I Used AI To Expand Myself 100 TIMES On Photoshop. Here's What Happened.

did you know that you can use generative

AI directly in Photoshop if you use

Photoshop on a regular basis this is not

news to you if you don't use Photoshop

on a regular basis you might not know

about this but also um you might not

care because you don't use Photoshop

either way stick around because this is

not just a tutorial there's a there's a

bigger point to this but then the 2024

update to photoshop they included

several uh generative AI tools like

generative Phill where if you select a

part of a photo and then tell it what

you want it to put there it just puts it

there

that and generative expand that lets you

expand out from your subject and it just

fills in what's around them it's not

perfect and sometimes it makes weird

choices but it kind of works like chaty

PT by just sort of like how chaty PT

just predicts what the next word should

be this just sort of predicts what

should be there based off of what it

sees around the edges of the images and

I use this a lot in making my thumbnails

and stuff so I got curious like what

would happen if you did that generative

expand thing over and over and over

again like like like what if you did it

a 100 times how many times would it take

before things started to get weird the

answer not very

many oh

man so I should start by saying that I

am not a Photoshop expert by any means

but I have used it a lot over the years

like I worked as a copywriter in

advertising uh for about 15 years uh and

obviously I was not a designer I was a

copywriter but I worked with designers

and there was a lot of mocking up stuff

in Photoshop that way I've also made

thumb nails for over 800 videos on this

channel yes I have done over 800 videos

on this channel and by the way each

video I do a few different thumbnails so

it's well into the thousands at this

point I would say on a scale of 1 to 10

I'm maybe a six maybe a seven in in

Photoshop skills um I'm I'm good enough

to mock up ideas but then if I want it

to really look good I send it to an

actual designer but what I've easily

spent most of my time on Photoshop doing

is making thumbnails for these videos

and all videos for thumbnails are 16 by9

kind of like what you're looking at

right here and vertical photos are the

bane of my existence so here's what I

mean by this let's just say you find the

perfect image but it's not 16 by9 so the

first thing you got to do is create a

little template it's a 16x9 template and

then you have to pull this out drop it

in this is what I had to do about 5

years ago so you had two options here

one is you scale it way up so that it

fills the entire width and then you have

to just sort of frame it ever is best

for that frame but you don't get to see

the entire thing this is especially bad

when you're doing you know people with

their faces and stuff like that or you

can scale it to about you know the right

size but then you got to fill in these

things on the side now again like just

five years ago the best option that you

had here would be to do something like

select the stamp tool and that's where

you uh select something right there and

then you paint over to the side and it

just basically covers what was there in

that little stamp that you did

this is very beginner uh Photoshop stuff

as you can see you can only do a little

bit at a time and it's it's uh it's very

timec consuming now just a few years ago

they introduced something called content

aware fill and what you would do there

is you would select the area that you

need to fill in and then you hit content

aware fill and it would basically fill

it in with whatever is Clos it you can

see where it's green right there it

would kind of show you what it's pulling

from and uh it's to say that it it

wasn't perfect but it would fill it in

with something for some reason this this

stable background became bricks in its

estimation but now with the 2024 model

they have this generative expand tool

and it's so freaking simple you hit the

crop tool then you come down here into

this little bar that they've created

select 16 by9 so it creates the size

that you want and then just expand it

out to the size that you want it to to

be you create the space that it needs to

fill in and then uh you just select

generate and you got a little task tool

up here it takes a second for it to to

load up but look at what happens it's

done it's almost I mean unless you're

really looking for it you cannot hardly

even

tell that there was anything change to

it it does give you a few different

options to choose from here uh but

usually usually one of them works

perfectly so here's another example of

how I used one of these I did a video a

while back on U how they're bringing

back the woolly mammoth de extincting

animals that kind of thing well I found

this photo uh in the Adobe stock catalog

so again I need to make this 16 by9 so

you go to crop it's 16 by9 in the

ratio make it a little bit bigger so

it's the right

size generate and now you've got this

background and it looks perfect doesn't

it so I wanted to show that there's

human beings in here with the mammoth so

what I did was I select the Marquee tool

and just kind of I want a person

standing right here on this rock right

here so I just kind of did a little

thing kind of selected a little thing

like that create a space now you hit

generative fill and you type in uh a

person looking up at the

mammoth

in

cold weather

clothing and hit gener

and there it is you want a different

person you also got that person who's

kind of growing out of the rock which is

weird that might be my favorite look at

that it's magic so like when we talk

about AI being a tool it's it's kind of

an abstract concept until you get to

things like this and and it's just these

very incredibly time-saving features

that AI has brought in to tools that

we've been using for a long time that

are the real game changer to me but

seeing this at work got me thinking like

what if I took a picture of myself and

did a generative expand on it and then I

expanded out from that and then out from

that and out from that what if I did

that a 100 times and then maybe I could

Stitch all that together like an

infinite Zoom thing so I decided to give

it a try so I took a shot of myself

which you can see here and I expanded it

and I decided to use the grid that the

crop tool creates and made it so the

size of the photo was the same as one of

the cells created by the grid that way

all the expansions would be the same I

think it came out to about 300% did the

generative expand and and got this oh

man it looks like the ceiling is melting

look how long my arm is I realized

pretty quickly that if I just kept

expanding the image over and over that

the size of the image was going to

become unsustainably large so I reduced

the image size back down to 4K

resolution and then expanded it again oh

this is interesting this is actually a

lot more interesting than what I got

yesterday

[Music]

