[HN Gopher] How to turn 'sfo-jfk' into a suitable photo
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How to turn 'sfo-jfk' into a suitable photo
Author : bblcla
Score : 16 points
Date : 2026-01-28 19:24 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.approachwithalacrity.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.approachwithalacrity.com)
| kazinator wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| I realize dang has already tagged this (and I get it) but I
| don't know who is actually benefiting from this. This is
| deceptive as it doesn't represent a traveler's actual/expected
| experience and just adds more slop to the pile. This is a case
| where you should pay actual photographers to take verified
| pictures of the places you are recommending people visit. Why
| would someone cheapen their brand like this?
| properbrew wrote:
| If you read the article you'll see it's not about generating
| AI slop images:
|
| > Take a freeform query (like 'sfo->jfk') and turn it into a
| 'place'
|
| > Build a database of 'places' -> pictures
|
| > Build a software system that can take a 'place', look it up
| in a database and spit out the right picture - even if that
| 'place' isn't in the database
| busymom0 wrote:
| Couldn't you grab the image from the Wikipedia page of that
| location? For example searching for "Deadvlei" from the blog post
| gives this which has a photo:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadvlei
| dang wrote:
| [stub for offtopicness]
|
| [sorry I messed up with that title! perils of not reading the
| articles closely]
| tehjoker wrote:
| I'm not sure it's good idea to use AI for this purpose. When
| you're talking about travel, you're talking about a real place.
|
| If you show something photorealistic and AI generated, what is
| shown is simply an illusion.
|
| If you use a cartoon style maybe they can work because the user
| will immediately understand what is shown is not a photograph.
| hayksaakian wrote:
| the article doesn't talk about AI generating photos. it talks
| about using AI to interpret user queries into photo
| selections from photographers
| nluken wrote:
| The post title here is extremely misleading. Per HN
| standards, the post should use the original title, "How to
| turn 'sfo-jfk' into a beautiful photo"
| dang wrote:
| Ok, sorry! but re 'beautiful' see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46802571
| tehjoker wrote:
| sorry i skimmed the post and confused myself then
| MrZander wrote:
| The title on HN is incorrect/misleading, they are not
| generating AI images. They are hand curating a database of
| images by location and using an LLM to pick the pictures.
| npinsker wrote:
| The headline (currently: _"Trying to craft AI images that are
| worth displaying to end users"_ ) is misleading and changed
| from the original. Author isn't crafting any AI images; they're
| using AI in tandem with manual work to help choose from a set
| of human-authored images.
| dang wrote:
| Ok! that was my attempt to avoid linkbait and make the title
| less provocative (submitted title was "How to design an AI
| app with a sense of taste"). But I missed the mark this time,
| so have reverted the title to the article's own headline,
| except I'm not going to keep the word 'beautiful' up there
| since that would be certain to provoke shallow objections.
| echelon wrote:
| Speaking of "crafting", I think this is the perfect word to
| describe something more than "prompting".
|
| It's extremely hard to block out a scene with just words, eg.
| "rotate hand 45 degrees, stand perpendicular to the column,
| shadows from light source 60 degrees above horizon, large box
| in front of chest, approximately 2 feet wide", etc.
|
| Image-to-image, ControlNets, previz-to-final, etc. are the way
| to go, and I'm convinced this is the core interface for image
| and video creation. Text prompts will get you a coarse grained
| first approximation, which you then visually adjust to your
| exact needs with UI/UX-first models.
|
| I built an intentional "crafting" engine so people could mold
| images like clay, with full intention:
|
| https://github.com/storytold/artcraft
|
| This is really early days though. I expect more tools and
| models to enable you to fully manipulate everything first-
| class, in 2d/3d. As if everything in an image were mutable.
|
| As a film director, this is really exciting stuff.
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