Photographers, You're Being Replaced By Software 282
Mrs. Grundy writes "CGI software, even open-source software like Blender, continues to improve in quality, speed and ease-of-use. Photographer Mark Meyer wonders how long it will be before large segments of the photography industry are replaced by software and become the latest casualty to fall to outsourcing. Some imagery once the domain of photographers has already moved to CGI. Is any segment of the photography market safe? Will we soon accept digital renderings in places where we used to expect photographs?"
Re:CGI wishes (Score:3, Interesting)
That and I think there will be backlash against it as consumers find out. Some things you just don't care. Other things you really want to see the real thing, even if it were inferior to a rendering.
What I'll be curious to see is how many places we're okay with digital renderings in lieu of human models. It could have real advantages, you could actually see clothing on a model that you load up that looks like you (instead of the same 25 stick figures with exchangeable faces).
Re:CGI wishes (Score:5, Interesting)
CGI is replacing actual photos in the stock picture business, and in the catalog business. I haven't seen an office catalog in years that uses actual pictures. It's all semi-competent CGI.
I know for a fact, err, trustworthy heresay... that almost all electronic catalog "pictures" are 3-d CAD renderings, sometimes with a bit of photoshop. I'm talking about real EE component catalogs, not best buy consumer catalogs.
From trying to take pictures of things I've built, its an unholy PITA and depth of field and reflections and lighting are agonizing. You can look at the pic of a PCB, lets say a stereotypical switching power supply module, and try to figure out how I could get that depth of field and lighting without reflection issues and suddenly realize, this was done in Solidworks not a camera.
If you want to see how bad "real pictures" of electronic devices/components look, try trashy photos of that stuff on ebay. Some of those guys are obviously not even wiping the human grease off the cellphone camera lens first.
Re:CGI wishes (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, in The Avengers, during the final battle sequence, most of the shots in the city are 100% CG, background buildings and all. Even in many of the "non FX" type films, I can assure you there are lot's of CG going on. Which is why I love it when people tell me that they hate CG films because it's so obvious, then I give them a quick list of films they have seen and give them examples where they have watched CG without even knowing it.
I work in both worlds (Score:5, Interesting)
I've done all sorts of photography professionally - from fine art, documentary, photojournalism, weddings, to commercial (not at the same time). And by professional, I mean, actually getting paid for it and making a living and renting cameras, grip, lights, assistants - the whole gamut. I have since switched to 3D and I tell you it's slower because I have to do everything myself. It's not like animators or modelers are clamoring for still image jobs. I have to model, texture, build the shader, and light the scene everything myself (which isn't hard with my background - but radiosity is another matter). That's at least a 2-3 week additional work time for a project.
Photography won't be replaced by CGI any time soon because the former is faster. I can hire a crew and equipment and finish a shoot in 10-12 hours tops. CG supplements it with set extension or environment/ object replacement, but to create something CG from scratch takes a very long time. I give CG this: it's easier to setup lights whereas in real life you need an electrician or a generator for larger projects, especially if it's on-location outdoors. You also need a lift and an experienced assistant to operate them, and an impeccable sense of where the wires are of course, have safety in mind at all times. With CG, I just click a light node and bam, I can duplicate 2k lights down a tunnel for a car shoot. Obviously, the downside is the render time, particularly when you have to bounce and diffuse it but if you can segment the 6k image to different quadrants per render node, and rent a render farm, it's efficient.
Overall workflow, photography is faster in my experience only because there's people available to hire. Where I'm at, there's not too many freelance CG artists, or artists who knows lighting (because it affects the shader and vice-versa), and almost no photographer/ assistant know how to do CG. I seriously doubt CG will overtake commercially produced still photography (as opposed to wedding, event, documentary, etc).
Re:CGI wishes (Score:5, Interesting)
All of painting wasn't obsoleted, but photography did greatly reduce the size of the portrait-painting market, which used to be important and lucrative. Rich people paying to have their portraits painted used to be the main way a lot of artists made a living, but that occupation took a real nose-dive in the early 20th century.
Re:CGI wishes (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly.
Right now, even the absolute best efforts don't fail to completely escape the uncanny valley [wikipedia.org], and the few that almost do usually require days of postwork and effort after the main render, just to get them that far. I won't even mention the hundreds of man-hours required to get up a proper mesh, get the lighting and composition just right, and then to wait out the render times (LuxRender, one of the better ones out there, will consume endless hours on end just to get up a complete render on a small image.)
As someone who has had a lot of fun in the CG realm for over a decade now, I know that it is *almost* possible, but won't be for a long time - especially not to the point where fully photorealistic images can be rendered out of thin air by some CG sweatshop in China.
A real-world incident (Score:3, Interesting)
All joking of robots replacing artists aside, there is some truth to Mr. Meyer's concern, and I have felt the consequences. Allow me to share a brief story as my first-ever Slashdot comment.
My father migrated to the US as a young man and high school dropout and learned to make his living as a commercial photographer. He got good at it, and though our family has never seen an excess of money, we've been able to survive from his steady income from the variety of low- and high-profile clients. (Though the payoff wouldn't suggest it, some are extremely well known -- anyone with a credit card looks at one of his old photos every day. #brag)
The big, then-ugly switch to digital came and he closed his dark room and turned on his Mac. Since then, his most steady client was one of the top major US mobile phone carriers. For well over a decade (maybe two, I have a terrible sense of time), he shot all of their new phones for packaging, billboards, etc. The market slowly changed and other customers stopped asking for photos, but this single company kept our family afloat.
Last year the company hired a new marketing firm who convinced them to switch from hi-res photographs of their products to 3D computer-rendered graphics. My dad was no longer needed and after many years of nonstop work they dropped him. My dad, who is now 72 years old, with no other steady photo customers, has had to make changes. He packed up his photo studio and set up shop at home for occasional shoots, but is applying to grocery stores so he can pay the bills. (Being adaptable and resilient, he has also been teaching himself digital video editing in an effort to get into that market.)
What about the phone company's switch to rendered models? Apparently it has gone poorly for them. Word has it that the switch was a disaster -- turnaround for new images was neither cheaper nor faster -- and they have fired the marketing firm, who in turn, consequentially, has had to make massive layoffs.
So back on topic, yes, there is CG replacing some photography in the real world. But such an "upgrade" seems yet early. Maybe even premature or naively futuristic. Make what you will of its outcome.