Items tagged with photos
A little over a year ago, we talked about NVIDIA and its AI processing technology that was working to create realistic-looking human faces from a few source photos. The images that the AI created were so photorealistic that you would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the AI generated faces and real human faces in photos. The technology has come so far in the last four years that the difference is now even more astonishing, and frankly a little creepy. The image above (b) shows the faces that a similar AI was able to generate in 2014, while the photo below this paragraph shows the faces the AI can create today. The AI-rendered faces are so good that if you weren't told...
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First Year In Google Photos Chronicles 200 Million Users, 13.7 Petabytes Of Pics, 24 Billion Selfies
One thing that hasn't changed in recent times is that life's precious memories are still preserved in photos and videos. However, it's the media that's different now—instead of actual photographs stored in physical photo albums, it's now common to archive memorable moments in digital form. The widespread adoption of Google Photos underscores that transition. It's been a year since Google introduced its Photos service, and in that short period of time it's amassed some 200 million monthly active users. Collectively all those users have uploaded a whopping 13.7 petabytes of digital data. To put that number if perspective, if you were to try and swipe through every photo, it would take you 424 years,...
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An update to OS X today brings with it Apple’s new Photos app, which is meant to give users better tools for accessing and sorting their photos. Photos is also more integrated with iCloud, which is good news if you’ve been meaning to get your photos off your vulnerable hard drive and into the cloud. If your 5GB of free iCloud space is already nearly tapped, however, you may soon be exploring Apple’s paid storage expansion options. Image credit: AppleThe Photos app is free, of course. It replaces Aperture and iPhoto and is similar in design to the Photos app for iOS. But it has many more features than you’ll find on the iPhone’s version, including better tools for color correction and a cropping...
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Just in case there's a shred of doubt, posting sexually explicit photos or videos of your ex-lover without his or her permission is not okay. The practice, known as revenge porn, is a cowardly way of seeking vengeance for whatever wrong an ex is perceived to have made. And not only is revenge porn in poor taste, it's also becoming increasingly illegal as new laws aim to crack down the behavior.One of them landed Kevin Bollaert, a former revenge porn website owner, an 18-year prison sentence. According to the Pittsburg Post Gazette, the 28-year-old allowed over 10,000 nude and sexually explicit photos to be posted to his now defunct website, UGotPosted.com. He encouraged scorned exes to post such...
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One of the best reasons to use Facebook is to keep up to date with family and friends that live in different time zones. Sure, we've all posted goofy status updates and pictures of our lunch, but at its best, Facebook is a vehicle for virtually taking part in the lives of loves ones, especially when photos are involved. Building on that theme, Facebook is rolling out a customizable scrapbook feature that will make it easier to organize and share photos. "Our team ran a small survey for parents who share pictures of their children on Facebook and found that 65 percent of them tag their partner in these photos to share them with their partner’s friends. These same parents also told us they want...
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Have you ever sat down and thought to yourself, "Self, what the Internet really needs are more animated GIFs!" Probably not, but brace yourself for a deluge of GIFs in the coming months anyway as YouTube rolls out a new feature that will make it easy to create them from videos that have been uploaded to the service.We're not being curmudgeons here, we just know what's around the bend, and that's a lot more GIFs. Hopefully this will result in some hilarious captures, and if you're planning to participate but need video fodder, be sure to check out HotHardware's YouTube channel.The feature is currently being tested on PBS Idea Channel's YouTube page, and the way it works is rather easy. If you...
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It's no guarantee that today's fads won't fizzle out tomorrow, especially in the rapidly evolving mobile space. That being the case, Snapchat took a monumental gamble by turning down two lucrative buyout offers by Facebook, one for $1 billion and a second one for $3 billion. Time will tell if those were wise decisions, but in the meantime, Snapchat's development team continues to find ways to keep its users engaged, most recently by adding geofilters. "We’ve had a lot of fun drawing up new filters for special locations in Los Angeles and New York. Swipe right on the preview screen to check them out – they’ll change depending on which neighborhoods you’re in! Although you’ll...
