Playing with Firefly

I began using PageMaker software for desktop publishing when I bought my first Mac in 1988. PageMaker's parent company Aldus was later purchased by Adobe which transitioned me to its InDesign desktop publishing software and I have stayed with it through many revisions for years including purchasing the Adobe Creative Suite of software that included InDesign with PhotoShop, Illustrator, and more. Now it is a subscription service and I, addicted as I am to using the stuff, pay an exorbitant monthly fee so that in my eightieth year I can continue to play with it. A relatively new part of the Adobe Suite is called Firefly. It is an AI image manipulating program that, to this old geezer, is amazing. 

I have been playing with it the last few days.

On Saturday when I got to the Clocktower for our first regular First Friday Tour in a couple of years -- the wooden superstructure above the brick tower has been renovated and reinforced structurally -- Tony Pope presented me with a scanned copy of an engraving of our home that was printed in an 1888 special edition of "The Tribune of Rome". 

It is sort of dark and it occurred to me that Firefly might be able to lighten it up and bring a little more detail out. So I tried it first as a pencil drawing...

Then I tried "oil painting"...

Then I asked it to brighten the oil painting...

Then I asked it to change the paint colors to what we use now...

It is not perfect. It screws up the roof of the bay window and seems to add an extra window barely visible on the far side of the upstairs porch. 

I wish I could restore the slate roof to the original and add a fence and gates like the ones William Wright had.

After fooling with the house picture for a while I wondered what it would do with some old people pictures. We only have one photo of my maternal grandfather who was born before the Civil War and who died in 1932. It is a dark slightly blurry snapshot of him sitting in a chair in the side yard of their little mill house on Hazel Street in Porterdale, Georgia.

Here's the Papa Baird that Firefly gave me...

One of my favorite shots of my beloved Daddy Shaw with one of his cars...

Firefly's oil painting of Milstead's barber, and salesman of Knapp Shoes and Kirby Vacuums and Singer Sewing Machines adds a much more substantial home than the little mill village house on Main Street in Milstead, Georgia!