It’s a hot topic, probably one that suffers from a lot of hype. But having said that, we just don’t know where this will all end for many professions and roles within organisations—no one really knows what the next steps will bring. 

In the meantime, however, we thought we’d look at one way the new ‘AI’ tools can help designers and those who work in marketing—or those who need to create some form of visual as part of their work.

Generative Fill

We’re looking at using AI in your design workflow (generative fill). Generative fill is the ability for so called ‘AI’ tools to fill in areas of an image that just aren’t there.

Tools such as Photoshop now include in their public versions a suite of ‘AI’ tools to manipulate images in a way not possible before by anyone but the most talented artists.

Let’s look at this quick example (see the image with this article above).

For a client’s advert we both agreed this image suited the visuals well. However, the image was cropped in such a way that it stopped short of the ideal depth. Without more depth we couldn’t get the image to site neatly in the space available.

This would typically mean we’d need to find a new image. But with the generative fill function in Photoshop we can now add more image to the lower part of the image, within seconds…

As you can see, the tools have done a very convincing job of adding new elements. They successfully ignored some elements (such as what we think may be a white sheet of paper) instead filling in new detail that wasn’t there.

Is it perfect? No? There are issues to the left side and the button added to the tan jacket don’t look quite right for example, but overall, and bearing in mind how we needed to use it, it worked perfectly and quickly.

This of course translates into a quicker job for the client, so they save on their budget too. So if you’ve not tried using AI in your design workflow yet, maybe you need to take a look.

What’s The Future?

‘AI’ tools are already helping businesses explain their needs to designers using better visuals, creating storyboard faster than ever, and helping designers speed up workflows and make changes to the way they work.

However, these ‘AI’ tools have already cost jobs within the industry, in artworking departments for example, and there are new tools in Illustrator on the way that are causing controversy in the illustration industry. But until we have a clearer picture of the full impacts, there are ways to use the new technology to our (and our clients) advantage.

Jeff

Caffeine Creative are an experienced team based on the outskirts of Cardiff. We help with graphic design, web development, company values, branding and more. To know more please contact us.