Month: October 2020

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Photoshop’s new AI features include neural filters and sky replacement

https://www.engadget.com/photoshop-desktop-ipad-update-artificial-intelligence-130024695.html

Adobe has released new versions of Photoshop for desktop and iPad with a bunch more AI-powered features. The Sky Replacement tool that Adobe added to the latest version of Photoshop Elements is now available in the full version of the software. The feature uses AI to separate the foreground and the sky, and you should be able to create more dramatic scenes with a few clicks.

Neural Filters is another of the AI tools you can play around with today. Adobe worked with NVIDIA on the feature, which it says works best on systems that support graphics acceleration. The first two "featured" filters are Skin Smoothing and Style Transfer. With the latter, you can apply the style of famous paintings like Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night to your images.

The Style Transfer tool in Photoshop
Adobe

There are six other beta filters that you can try. One called Smart Portrait allows you to change a subject’s age, facial expressions, pose and more. 

You’ll be able to use Neural Filters to colorize black-and-white photos with content-aware color too. With the Super Zoom filter, you can increase the resolution of certain areas of portraits when you zoom in. There are also options to remove artifacts caused by JPEG compression and add simulated volumetric haze to the background of an image to make your subject stand out more.

Elsewhere, there are Sensei-powered Object Aware Refine Edge and Refine Hair tools in the Select and Mask workspace. They will help you select difficult or finer textures and elements (like hair, oddly enough) even when they blend into the background.

Adobe is hoping to help save you even more time with Photoshop’s redesigned Discover panel. It contains a larger library of tutorials and tips, along with a more powerful search function. The AI will offer personalized suggestions based on what it has learned about you and what you’re working on. For instance, it may recommend one-click Quick Actions that automate certain functions like removing and blurring a background or enhancing the image.

Other new features in Photoshop include Pattern Preview (which gives you an idea of how a design will appear as a pattern), more ways to adjust shapes, an option to reset a Smart Object to its initial state and version history for cloud documents. Desktop users can also sync cloud documents to use them offline. That feature will hit iPad later.

Speaking of iPad, you can now livestream from the Photoshop app if you want to give others an insight into your process. You can toggle your camera and on-screen chat as you see fit. The tablet version of the app also allows you to edit the image size by adjusting the dimensions, resolution and sampling of your project.

Livestreaming from Photoshop on iPad
Adobe

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

October 20, 2020 at 08:03AM

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Amazon’s Luna game streaming platform is now in early access

https://www.engadget.com/amazon-luna-early-access-174007652.html

Just a few weeks after Amazon revealed its game streaming service Luna, it’s now in early access. The company said hundreds of thousands of people applied for a spot in the program, and a small number of them will receive invitations starting today. More people will be invited to try Amazon Luna in the coming months.

Amazon’s looking for feedback from folks who are checking out Luna in early access. They’ll be able to try more than 50 games on the Luna+ Game Channel (which costs $6/month, at least for now). They’ll also be able to play the likes of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla through the Ubisoft Channel, which will be available soon.

Luna works on Fire TV, PC and Mac, and through web apps on iPhone and iPad. Android support is on the way.

Those who snag an early access spot can play with any Bluetooth controller that’s compatible with their device. Otherwise, Amazon has its own peripheral, the Luna Controller, which offers lower latency by connecting directly to the game in the cloud rather than through the device you’re playing on. The Luna Controller, which costs $50 during early access, has built-in Alexa voice control as well.

For a deeper look at Luna, which also has Twitch integration, check out our preview.

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

October 20, 2020 at 12:45PM

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Impossible Foods is working on plant-based milk that tastes like the real thing

https://www.engadget.com/impossible-milk-154404741.html

During a press conference this morning, Impossible Foods announced that it’s branching out from just faux meats and is planning on producing a plant-based milk alternative called Impossible Milk. According to the company, it is not designed to be just another soy milk or nut-based milk alternative. Instead, it’s designed to function and behave just like the animal-derived cow’s milk.

In a demonstration from the company’s food lab, a researcher showed samples of Impossible Milk side by side other plant-based milks like almond milk and soy milk, to show that the Impossible Milk looks much more like cow milk than the others. According to her, Impossible Milk is designed to be just as creamy as regular milk, and will not curdle in hot beverages like other plant-based milks will. She demonstrated this by mixing it in a cup of hot coffee.

Impossible Milk
Impossible Foods

The company also announced today that it plans to double the size of its research and development team over the next 12 months. As part of this plan, it has launched the “Impossible Investigator” project that is designed to draw scientists from all over the world to join its team. According to Impossible Foods, these scientists will have the “facilities, resources and innovative environment to create an entirely new technology platform to replace animals as our technology for turning plants into meat, fish and dairy foods.”

