How are you handling ai (not illustrator) files

[The Vector Doctor]

What are you guys doing when customers bring in low res or complex images that were created using artificial intelligence?

Are you printing as is? Do you try to upscale the art if they need it blown up? Do you turn them away?

i am getting lots of artwork that cannot be vectored... what is your solution?

here are a few examples

 

[Boudica]

Honestly, it depends on the customer, and how bad the artwork is.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Considering that these issues could have happened regardless if what passes for "AI" was used, to me it would fall under what normally happens when there are production limitations hit. If the artwork had the same size/resolution/complexity issues as before "AI", how would it have been handled at that point? This just may make these concerns on steroids just due to the sheer volume that could be puked out with it, however, it is either treat it the same as any other artwork, or just have it to where if it looks like "AI" to you, just don't mess with it. Out right ban may put some people off, but just due to the sheer volume, I know others in different industries have just made it to where if it looks like it's obviously "AI", they don't touch it.

 

[Robot Man Machine]

Early this year I was losing clients because of this problem and discovered "notegpt.io". I've used that site a bunch to increase image sizes from the low-res garbage into workable dpi images. If you want more control then I would suggest using Adobe Creative Cloud with Lightroom / Photoshop.

 

[victor bogdanov]

Topaz and print, no problems.

why would you need to vectorize any of those examples you uploaded?

 

[ikarasu]

I’ve sent it to you once or twice!

Other times I use topaz photo with their ai upscale and it usually does an alright job.

Other times I tell them their 3” x 2” ai generated graphic looks like shit on a 24” x 36” sandwich board, and they can pay to have it redone as close as possible… or come back to me when they have the proper sizing.


Sometimes you can send the image back to ai… and ask it to upscale it and it does a decent job.


Usually If it’s a good customer I try to upscale it first - then tell them it won’t work, and come back with the proper file. If it’s a new / low paying customer I just say their art won’t work.


Ai is getting better though. I know a lot of graphic artists don’t want to hear that… but in a year or two I think it’ll replace anyone who hasn’t learned to use it as a tool. It won’t fully replace an artist, but a graphic artist who can use ai can cut art room time down by so much.


I was at an anime convention with the wife and kid - the wife saw a poster she wanted… and we like to support small artists, we bought probably 10-15 posters from various artists - this one artist looked for 20 mins and couldn’t find the poster… she said she must have sold out. We asked if we could buy it online… and she said unfortunately not as it was all her stock and she wouldn’t be getting more made for months. So we bought a different poster…. And I asked if I could print it at hole
If I took a photo of it… she was more than happy to allow that, so I did and gave an extra $20. Took a nice straight on shot thinking I’ll just print it at home and the wife will be happy - when I got home I realized the shot wasn’t perfect, so I threw it into ChatGPT and asked it to recreate the image to 100% likeness as a 48” tall poster… and it took my photo and it was almost bang on. The background colour was a bit darker…. But that was easily fixable. I couldn’t tell a difference and neither could the wife.

Since then I’ve been throwing random logos and signs into ai and asking it to remake it, just to see how it does. and it does a really good job at 90% of them. Started using an ai that can output to vectors and it even makes ok vectors - not perfect, but in 1-2 years I imagine it will be….


I think everyone on the ai hate bandwagon are the ones who are going to get hurt by it. It’s a tool like all others - graphtec obsoleted hand painting, Wide format printers obsoleted screen printing (somewhat) and a lot of cut vinyl…. It’s a new tool, and if you learn to use it… you can get more done faster, if you bury your head in the sand and protest so data centers… you’ll be replaced with someone who can use it.

 

[Boudica]

Topaz and print, no problems.

why would you need to vectorize any of those examples you uploaded?

Because that's what he does.

 

[Boudica]

I’ve sent it to you once or twice!

Other times I use topaz photo with their ai upscale and it usually does an alright job.

Other times I tell them their 3” x 2” ai generated graphic looks like shit on a 24” x 36” sandwich board, and they can pay to have it redone as close as possible… or come back to me when they have the proper sizing.


Sometimes you can send the image back to ai… and ask it to upscale it and it does a decent job.