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If you have a teenage son or daughter, you've probably spotted them making weird and contorted faces at their smartphone's front-facing camera. They're using Snapchat, a wildly popular photo and video sharing application in which users can send each other snapshots or short recordings that are viewable for anywhere from 1 second to up to 10 seconds (the recipient can always save a screenshot, though the app tattles on them if they do). It's a simple, free app available on iOS and Android that's quickly approaching a $1 billion valuation. To keep things fresh, and to keep that value up there, the Snapchat team just issued an update that adds a "Stories" feature, which is sort of like having a...
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Facebook isn't about to let its $1 billion acquisition of Instagram go to waste. Continued innovation is the secret to both remaining relevant in an increasingly crowded field of apps that offer filters for photos and videos, and to seeing a return on such a hefty investment. Towards that end, the Instagram team just unveiled web embedding for photos and videos. "Now, when you visit an Instagram photo or video page on your desktop web browser, you’ll see a new share button on the right side of your photo (just under the comments button). Click the button to see the embed code. Copy the block of text it gives you and paste it into your blog, website or article. When you hit publish, the...
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Instagram addicts can now get their fix of filtered photos even when their mobile phone batteries run out of juice. How so? The Facebook-owned service announced that you can now browse your Instagram feed on the web from your desktop or laptop, just like you do on your mobile device. All you have to do is head to Instagram's website and log into your account. "We believe that you should be able to access Instagram on a variety of different devices, any of which may be convenient to you at a given moment – including your desktop computer or tablet," Instagram stated in a blog post. "We do not offer the ability to upload from the web as Instagram is about producing photos on the go, in the...
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Being an investigative journalist isn't always easy. So, when a semi-illicit snapshot of a steamy dressing room scene in a French ski shop started making its way through cyberspace, we knew he had to, uh, take a closer look. For journalism, of course. And what exactly did we find upon a closer examination? We found that this particular ski shop has a sense of humor. Not only was the dressing room scene staged, but there are several funny scenes to be found as you virtually browse the store through Google Maps. Here's a look at the pic that grabbed our attention. We have no idea how far the naughty dressing room inhabitants went to make this scene look authenticate, but we do know they weren't...
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Here’s a name that’ll bring back memories (particularly memories of waving photos ‘til your hands hurt): Polaroid. The company is fighting its way back into the market with the just-announced Polaroid Fotobar, which is a retail location that lets you print the photos stored on your phone. It sounds as though Polaroid is following in the footsteps of the Apple Store with a focus on customer experience. According to Polaroid, the world is shooting 1.5 billion pictures every day. Nope, this isn't an Apple Store. It's a Polaroid Fotobar. Image credit: Polaroid Polaroid, which will have more details on the Fotobar at CES next week, describes the experience of printing your photos...
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Hasselblad has been catering to photographers for over five decades and specializes in medium format cameras, which are priced accordingly. In case you didn't know, the typical medium format camera can cost as much as a Kia, or more, so the fact that Hasselblad is running a promotion where a number of models are discounted by up to 22.9 percent (let's just call it 23 percent, shall we?), well, that's a pretty big deal. Make no mistake, these cameras are still expensive even after the price cuts, and if you're a bargain shopper, there's nothing to see here. But for those who are interested in Hasselblad's cameras, now is the time to pounce. A sample of models that have been reduced include: Model...
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Samsung's ST80 digital camera might be just the cure for social networking nuts who get the shakes when unplugging from cyberspace for too long. That's because the ST80 is Samsung's latest in a line of Wi-Fi enabled point-and-shoots, meaning Little Miss Molly MySpace and Freddy Facebook can fling those Kodak Samsung moments online from any hotspot instead of having to rush home to fire up their PC. "We want to let people share their favorite pictures quickly while they’re on the move, and the ST80 does just that," said Sangjin Park, President of the Digital Imaging Business, Samsung Electronics. "Connectivity is everywhere, and at Samsung we are committed to bringing these wireless capabilities...
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