It’s been quite a busy year for Impossible Foods. Not only did it announce a brand new Impossible Pork product in January, its faux burger product is now available in over 9,000 grocery stores in the US. Earlier today, the company also announced that it will be available in Asian grocery stores for the first time. Nearly 200 grocery stores in Hong Kong and Singapore will carry it — PARKnSHOP in Hong Kong will sell it for $HK89.90 a package, while FairPrice locations in Singapore will sell it for SG$16.90. It’ll also be available for online delivery through PARKnSHOP in Hong Kong and RedMart in Singapore. 

Impossible Milk is still very much in the development phase, and won’t be available for consumers any time soon.

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

October 20, 2020 at 10:51AM

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Two New Ways to Print Your Google Photos: $7/Month Subscription and Walgreens

https://www.droid-life.com/2020/10/20/two-new-ways-to-print-your-google-photos-7-month-subscription-and-walgreens/

Read the original post: Two New Ways to Print Your Google Photos: $7/Month Subscription and Walgreens

Earlier this year, Google launched a trial for a $8/month subscription service that allowed people to have a portion of their Google Photos automatically printed and sent to them in the mail. That trial ended in June, but this week, it’s back for the masses priced $1 cheaper at $6.99/month.

Available in the coming weeks to all users in supported markets, this service uses machine learning to suggest 10 recent photos for you to print. Once the shots are selected, you can choose matte vs. glossy finishes and add borders. You can also skip a month or cancel the service whenever.

You can even turn your photos into postcards, perfect for mailing a memory to a loved one you haven’t seen in a while. And these prints are made with cardstock paper, so they’re built to last.

Starting today, Google announced that you can now order 4×6, 5×7, or 8×10 photos prints through Google Photos for same-day pickup at your local Walgreens. According to Google, this nearly doubles the total number of stores available for same-day prints. In my area, CVS and select Walmart locations are already supported, so with Walgreens getting added, I’m totally good if I ever need to print some photos.

While same-day printing is available starting today, the subscription service will start rolling out to users later this month.

// Google Photos

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October 20, 2020 at 11:03AM

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For Fans Hungry For Baseball, Taiwanese Announcer Made Right Call In Unusual Season

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/19/924891330/for-fans-hungry-for-baseball-taiwanese-announcer-made-right-call-in-unusual-seas?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news

Richard Wang, who calls MLB games for Fox Sports Taiwan in Mandarin Chinese, had never called a baseball game in English. This spring, as the pandemic shut down baseball in the U.S., he was tapped to introduce Taiwan

Since 2014, Richard Wang has called Major League Baseball games in Chinese for fans in Taiwan. When COVID-19 delayed the MLB season, he had a chance to bring Taiwan baseball to the world in English.

(Image credit: Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)

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October 19, 2020 at 09:40AM

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Cruise Will Soon Hit San Francisco With No Hands on the Wheel

https://www.wired.com/story/cruise-hit-san-francisco-no-hands-wheel


Last week, Waymo, the self-driving vehicle developer owned by Alphabet, expanded a first-of-its-kind service offering rides to paying passengers around Phoenix—with no one behind the wheel. Videos shared by Waymo and others show its minivans navigating wide, sunny streets with ease.

Now rival Cruise, a General Motors subsidiary, has taken a step towards running its own self-driving taxi service—on the hilly, winding, pedestrian-swarmed streets of San Francisco. On Thursday, Cruise said the California Department of Motor Vehicles had granted it a permit to test up to five of its modified Chevy Bolts without anyone behind the wheel. In a blog post, Cruise CEO Dan Ammann said truly driverless cars would operate in the city before the end of the year.

Most of the more than 60 companies with DMV permits to test autonomous vehicles in California must keep at least one safety driver inside, who sits behind the wheel and monitors the technology. Four other companies—Waymo, Amazon-owned Zoox, delivery robot company Nuro, and AutoX—have received permits to test totally driverless vehicles in the state. But none is testing its driverless cars in areas as hectic as San Francisco.

The permit is a sign that companies like Cruise “are transitioning out of the development phase of the technology,” says Kyle Vogt, the company’s CTO.

How a chaotic skunkworks race in the desert launched what’s poised to be a runaway global industry.