you see now I'm in like a weird

cave I should probably mention that I

did all this on a live stream that I

made available for members so we got to

hang out and chat while I did this it

took a few hours hit the join button

down below if you want to be invited my

next weird idea

anyway oh we're coming out of the cave

now wasn't expecting that the expansion

seemed to put me in a cave for some

reason or maybe something like like a

bomb shelter built into a cave there

maybe a story behind this but within

maybe about five expansions it took me

out of the cave and then we were just

off across an endless

landscape so part of this little

experiment was that I wanted to just let

it be random um remember it gives you

three choices and obviously whichever

choice you choose will affect the Next

Generation and so on and so on so if I

wanted to direct where it went I could

do so by picking a different choice or

for that matter I could have just

entered a text prompt to change it

however I wanted but I chose to just let

Randomness do its

thing for a while

yeah after about an hour and a half of

this endless landscape that wasn't

changing much it just all kind of

started to feel kind of syy so I decided

to nudge it a little bit to see if I can

make it go in a different direction and

go in a different direction it

did o

oh so how does this work without going

into a whole Deep dive on generative Ai

and how it works because that's totally

out of scope for this video and it's

been covered a million times before the

first of these programs to really make

some ways was Dolly from open AI which

was only just revealed in January of

2021 yeah believe it or not this is only

about 3 years old but doly was a

revelation because it combined natural

language processing with image

generation making it possible to just

enter a text prompt and get a fully

realized image out of it it wasn't

perfect uh especially with hands it was

notoriously bad with hands at first but

it was a proof of concept um also the

original DOI wasn't really available to

the public it was more of a research

project DOI to made significant

improvements to the original and it was

available to the public in April of 2024

followed soon after by mid journey in

July of that year and stable defusion

one month later in August yeah I think

someday we're going to look back on 2022

as the year when this all started

happening one of the big problems with

these image generators was that they

were basically trained on all the images

on the internet meaning artists

photographers illustrators they were all

having their copyrighted work being used

without their permission which is still

going on but to add insult to injury

these same artists and photographers had

to face the possibility of losing work

because people can now just make

whatever images they want instead of

paying an artist to do it for them but

even more so they stood to lose Revenue

they normally made by licensing their

work to stock image libraries stock

image sites have been a whole industry

for a while now for decades actually

they were used by designers and agencies

to mock up campaigns and websites and

they were really one of the first

Industries in the shopping block once

the gener to AI art thing became a thing

and one of the largest stock libraries

in the world was was owned by Adobe

itself they stood to lose Millions maybe

billions of dollars as people turn to

these generative AI models so in March

of last year Adobe introduced Firefly so

Firefly is adobe's generative AI model

it works just like Dolly and mid Journey

the difference is that Firefly is only

trained using the images in Adobe stock

catalog which means Adobe already had

the licensing rights to all these images

so it feels a bit more ethical because

at least the artists got paid something

for their work being used in training

data now I tried Firefly when came out

honestly I was kind of underwhelmed by

it compared to say mid Journey who I

still think has the best image quality

and apparently I'm not alone in that

opinion because Firefly has never really

taken off as a standalone image

generator but in 2024 Adobe Incorporated

Firefly into Photoshop so yeah these

generative expand these generative fill

tools that's Firefly and as a tool

inside of Photoshop it's been a game

changer and it's made possible all the

things that I'm talking about in this

video okay so you know how I said I was

maybe a six or a seven on Photoshop a

second ago I would give myself the same

rating of proficiency when it comes to

editing I've done tons of editing but

yeah I would still rate myself as only

maybe a six or a seven but when it comes

to graphics and like effects and stuff

like that um I maybe a

three as you're about to find out so

here's how I was hoping this would work