Usually If it’s a good customer I try to upscale it first - then tell them it won’t work, and come back with the proper file. If it’s a new / low paying customer I just say their art won’t work.


Ai is getting better though. I know a lot of graphic artists don’t want to hear that… but in a year or two I think it’ll replace anyone who hasn’t learned to use it as a tool. It won’t fully replace an artist, but a graphic artist who can use ai can cut art room time down by so much.


I was at an anime convention with the wife and kid - the wife saw a poster she wanted… and we like to support small artists, we bought probably 10-15 posters from various artists - this one artist looked for 20 mins and couldn’t find the poster… she said she must have sold out. We asked if we could buy it online… and she said unfortunately not as it was all her stock and she wouldn’t be getting more made for months. So we bought a different poster…. And I asked if I could print it at hole
If I took a photo of it… she was more than happy to allow that, so I did and gave an extra $20. Took a nice straight on shot thinking I’ll just print it at home and the wife will be happy - when I got home I realized the shot wasn’t perfect, so I threw it into ChatGPT and asked it to recreate the image to 100% likeness as a 48” tall poster… and it took my photo and it was almost bang on. The background colour was a bit darker…. But that was easily fixable. I couldn’t tell a difference and neither could the wife.

Since then I’ve been throwing random logos and signs into ai and asking it to remake it, just to see how it does. and it does a really good job at 90% of them. Started using an ai that can output to vectors and it even makes ok vectors - not perfect, but in 1-2 years I imagine it will be….


I think everyone on the ai hate bandwagon are the ones who are going to get hurt by it. It’s a tool like all others - graphtec obsoleted hand painting, Wide format printers obsoleted screen printing (somewhat) and a lot of cut vinyl…. It’s a new tool, and if you learn to use it… you can get more done faster, if you bury your head in the sand and protest so data centers… you’ll be replaced with someone who can use it.

I think a professional can use tools to quickly turn something unproducable into something producable In seconds. My protest is when millions of people are just using it to THINK for them. We don't need new data centers, if it's used only when necessary, as a professional tool then we shouldn't require more.
But it's being forced on people to use it more and more for unnecessary shit and that is the problem.

 

[HillHouseGraphics]

I have turned this into a new revenue source. I have a bunch of tools in my toolbox to deal with these files. First, Topaz is amazing at bringing up the scale for images. Illustrator does an ok job at generating vectors from sample image and by adding some photoshop help, you can do wonders with images. And of course there is the old pen tool in illustrator to create CutContour paths. I explain and show how bad the files are, give them an estimate to work with it and one to re-create on my own.
With the right client, you can name your price. For instance one client with a $700,000.00 boat, has a wife who "designed" a composition. I explained that we charge $110 per hour for graphic design and I expect that it could take 8-10 hours to get to a print and cut ready composition. They worked with me and decided on changes after proofing, which added another couple hours of photoshop work on color and extra details and they gladly paid the price. For years of losing money on graphic design, we are now generating money that we would never have seen before from graphic design.

 

[Grizzly]

For the examples you posted, those aren't ones I would try to vectorize. I do realize that's what you do and everybody is probably sending you loads of ai junk and that's the point of your post. I also realize that in the graphics world, the first file we're going to ask for from a customer is a vector and I think sign shops are getting burned out of ai generated artwork being so low res and just sending it out to be converted when it doesn't need to be. I use Topaz Gigapixel and charge the customer for upscaling and any other time needed to create a simple die-cut and print as is. I feel like I have to educate more and more everyday on the limitations of ai. Mostly it's been explaining that ai doesn't typically output the correct scale proportions, isn't consistent across outputs and produces some weird things that just can't be corrected. And then I have to tell people to stop taking screenshots of their phone and download the actual file from ai.

 

[paul luszcz]

You vectorize it when you need anything other than printing. Think of logos being cut on CNC routers, channel letters, cut vinyl graphics. Often you cant repro them properly because they have impossible lighting, shadows, and effects. They also use fonts that can’t be matched. If we think it can be reasonably vectoriced we send it to Ty Vector Doctor.

