Category: Family

Century-Old Drawing > A.I. Version

On the left is a more than century-old drawing of Grandma Rydberg. On the right is the photo version as interpreted by Adobe Firefly A.I.

The A.I. version doesn’t replace the old drawing for me, but it does give a really good idea of how Grandma looked when she sat for the artist. Printing it up and displaying it would be of great value, in my opinion, since we don’t have that many portrait photos of her when she was younger.

If used correctly, A.I. can fix, enhance, and even improve an old photo, but if not used correctly, like anything, the results can be detrimental. In this sort of use, it is just another kind of Photoshop, which has A.I. tools of its own.

I have a favorite 1996 Nintendo game, “Metroid”, and have played different versions that have been altered by people; one is extremely well done, having logically added and enhanced things that should have been accomplished on the original game. Another one was an example of someone who got access to the editing tools and went nuts, creating a frustrating version of the game that is almost unplayable.

I look at A.I. and Photoshop in regard to graphics in the same way; used correctly, it can be amazing and useful; used incorrectly… and horrible things can happen.

1916 • Grandma Rydberg • A.I. Photo Restoration

On the left is an A.I.-restored (Adobe Firefly) photo of my Grandma Rydberg, from when she was seventeen years old in 1916, and still in Hungary. They left for America soon after that.

I didn’t want to take this photo out of its very old and odd frame, so considering that this is just an iPhone photo through the glass, with some light reflection, the A.I. did pretty well.

Oil Paintings By My Late Aunt Ida

More art by Aunt Ida at: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjCS1xn

My late Aunt Ida was a prolific oil painter, and unfortunately we have no idea where her paintings went, other than the four that we have in our house. This mountain painting, which is pretty small compared to the one of the country house, was just found in my Dad’s files. It is nice that we have a fairly diverse collection, even if it is only four pieces.

Work like this is one of the reasons I’m not a fan of “Modern Art”, where people just toss two or three cans of paint on a canvas and declare the result “Artwork”. Or drawing two rectangles on a white canvas, and if you don’t “get it”, than you aren’t sophisticated enough to understand how ground-breaking it is.

Declaring things that are ugly, visually chaotic, insultingly simple, childish, and lazily random to be great art is what happens when standards no longer exist. My aunt learned a craft, practiced it prolifically, and the result were paintings that are unique and beneficial to the soul.

Aunt Ida holding my Dad

Emily and Madeline

We have two wonderful photos in our stairwell, framed and enlarged from their original 4×6 size. I’ve been looking for those small originals for a long time, and my sister just sent me a copy of her girls, Emily and Madeline, so that is one out of two! The other one is my nephew Edward and his sister, Elaine. My guess is that these photos are buried in documents somewhere in my dad’s office, or mom gave them away as she was doing that a few years before she passed away, stacks of photos, gone. But, if this photo can resurface, the other one can, too.