
Show HN: Neural network turns photos into a specific style of painting - chrischen
https://www.instapainting.com/ai-painter
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nthitz
Another take on it from Kyle McDonald [https://medium.com/@kcimc/comparing-
artificial-artists-7d889...](https://medium.com/@kcimc/comparing-artificial-
artists-7d889428fce4)

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mappu
_> I'd like to understand this algorithm well enough to generalize it to other
media (mainly thinking about sound right now)_

A DeepDream for audio would be very interesting.

~~~
chrischen
It'd probably be a lot better for usable results, since you can easily
restrict it to certain musical scales.

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benologist
Will there be an API for this for digital-only, high resolution pics?

Some feedback too:

1) when submitting it was a bit weird that I have to upload pics in order vs
explicitly 'this is my pic', 'this is my art pic'

2) a lot of people won't have a catalog of digital art to upload as their
reference pic, some samples to select from would be nice

3) after uploading my source + reference pics and clicking 'submit artwork' it
takes me to a login/signup page for AMANUFACTORY.COM. That button really
stands out as what-you-should-do to finish the process!

4) would be nice if instead of selecting one painting it generated lots of
different styles

~~~
chrischen
I hacked this in one day using some UI for existing stuff, so the UI will be a
bit weird.

After uploading your source + reference, you don't have to do anything. The
Submit button at the bottom is UI for other people to submit a resulting
image. I'll probably remove it since it's for the other stuff.

As far as API, the process is fairly expensive (uses EC2 GPU instance), so any
heavy application type usage would probably be better served by setting up
your own instance. We use implementations found on github (credit at the
bottom of the page).

~~~
dutchbrit
Funny, I hacked something like this together too recently, although it did
take me a bit longer. Nice job!

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bithive123
See also: [http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/projects/image-
analogies/](http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/projects/image-analogies/)

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anjc
Quick off the mark eh? When was this idea published by those researchers, two
days ago?

No wonder universities are getting super serious about IP
protection/licensing/commercialisation

~~~
duaneb
> No wonder universities are getting super serious about IP
> protection/licensing/commercialisation

oh god, the knowledge might be free with only attribution and no revenue! the
horror!

~~~
anjc
Eh how do you incentivise the creation of this knowledge given that it costs
money to do?

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duaneb
The kids who know what's up will know where to do the research. That should be
incentive enough. Considering you can't stop another organization from
building on your research, the "competition" is a little hard to explain.

A university should be run like a school, not a business.

~~~
anjc
You should look up the financial statements for one of your local colleges and
see if it _can 't_ be run like a business. Just one of them costs a lot of
money to keep going..

That's why they have to protect IP and commercialise it. Because if they
don't, the colleges can't keep teaching as it all costs so much.

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arm55
I'd be really surprised if someone isn't already hard at work on an iOS app
that uses this tech. The scalability is of course a problem, but I'd pay 50
cents per photo (assuming I got a small preview of it first) or something of
that order to support the costs.

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chrischen
There's no public list, so if you ran an image feel free to share here.

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astrange
I accidentally submitted something four different times, since I thought the
form wasn't loading. Does it just start as soon as you post two images,
without a submit button?

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siegecraft
I wonder what it looks like if you upload something cubist or otherwise
abstract.

~~~
chrischen
[https://www.instapainting.com/requests/view-
asset/55e8a42290...](https://www.instapainting.com/requests/view-
asset/55e8a42290f1f848178b4569?asset=55e8a42290f1f848178b4569_aipainter.jpg)

~~~
siegecraft
[https://www.instapainting.com/requests/view-
asset/55e7f37e90...](https://www.instapainting.com/requests/view-
asset/55e7f37e90f1f8b87c8b4581?asset=55e7f37e90f1f8b87c8b4581_aipainter.jpg)

~~~
chrischen
The art style image should be the second image. So it tried to do the artwork
in the style of the photo instead.

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dharma1
that was quick, the paper just came out

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SomeDev15
What paper are you refering to?

edit: Leon A. Gatys, Alexander S. Ecker, Matthias Bethge, A Neural Algorithm
of Artistic Style

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deepnet
_A Neural Algorithm of Artistic Style_ by Leon A. Gatys, Alexander S. Ecker,
Matthias Bethge

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1508.06576](http://arxiv.org/abs/1508.06576)

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zigggi
can we get a bigger version of the resulting image? The output is very small.

~~~
chrischen
Just upgraded the implementation used. I'll see if I can increase the size
without running into memory issues.

EDIT: Increased to 768px max size.

