patti Brady of “Never Say Goodbye” (1947), or Sherry Jackson from the unseen “Hello God” (1951), both of whom are still with us.

— Ralph Schiller

 
 

Mail Bag: Errol Flynn & Frank Sinatra Obsessed with a Four Letter Word

16 Jan

The Mail Bag brings an interesting question from Mike Harwood. Whst is the 4 letter word Errol Flynn and Frank Sinatra were obsessed with?

Hi there,

Did you ever find out what the four-letter word beginning with M was that Flynn & Sinatra were supposedly obsessed with?
There’s a copy of the Saga magazine on abebooks but the international postage would be twice the cost of the magazine for me.  The seller does include a picture of the article but the answer is evidently on the next page!
I’m wondering if it is a woman’s name like Mary, possibly an actress, but it would be a funny way of referring to a person!
regards,
Mike Harwood.
Thanks, Mike!

— David DeWitt

 

Remembering…

16 Jan

the passing- 81 years ago today:

” Carole Lombard’s tragic death means that something of gaiety and beauty have been taken from the world at a time we need it the most.” ~ Errol Flynn

— Karl

 
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Mail Bag! What Errol Flynn Books Have You Read?

08 Jan

Our great friend Jan van der Vliet shows us his bookshelf today and asks What Errol Flynn books have you read?

Thanks, Jan …

— David DeWitt

 

DC PUBs

03 Jan

Based on a recent post, here is the entire series of photos from the shooting of Dodge City from the book by Mr Fegerl. He asked me to share it.

— Inga

 
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