I was hoping that I could just use the

scale function in Adobe Premiere and

time it up just right have it kind of

just fade in from one picture to another

and time the the expansions just right

so that all I would have to do is apply

that to one clip and then I could just

copy that property and apply to all the

other Clips line them up Bob's your

uncle um turns out Bob was not my uncle

cuz as you can see this first one looks

fine but then the timing on the second

one I just couldn't quite get it right I

played with it and played with it trying

to make it work and what it turns out

the problem is is that um the velocity

of scaling the the speed of the scaling

changes depending on what percentage of

scale the image is meaning an image

that's expanding from say 30% to 50% is

going to move a lot faster than when

it's going from 200 to 250% and that

just made timing up those clips really

difficult I even came over here in the

effects controls panel and was applying

a a curve to the scaling um trying to

make it work right there and as you can

see I played with this for like a couple

of hours and I just never could quite

get it right did I mention I'm about a

three when it comes to graphics and

effects what I realized I need to do is

to be able to move it in zspace so if

you know know anything about um editing

and compositing and things like that you

got the X and the y in the parameters

that you see but then there's like a

depth a zspace and I figured if I could

get the zspace lined up that way I

wouldn't be dealing with those weird

velocity issues when it came to scaling

the problem is you can't really do that

in Premiere you need something like

Adobe After Effects to do that and if if

I'm maybe a six or a seven editor in

Premiere I am like a -2 editor when it

comes to Adobe After Effects I am not

good at that luckily I have a good

friend named Mark who is good at that so

after I finally gave up on this I handed

it over to Mark and he did his thing in

After

Effects so it turns out even using the

zspace and after effects wasn't quite as

easy as I was hoping for there was a lot

of positioning the images to line up

just right so instead of just getting

one clip right and then copying and

pacing that property to all the others

like I had hoped we'd be able to do um

he actually had to painstakingly take

each Shot line them up adjust their

timing and do that one after another a

100 times I ow him a few beers for this

and even then he struggled to make the

transitions as as smooth as I was hoping

for it turns out that the expansions

themselves kind of created a bit of a

warp on the outside of the images that

prevented it from lining up perfectly so

yeah we we still get a little bit of a

stutter effect which I'm I wish we

didn't have but in the end we came out

of it with this

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

is my face all swirly

now so overall I'm pretty happy with how

this came out um I would like for it to

be smoother that kind of wah wah wah

effect isn't really what I was going for

but apparently uh you know Mark did

everything he could and it still kind of

came out like that so I think it's

something in the in the expansion itself

I don't know maybe if I made the

expansions a little bit smaller it would

be smoother um I don't know if any of

you guys out there have a better idea

I'd love to hear it but this was just an

experiment I wanted to see what would

happen um I would be interested in

repeating it to see if it goes in

different directions every time you do

it I did test this a little bit before I

did that full live stream I only did

maybe like five to seven expansions and

that one got a lot more abstract it was

a lot weirder so U I was actually kind

of surprised when I was doing it and it

just kind of gave me this infinite

landscape forever because the first time

I did it it immediately went into just

like weird shapes everywhere so yeah

again I'm I'm I'm curious what would

happen if I did it again but uh this

took hours of my time and of Mark's time

so I'm not sure I really want to go

through all that again but somebody did

point me to an app uh from a a company

called video leap that does this

infinite Zoom thing apparently in a

matter of minutes so I downloaded it

let's uh let's let's check it out so

this is one of those AI apps that does

all kinds of cool things um immediately

replaces backgrounds does before and

afters voice swaps face swaps that kind

of thing and right there in the middle

they got infinite Zoom all right so so

I've uploaded the photo and um you can

write a description to have it do

something specific but uh I'm just going

to let it do the random thing because

I've been doing the random things so H

continue here I'm zooming out let's go

[Music]

