It is not often I get to sit down and reflect on things in writing these days, life seems to be so busy ! Of course it is not just business that keeps me on my toes, but running around doing the routine chores and one or two not so usual things too. Speaking of not so usual, the weather in South Wales has been unusally nice with lots of sunny days and less rainy days, even our allotment has needed watering !
On the training front we have been running our courses as normal and recently welcomed a visitor from Denmark. Our first EU client since Brexit – lets hope things continue to improve on that front. Our main slant with training these days is on the use of Vuescan combined with Adobe Photoshop for scanning and editing. We do use Silverfast for scanning but not for editing or archival work. So if ever you want to learn some tricks and tips get in touch, lets see if we can help.
Our scanning and video / cine work have remained fairly constant but the proportion of returning customer work has increased (thanks, you know who you are). This has resulted in savings on advertising – happy days ! We are noticing more degradation on the vhs tapes we receive, and one or two cine films that have been worse for wear too. In once instance a set of super 8 movies had been completely ‘washed out’ with almost nothing to recover. Curiously a standard 8 film that had been kept alongside the super 8 was in almost perfect condition.
On a totally different subject, last year I waxing lyrical about the internet. I think my worst fears have been surpassed. Not only are we bombarded by ads and cookies as we surf the web, a requirement to sign up to sites for news, or to follow their click bait, but the ads are AI generated, the results of our searches are AI generated, our searches and the articles we write are ‘improved’ by AI ……… well obviously not this one 🙂
We have turned a corner with the adoption of AI and I believe it is not for the better. We are using a powerful tool without truely understanding its potential for both good and for harm. How long will it be before our News services, novels and our intercommunications are produced by AI ? Its already happening !
AI is also being used in image manipulation. As manipulating images to repair damage and restore them is something I do then having a clever tool to help should be an appreciated assett , but I worry that the manipulation is not just to repair pictures but to add or remove people or objects in those images so although they look real they are no longer true. The end result is that you will no longer believe any picture you see to be real. One of my good friends took great delight in showing me some photos of fashion models that he had generated. Yes generated, the people in the pictures and the clothes they wore were generated. He was so pleased with them, I was mortified !
In my opinion with cryptocurrency in the ascent and with AI overtaking the media we are in a bad place and we need to tread carefully. What was the stuff of science fiction is now a hard reality.
Back in my world of film, slides, tapes and celluloid we continue to carefully save and restore those memories, and hopefully without corrupting their historical value. My good friend Alan, the guy who co-founded Saturn Films 1969 with me back in … um….. oh yes 1969, asked me the other day if I ever get bored with the repetitive tasks of my work …… and was I thinking of retiring? I told him that the repetitive tasks were few and far between and that every new project is unique. Although I have no intention of retiring I do need to pass over the reigns at some point and, fortunately, the next generation are bright and inspired.
Until next time. David. August 2025.