In my last post I talked about how I had watched the Masterclass course about AI and that they had mentioned a few different AI tools during the course.
I thought Iād try one out called PicStudio.ai
If you want to try it out and support me at the same time, hereās my referral link: https://www.picstudio.ai/?via=dino
So the way it works is that you
- Select a āpackā
- Additional Options (depends on pack)
- Create a model
Select A Pack
The Pack is essentially the style of the photo. These are preset stylings like the lighting and concept for the background.
Additional Options
Depending on the pack you choose, there are sometimes additional options to select.
In my case, I selected the āField Biologistā Pack. Once I selected it, I then needed to select from a list of Clothing options and a list of location options.
For the clothing, I picked āLong-Sleeve Moisture-Wicking Shirt With Roll-Up Sleevesā
For the location, I picked āWooded Area With Deciduous Trees And Flowing Streamā
šŖ²Bug Interlude:
I did this on my iPhone, but ran into what I can only describe is a bug. I assume theyāve optimized their website for Chrome on mobile because Safari didnāt seem to work.
After selecting your pack and options, you need to add it to cart, and this simply wasnāt working for my.
I switched to using Chrome and then was able to complete the process there.
Create your model
Once you have selected the styling of your photo, (And paid for it), you need to provide information about the model (person) upon which the images are based.
This includes answering a bunch of question like age, gender, body type and so on. These were my details.
Model details
- Ethnicity: White
- Eye color: Brown
- Body type: Athletic
- Age: 39
- Gender: Male
You then need to upload āat least 8 picturesā.
šŖ²Bug interlude:
Here again there was some strangeness in the process. The copy and tips all say that you need to upload āat leastā 8 pictures of yourself. And there is even a tip that says āfor better results, upload more than 8 picturesā. But when it came to actually uploading the pictures, as soon as I uploaded the 8th photo I got a āphoto limit reachedā alert and was not able to upload any additional pictures. š¤·
anyway, these were the pictures I uploaded:
I can also see on my āmodelāsā details, that these images were automatically reinterpreted and cropped to the following:
Essentially, it looks like itās mainly focussing on my face, and cropping out the rest. In some cases it seems to have kept some of my upper body, while in other pics it cropped that part of my body out.
Results:
So once youāve filled out the question and provided your 8 pictures, and confirmed, it will take roughly 30 minutes for your pictures to be generated.
Each pack generates 40 images based on the same model.
Pros:
Overall I was blown away with how good the results were, it looks incredibly real and even generates images with my looking in various directions which is very cool.
My hair was very accurate, including how thick it is and the curls, the individual follicles were crazy. Most incredible was the beard hair. I have a mostly dark hair, but a few grey/white hairs in my beard, and thatās exactly what came out, Iām still in shock.
Another thing that I found really good was my nose. Iāve tried generating ācleaned upā photos of myself with ChatGPT in the past and they were complete failures. It always spits out an Ć¼ber smooth fake looking person, my nose is always turned into this weird long , thin nose, and my hair is always something that feels almost random.
Wrinkles and smile creases and even how my eyes close when Iām smiling were all 100% believable.
Cons:
On the face, I have very little to comment on, it was really good.
After really interrogating the photos, there were two things on the face that I noticed being ever so slightly off.
- Teeth: My two front teeth are slightly too big and flat, while the spaces between my teeth are too pronounced, leaving a lot of dark shadowing between them than in reality. Although I will say it got my one canine on the right side of my mouth really on point.
- Eye Wrinkles: So when I smile, I have a lot of wrinkles on the side of my eyes. It got the gist of it right, but because the pictures are generated to look like they are super hi-res, it also over-defines those wrinkles in many cases, especially the ones below my eyes. but like I said, I really had to interrogate the images to notice that this looks slightly innaccurate
So what about the rest of the body?
- Arm muscles: I found this to be over-pronounced in almost all the images. As much as it would be nice to look like this ānaturallyā, I think I might be able to pull this off if I was flexing throughout the whole photoshoot, after having just done 50 bicep curls, and was wearing a shirt one size too small. The pics arenāt completely crazily out of the question, but they are just beyond the limit of believability in about 80% of the cases.
- Body length: I found that many of the images make my torso look way too long. I think itās interesting that none of the questions ask about height and all the pictures I uploaded were all automatically cropped below the chest area. Again, the outputs were not totally off, but there were definitely a few that made my look taller than I actually am. For reference, Iām about 178cm // 5f9 (5ā10 if Iām standing up really straight and craning my neck a bit š
- Hands: I know AI hands are really bad generally, so in comparison, these are excellent, theyāre just not my hands though. I canāt explain it, I just look at them and know Iām not looking at me.
Here are some of the outputs that I found to be both good and as close to accurate as possible.