Some photo images can be scaled up using Topaz others cannot. Some fonts are mangled and not all faces come out well. Good enough if good enough if good enough, okay. If you care to do better, it can’t be done. Analyze the file before you commit.

 

[MrDav3C]

We often get customers who provide their AI "Artwork", usually for us it's shop front and vehicle graphic visuals.

Some are dead set that this is "their design" and that's how it has to look.

Others understand that AI images aren't perfect and are using this as a starting point to give us an idea of what they want - this is a lot better than back in the day when the customer would come in with something illegible scrawled on the back of a cigarette packet.

We then explain to them the possible limitations of AI images often being low res, not vector artwork, not using actual typefaces and any obvious flaws we can see such as strange proportions in visuals to make the artwork "work", door handles, side loading door rails, body lines etc. removed from vehicles so the lettering and logos will fit or a design that's on a completely different vehicle!

We then give an estimate on how many hours we think it will take to create proper usable artwork and quote accordingly for this.

As much as this is frustrating at times, none of these are really new problems. I'm sure anyone who has been in the industry for a number of years has had customers who have decided to use their own "graphic designer" and this has resulted in low res useless files being branded as artwork, poor font choices, deleted door handles etc. and artwork designed on the wrong vehicle template.

Whilst AI makes these problems more common and we have to spend a bit more time educating people, we get a lot less customers if any that don't have a clue how they want their vehicle or signs etc. to look. I think this actually saves us time as we are not "designing blind" or producing several design options in the hope that the customer likes what we have done.

Edit: I think I've strayed from the original question a bit here....

As everyone else has said, there are various options for upscaling poor quality images whether they are created by AI or not.

If upscaling isn't going to work then are two options:

1) Quote to recreate our "version" of the artwork and explain to the customer it will not be identical to the original. I often use the example that if two artists were to draw the exact same picture that they will never look the same & most of our customers are fine with this.

2) Explain to the customer their artwork isn't up to standard for anything other than looking at it on a screen and that we will do our best to upscale it and perhaps even add a bit of noise to help smooth the rough pixels but that it probably won't be perfect. We sometimes offer to produce a small wet print for them to assess the quality and make the decision if they are happy with it & remind them that we can't make chicken soup out of chicken poop!

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I think everyone on the ai hate bandwagon are the ones who are going to get hurt by it. It’s a tool like all others - graphtec obsoleted hand painting, Wide format printers obsoleted screen printing (somewhat) and a lot of cut vinyl…. It’s a new tool, and if you learn to use it… you can get more done faster, if you bury your head in the sand and protest so data centers… you’ll be replaced with someone who can use it.

Not really anything truly dies. Did radio kill the stage, did movies or TV kill radio? Did CGI kill 2D animation (shoot we even have CGI trying to look like 2D and we have really had quality go down hill compared to the 2000s and I would argue because of knowledge lost)? Did it kill stop motion? The market may have gotten smaller, but it's not really dead. In fact, for some things there has been a resurgence in interest for the traditional methods.

I truly dislike knowledge lost and we are seeing that. Not just in terms of having what passes for "AI" doing the heavy mental thinking for a person, but also not learning what "AI" is abstracting away. That isn't good for our mental health either. We do not get the same feedback/dopamine response from tech like we do from more analog methods. We have seen loss of knowledge even with general computing usage from the supposed digital native generation that have really only known this tech. Also research is showing that those that are using "AI" to learn at the beginning, have lower cognative function building. How we receive information is different when we have to come to our own conclusions versus letting "AI" do it for us.

Also we will get to the point that users of "AI" (and maybe it will actually be "AI" at that point) will be like this current generation of general computer users (I'm talking the normies, the majority of the population) that won't be able to do anything without "AI". What happens if one doesn't have access to their "AI" for whatever reason, that's no bueno for you (unless we are going for those neural implants). Won't be able to get squat done. Most aren't going to be running them locally, so it's not like one will have an offline mode. There was a time a couple weeks back, I had no internet for 4 days and it was just at my place, it was not a wide spread outage or anything like that. Just imagine all that business lost if I only knew how to use "AI", or it was a major tool. And that will be a thing, it may take a generation or two of users (I doubt it, but it may just based on what it was like for just general computing), but we will get there. Only problem that we will also have is that most people will only know what "AI" has generated back out. This is following the same thing as low/no code, auto conversion/digitizing etc. It may have it's application here or there, but if things don't fit within that narrow application, not good. But people will use it for everything, because they don't know any other way.