okay this one went a bit more cyberpunk

it even has music on it that didn't

expect that okay so that was clearly a

lot faster than what I did with the

Photoshop thing um but it also didn't go

nearly as far it only kind of goes back

to a certain point and then zooms

out or zooms back I do kind of Wonder um

if I can make several of these like take

the last frame of this and make that the

starting point for the next one and just

let it Zoom do that forever

um I'm not going to do that now all

right so the the point of this whole

video is basically to show how um you

know all these AI tools are meant to

save time and this is how AI is going to

enter our lives you know we think of

this like technological singularity this

big event this big thing that's just

kind of going to explode and happen but

you know I've been making the point for

a while that the singularity is

something we've been living in probably

since the beginning of the Industrial

Revolution and these AI tools this is

how it's going to happen is it sort of

just integrating just piece by piece

into programs and processes that we

already use but there are dangers in

this though I mean there's the obvious

dangers of the fact that you can just

select a little circle and put a person

into a photo or you know manipulate

stuff in that way but we've been doing

that for a long time um the problem that

I see now is like when you go through

the the Adobe stock Library like most of

the IM in there are just AI generated

images like the woolly mammoth photo

that I was playing with earlier that was

an AI generated

image that was not a real photograph of

a mammoth obviously but it it gets me

wondering though like if if the Firefly

model is training off of the Adobe stock

image

gallery is it just training off of

itself at this point the great AI uros

if you will but the point of all these

AI tools is to increase productivity and

that was the the point of Photoshop from

the very beginning like I'm not kidding

the the ability to expand a vertical

image to 16x9 at the push of a button

has saved me countless hours of

thumbnail editing and I could use all

the help I can get in the productivity

space which is why I bought this

book which I've never gotten around a

reading I mean what could have possibly

kept me from getting to all these Pages

he says gesturing wildly at everything

yeah I haven't developed the habit of

reading bunch of pages every day which

has kept me from getting to this book

that's supposed to teach you how to

build the habit of reading a bunch of

pages every day it's a vicious cycle but

I did find a way around this problem and

it's an app called imprint and look I'll

be honest I didn't know anything about

this app until they reached out to me

but I'm really glad they did because I

actually really like this cuz one of the

perks of doing what I do sometimes you

actually has something really cool drop

in your lap so here's how it works

imprint pulls insights from some of the

most popular thinkers and authors today

and well across all time actually and

distills the book's essential points

into Fun interactive courses courses

that you can take in less than 5 minutes

think about all the times you been

mindlessly scrolling on your phone you

could be learning Concepts that could

change your life like the concept of

atomic habits which is on here and I

learned all the key Concepts in like 20

minutes over 3 days and there's all

kinds of other books in here on

everything from sleep with Matthew

Walker and Building Wealth with ram seti

even The Art of War from sunsu they also

have learning paths depending on what

you want to improve about yourself like

I did the productivity path and that's

where I learned about Mel Robins 5c rule

which is basically whenever you find

yourself procrastinating or hesitating

on something just count backwards from

five and then just do the thing you're

procrastinating on that sounds

incredibly simple but psychologically it

gives you what they call activation

energy which kind of gives you the

willpower to do the thing it's a simple

trick but it works and the reason that I

remembered that is because imprint

lessons are designed based on the

science of learning meaning each chapter

is broken down and explained visually

with Graphics that bring the concept

home and then at the end of it it asks

you questions to sort of reinforce what

you just learned now I especially like

that the things that you learn on here

are actionable like things that you can

actually apply to your life but they

also just have you know books on social

issues and history if you just want to

absorb the knowledge anyway I've really

been enjoying it and I'm happy to put

this out there for you guys so just go

to imprint app.com jo- Scot for a 7-Day

free trial and 20% off your subscription

honestly if you do that 7-Day trial I

think you'll be hooked by day three like

I I liked it immediately it's it's like

a it's like a cheat code to improving

your life so one more time that's

imprint app.com jscott or just click the

link down in the descript thank you guys

so much for watching I would love to

hear your opinions in the comments about

the the dangers of all this and uh maybe

there's better ways of doing what I did

here again it was just kind of a big

experiment if this is your first time

watching my channel I invite you to

watch this video right here uh because

Google thinks that that might be right

up your alley or you can look at any of

the videos on the sidebar if you're on

your web browser give them a click and

if you enjoy them and you're not

subscribed I invite you to subscribe

I'll come back at videos every Monday

but that's it for now uh this is a very

different kind of video we'll be getting

back to normal types of videos soon

enough but thank you guys so much for

watching now go out there have an eye

opening rest of the week stay safe and

I'll see you next Monday love you guys

take care