So as not to freak out the neighbors, Cruise says its driverless car rollout will be gradual, and will begin in just one neighborhood; it declines to specify which one. DMV’s permit limits the five vehicles to speeds under 30 miles per hour and prohibits operating them in heavy fog or heavy rain. The slow rollout will “start to introduce people to the concept that maybe driverless cars are coming,” says Vogt. “Maybe not in the timeline [people] thought a couple of years ago, but they’re coming and expect that and start to acclimate to it.”

Cruise, like much of the industry, has admitted that the technical challenges of self-driving cars are more difficult than once thought. It had initially planned to launch an autonomous ride-hailing service by the end of 2019. Vogt has learned his lesson: He says it’s no longer “reasonable to put a hard, hard deadline or date” on when fleets of truly driverless vehicles might ferry paying passengers in San Francisco.

Among the challenges, Vogt says: Cruise needs to know that the vehicle will perform safely and prudently if, say, an internal wire is loosened. It needs to know that the car will react safely facing a situation it hasn’t been trained to deal with. To that end, Cruise has been testing driverless cars at a General Motors’ facility in Michigan for months.

A driverless Chevy Bolt tests at General Motors’ proving grounds in Milford, Michigan.

Courtesy of Cruise

San Franciscans have not always been comfortable with the self-driving testing in their midst. In the five years since Cruise began testing in the state, its cars have reportedly been involved in slap-fights with cabbies, and taken at least one errant golf ball to the windshield. Collision reports posted by DMV indicate that self-driving vehicles testing in California are involved in occasional fender-benders. The most recent reports, from September, show Cruise vehicles testing in autonomous mode have been rear-ended, bumped into, and involved in collisions, which according to the reports sometimes leave the company’s safety drivers with neck or back pain. Self-driving advocates say that while vehicles driven by software will never be perfect, they’ll keep the roads safer than humans, who are sometimes distracted, tired, or drunk. Neither the San Francisco mayor’s office nor the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency responded to questions about Cruise’s new permit.

That future can be hard to visualize, but Cruise has some ideas. The company earlier this year staged a San Francisco launch event for a vehicle it’s calling Origin, a six-seat electric vehicle meant for autonomous ride-hailing and delivery. “It’s what you would build if there were no cars,” Ammann, the CEO, said.

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October 15, 2020 at 06:00PM

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FAA cuts the red tape for commercial rocket launches (and landings, too)

https://www.space.com/faa-streamlines-commercial-space-launches-landing-regulations


Commercial space is about to become more accessible than ever before. 

Today (Oct. 15), the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration‘s (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) announced that it has published a new launch and re-entry rule known as the Streamlined Launch and Re-entry Licensing Regulation-2 (SLR2). The new rule aims to increase launch and reentry access for commercial space companies while maintaining safety. 

“We’ve seen the first launch of American astronauts into orbit aboard an American-built rocket since the end of the space shuttle program in 2004, to the International Space Station,” United States Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, said in a news conference today, referring to SpaceX’s two-month Demo-2 mission, which lifted off on May 30. 

“Our country is headed towards a record year in commercial space, and our goal in finalizing this new regulation is to keep it that way,” Chao said.

“We’re cutting the red tape that has held this industry to the launch pad for far too long,” FAA assistant administrator for communications Brianna Manzelli said at the news conference.

Related: Trump’s Space Policy Directive 2 could make life easier for SpaceX & others

This new rule is rolled out under the President’s Space Policy Directive-2 (SPD-2), which was enacted in 2018. SPD-2 guides the Secretary of Transportation to create a new regulatory structure for launch and re-entry activities. The directive also advises the Secretary to consider allowing commercial operations to launch and re-enter Earth’s atmosphere with just a single license (as opposed to having to get a new license for individual activities).

And with SLR2, the FAA has done just that. Now, only a single license is required “for all types of commercial space flight launch and re-entry operations,” according to SLR2, which “increases flexibility for launch and re-entry vehicle operations.” 

With SLR2, the FAA aims to streamline launch and re-entry procedures, so, “while it is laser-focused on public safety, it only regulates to the extent necessary,” Wayne Monteith, the FAA’s associate administrator for commercial space transportation, said during the news conference today. “The goal is to simplify the licensing process and a lot of novel operations, reduce costs and positioning both the industry and the FAA for the rapid increase in the number of launches that are coming, all without compromising safety.”

One interesting component of this new regulation sort of gets rid of the old rules that stated that the license for a launch would “begin” or take effect upon arrival at the launch site — for example, the gate at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. 

Instead, now, “an individual company can, in essence, negotiate with us when they want the license to begin,” Monteith said. “It reduces [the] burden on the individual stakeholder. And it certainly reduces [the] burden on government to monitor operations that have little to no impact on public safety.”

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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October 15, 2020 at 04:44PM