 

[ikarasu]

Not really anything truly dies. Did radio kill the stage, did movies or TV kill radio? Did CGI kill 2D animation (shoot we even have CGI trying to look like 2D and we have really had quality go down hill compared to the 2000s and I would argue because of knowledge lost)? Did it kill stop motion? The market may have gotten smaller, but it's not really dead. In fact, for some things there has been a resurgence in interest for the traditional methods.

I truly dislike knowledge lost and we are seeing that. Not just in terms of having what passes for "AI" doing the heavy mental thinking for a person, but also not learning what "AI" is abstracting away. That isn't good for our mental health either. We do not get the same feedback/dopamine response from tech like we do from more analog methods. We have seen loss of knowledge even with general computing usage from the supposed digital native generation that have really only known this tech. Also research is showing that those that are using "AI" to learn at the beginning, have lower cognative function building. How we receive information is different when we have to come to our own conclusions versus letting "AI" do it for us.

Also we will get to the point that users of "AI" (and maybe it will actually be "AI" at that point) will be like this current generation of general computer users (I'm talking the normies, the majority of the population) that won't be able to do anything without "AI". What happens if one doesn't have access to their "AI" for whatever reason, that's no bueno for you (unless we are going for those neural implants). Won't be able to get squat done. Most aren't going to be running them locally, so it's not like one will have an offline mode. There was a time a couple weeks back, I had no internet for 4 days and it was just at my place, it was not a wide spread outage or anything like that. Just imagine all that business lost if I only knew how to use "AI", or it was a major tool. And that will be a thing, it may take a generation or two of users (I doubt it, but it may just based on what it was like for just general computing), but we will get there. Only problem that we will also have is that most people will only know what "AI" has generated back out. This is following the same thing as low/no code, auto conversion/digitizing etc. It may have it's application here or there, but if things don't fit within that narrow application, not good. But people will use it for everything, because they don't know any other way.

We are dumbing ourselves down - I don't think its the persons fault that made the tools though.

AI Is great... but it's also really stupid. You can ask it a question, and it'll use crowdsourced information and give you a completely wrong answer. You can call it out on it and say that doesnt seem right... and 2 seconds later it'll say "Good catch! The correct answer after doing a more thorough research actually is this." It'll still be wrong...and you call it out again...and that process repeats 50 times. My kid came to me with a completely wild claim.... Rather than just tell him it's wrong and to google it, I showed him how to get AI to cite its source, and I taught him how when I was in school you had to cite your source for everything - Whether you're going to google something, or chatgpt it... You should always ask where it got its information from, read it, and process it yourself and come up with your own answer. It's a great tool... if you know how to use it, and a dangerous one if you don't, just like almost every other tool.

I thought the generation after mine would be so smart because they had the WWW at their fingertips - Instead a very narrow group learned how to use computers, then smartphones came out...and now everyone points and clicks on their phones and they're more computer illiterate than the generation before mine.

Is it the parents fault? Nowadays both parents have to work 10 hour days to get by. Is it the teachers fault? My kids class had 26 students for 1 teacher... And rather than teach kids the proper use for cell phones, they decided to ban cell phones from all schools. So even if the teachers wanted to teach proper phone use... theyre not allowed. Is it Steve jobs fault for introducing cell phones?

My guess is it's a little bit of everything. But I think we need to teach people the proper way to use the tools at their disposal VS ban, or complain about them - My parents complained about computers.... I complain about cell phones.... A few years younger than me complains about AI.... There will ALWAYS be something thats destroying peoples minds, And while it seems like its happening exponentially faster now... I don't think thats the fault of any 1 thing in particular, I think its just the way society has "evolved". We're becoming...softer, and stupider. AI isn't helping for sure, but ignoring progress isnt the answer either. People just need to wake up and learn to think for themselves and question things!

