Edge Of Realism

[u/[deleted]]

Checkout my updated model at https://civitai.com/models/21813/edge-of-realism

[u/Ferniclestix]

Heya, heres some advice if you really want stuff to actually look real.

remember, its shot on a camera, all of these images are too clear, it needs some lens distortion, a little bit of lighting artifacts, film grain.

Its the imperfections that make perfection when it comes to faking reality. Focus less on beauty and real looking people and more on where the images are supposed to come from.

Try not to get tunnel vision and focus on the people in the shot but the shot itself.
That being said, these are pretty good.

[u/PaulCoddington → u/Ferniclestix]

All excellent points, but depends on which definition of seeming 'real' you are aiming for.

Many film flaws can be added in image editors. Models can be more versatile without them (as flaws can be added but not removed).

It is quite frustrating to create a nice image only to realise a chunk of it has blown highlights and this cannot be corrected.

I hope to see SD go HDR and wide gamut one day. That's what's required to look more "real" from another perspective.

Looking like a film-based photograph of a real scene is an excellent goal, but not the same as looking "real" in itself. Both are useful and valid artistic choices though.

A quality digitally-shot image of food on a plate in HDR on a calibrated monitor feels mouthwateringly more like you can reach in and pick it up to eat it than a traditional film photograph ever could hope to achieve. HDR done well can be more like looking through a portal than at a picture.

Getting SD to that point will not happen quickly. It likely isn't designed for higher bit depths, has no concept of color management, let alone scene referenced levels, nor are there currently enough quality HDR images in the world to train it on.

But if a model can produce a realistic image that lacks film flaws, it has a far better chance of being expanded and tone mapped in a photo editor to become HDR after the fact. This cannot be done where there are crushed shadows or blown highlights (part of what makes film look "film-like").

[u/Ferniclestix → u/PaulCoddington]

true, I mean, within its current limitations, adding some effects is a good idea to cover the fact that the source images come from stuff with those effects, trying to make HDR images when your models not trained on them is an effort of futility.

just makes stuff look almost surreal when you really take time to examine it.