 

[ikarasu]

I think a professional can use tools to quickly turn something unproducable into something producable In seconds. My protest is when millions of people are just using it to THINK for them. We don't need new data centers, if it's used only when necessary, as a professional tool then we shouldn't require more.
But it's being forced on people to use it more and more for unnecessary shit and that is the problem.

Part of that is expansion though. 1 year ago AI couldnt generate an image without it having 6 fingers - You generate a movie about will smith eating spaghetti and it looks like a 1 year old produced the video. Now its so realistic you can't tell that its fake.

Artwork now is great... but it's still now perfect. Art is a form of expression, and computers wont ever be able to replace a true artist - but imagine if you could goto AI and say "We need to produce another sign for google. This is their logo... We would like it to be 10 FT tall by 60 FT wide, can you produce all Assets including the CNC files, Digital print files, Shop drawings, and send the drawings in for a permit?" And in 30 seconds, it not only produced all the artwork to spec... but drew out exactly how it needed to be produced to pass a permit? VS A graphic artist spending hours, an engineer drawing up schematics to get the permit, and spending hours getting the permit?

As a society, and as an employee... That makes your job much easier. Do we need more data centers to get there? Probably... Is it somewhere we should be aiming to get to? Thats another debate.

My personal opinion... If I was a engineer, and I could input my specification and have it spit out a drawing and do all the calculations for me in seconds... I'd love it, I'd still double check everything and make sure theres no mistakes... but doing all the grunt work and freeing me up to do more important stuff would be nice. Same as a programmer... same as a graphic designer whos tired of throwing brand assets on a screen. It can really help people - Am I dumb enough to believe thats how it will go? No - I have a project manager friend whos a programmer...she's been a manager and worked at google, Microsoft, and a few other big places as well as startups. She'd swap jobs every 2 years just so she kept growing into new rolls and learning new things and challenging herself. She's been out of work for 8 months and cant find a job, all because her department got laid off... and every single place she applies, they ask her how she integrates AI into her coding, and whether she could manage a team of AI programmers... They still want managers, but they want managers who can manage a group of people using AI... Because why have 20 programmers and a manager, when you can have 5 using AI, and someone managing them / fixing their code? AI is definitely killing jobs, and in a perfect world it wouldn't - But just as Car manufacturing killed horse carriage jobs, Uber killled Taxi jobs, Door dash killed delivery jobs... people will adapt, new jobs will come... Hopefully better jobs.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

We are dumbing ourselves down - I don't think its the persons fault that made the tools though.

Why I tend to advocate for bespoke tools. Those that created it, tend to know how it works and if something goes wrong, at least they tend to have the brain power to muddle through and fix it. Using "AI" doesn't create the same pathways in our brain. That's the problem.

AI Is great... but it's also really stupid. You can ask it a question, and it'll use crowdsourced information and give you a completely wrong answer. You can call it out on it and say that doesnt seem right... and 2 seconds later it'll say "Good catch! The correct answer after doing a more thorough research actually is this." It'll still be wrong...and you call it out again...and that process repeats 50 times. My kid came to me with a completely wild claim.... Rather than just tell him it's wrong and to google it, I showed him how to get AI to cite its source, and I taught him how when I was in school you had to cite your source for everything - Whether you're going to google something, or chatgpt it... You should always ask where it got its information from, read it, and process it yourself and come up with your own answer. It's a great tool... if you know how to use it, and a dangerous one if you don't, just like almost every other tool.

The problem is the fundamental source. Back in my day, while the internet has existed in some form since the 80s, as far as the wide spread usage that we have now (here stateside), we didn't cite internet sources as it wasn't a source. The greatest strength of the internet as a source is actually it's greatest weakness as a source. The ability to make changes in real time. The assumption would be that the change was done correctly and honestly. Not all changes are and "AI" doesn't know which is which and if kids are using this at a really young age, they don't know what they don't know. It's going to be harder for them to actually have the tools to be able to verify. If they actually care, some won't.

I thought the generation after mine would be so smart because they had the WWW at their fingertips - Instead a very narrow group learned how to use computers, then smartphones came out...and now everyone points and clicks on their phones and they're more computer illiterate than the generation before mine.
Is it the parents fault? Nowadays both parents have to work 10 hour days to get by. Is it the teachers fault? My kids class had 26 students for 1 teacher... And rather than teach kids the proper use for cell phones, they decided to ban cell phones from all schools. So even if the teachers wanted to teach proper phone use... theyre not allowed. Is it Steve jobs fault for introducing cell phones?

In some ways, I blame both (more so actually teachers given the legislation that we have here stateside, but at the end of the day, parents still need to supplement). They were taught the abstraction and not what was underlying it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against tooling. Implementation is what kills good ideas. Technology was introduced in some schools way, way too soon (there are actually some introduce it in elementary school). Before the basics were taught or before they actually took hold. There is no fundamental basics. Plus we also had legislation that forced certain things that didn't help the students. May have had the best of intentions, but we all know what Hell is paved with. By the time one is in HS, sure work on using those especially when there are much harder concepts being worked on at that time. Maybe push it to 8th grade just some prelim stuff to help when going into HS.

I harp on this alot. Taking out cursive in a lot of ways was a mistake (most of our important documents (here stateside) are written in cursive, if one doesn't know how to read it, going to be at the mercy that what passes for "AI" and what has been fed to it or whomever you get to help read it is being honest about it(teachers really need to be working on literacy rates versus tech right now in general, but I digress)). It isn't just there to attempt to make words "purdy". It helps with fine motor skills, creativity, stimulates more neuron connections (something that learning things by "AI" in preliminary findings suggests that it doesn't stimulate much at all (nor do computer usage in general, have the same result either compared to cursive), the one that I read (linked it in quite a few threads here) had 3 groups, those that just did it the old fashioned way, those that just used analog with some internet(not "AI", just internet searches) and those that used "AI" exclusively). None of my kids would have had it if I hadn't taught it to them, but my wife was telling me that one of her nieces was in a group, SELECTED to learn cursive and it was essentially only for 2 weeks. Just 2 weeks. That's not going to cut it.

My guess is it's a little bit of everything. But I think we need to teach people the proper way to use the tools at their disposal VS ban, or complain about them

Time and place when using tools. Kids need to learn the basics before they go to the tools that are heavily abstracted. THAT'S how they would better be able to yoke their benefits. Thrusting abstractions at a young age doesn't do that at all.

We're becoming...softer, and stupider. AI isn't helping for sure, but ignoring progress isnt the answer either.

If we are becoming softer and stupider, how is that actually "progress"? Just because something is new and shiny doesn't mean that it is progress. "All that glitters is not gold".

People just need to wake up and learn to think for themselves and question things!

Kinda hard when people thrust these tools before the kids learned the tools to learn to think for themselves. Now, this is when the parents need to step up, unfortunately, at this stage, most parent's didn't have some of the stuff either, so it's just a self fulfilling prophecy.

It's history repeating itself. The thing is, given how abstracted technology is, how it presents the "answers" to us, is not the best way that actually helps us mentally. It just doesn't, that's not how our brains process things and form those pathways. This isn't having a ban, this is just a concern on when things are implemented and how. That's what is going to get the next generation.

 

[jfiscus]

Topaz. I use a combination of Topaz Bloom and Topaz Gigapixel and get good, printable results.
Sometimes takes a few tries and different processes to get a good outcome.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

Topaz and print, no problems.

why would you need to vectorize any of those examples you uploaded?

these are files requested from the customer. i receive art like this 3-5x per day now. Perhaps because many people don't know what vector files are or the capabilities. It is easy to assume that this is coming from the general public but i get these requests from sign shops too

 

[victor bogdanov]

these are files requested from the customer. i receive art like this 3-5x per day now. Perhaps because many people don't know what vector files are or the capabilities. It is easy to assume that this is coming from the general public but i get these requests from sign shops too

Yes I don't see why your customers would need that vectorized, all of those look like they would work great in Topaz .

 

[The Vector Doctor]

yes i recommend sites like gigapixel and topaz but some are looking for the cheapest way and don't always want to pay for that service either