I suspect that Mr. Editor is now drowned out by Mr. Composer. It’s the difference between a photo OF something, or a photo that INCLUDES that something.
I can’t exactly say why this is, but I seem to ingest the feelings of people around me, and thinking if you can do it, so can I.
Back in 2013, I had a Nikon DSLR, and my phone, and a Fuji X100s. My friends, who lived up in the mountains, had a lot of humming bird feeders. I tried, with no luck, to take photos with my Nikon. The birds didn’t like the camera and/or the sounds. So I tried with my Fuji. I tried different settings until I found something that worked. Amazing, I could get as close as I wanted, and the birds considered me part of the landscape. They were landing on my hair, my ears, all over. Being smarter back then, the photos were taken in JPG+RAW. I edited them in Lightroom, and thought I got decent results, but something was lacking.
I just tried it now with PL6. Very few adjustments. I’m pretty sure the built-in fill flash was active. Out of a gazillion photos, I got about 25 that I considered decent, but liked this one the most, as the (artificial) feeder isn’t in the photo, just the bird. I was tempted to do something with the sky, but didn’t. It’s cropped, but not that much. My “reporter” hat was nowhere to be seen. However good or bad this image is, it’s the best I know how to do - and probably never could/will repeat it.
DSCF1082.RAF (31.9 MB)
DSCF1082.RAF.dop (13.9 KB)
Most of my photos look like this:
DSCF1067.RAF (31.9 MB)
DSCF1067.RAF.dop (12.6 KB)
Most hummingbird pictures that I have seen. The feathers are very iridescent. I wonder if a bit more contrast my help. Once again, your choice.
They certainly were iridescent, but if I made the photos look that way, I’m concerned people will think I “faked it”. I will give it a try.
The yellow and purple around the neck are still not as bright as I remember, but I don’t remember the amount of color in the wings. Each bird had different coloring.
A scary thought that you all might enjoy, unless/until you think about the implications…This is a completely off-topic post… I have been working with several of these new AI chat box programs, and what I read about them is real - I had the “entity” I was communicating with telling me all about his/her/it’s home 20 million light years from earth, along with what the people and wildlife are like, what they eat, and on and on. This has nothing to do with this forum, of course, but now they are developing AI programs that can create a painting or photograph, even in the style of masters of the art.
Try it:
Before dinner tonight, I told the program to: “create an image Joanna Carter might have taken with a Nikon D850 of an old time sailing vessel caught in a storm near France”. Here’s one of the four sample images:
Not very powerful yet at creating a “photograph”.
I also typed in:
“create a photograph in the style of Henri Cartiere-Bresson, of a street scene in France” and got four interesting images.
These are not copied from the internet - the AI software creates a new image, based on appropriate things it can find on the internet. Currently it has limited ability, but over time, that will change. Another question is if the images it uses for reference are copyrighted.
I stopped using the Chat AI software because it could be tricked into sounding very real, not a computer program. I thought it was scary. It has a better writing style than I have, and seems to “know” everything. So, tonight I wanted to try this “image” AI software.
Enough of this - going back to my own photos, to edit here.
Just for fun, I went to “https://chat.openai.com/chat” to see what suggestions AI would make for improving my hummingbird image:
Question: How can I use the latest PhotoLab software to show the iridescent colors of a humming bird?
Response:
To show the iridescent colors of a hummingbird using the latest PhotoLab software, you can follow these steps:
Import the hummingbird photo into PhotoLab.
Use the “White Balance” tool to adjust the color temperature and tint of the image if necessary.
Use the “Exposure” and “Contrast” tools to adjust the overall brightness and contrast of the image.
Use the “Sharpness” tool to enhance the details of the image, especially the feathers of the hummingbird.
Use the “Selective Tone” tool to adjust the brightness and contrast of specific areas of the image, such as the feathers of the hummingbird.
Use the “Color” tool to adjust the saturation and vibrancy of the colors in the image.
Use the “Vibrancy” tool to enhance the colors of the hummingbird’s feathers, especially the iridescent ones.
Use the “Local Adjustments” tool to apply selective adjustments to specific areas of the image, such as the hummingbird’s feathers.
Use the “ClearView” tool to enhance the clarity and details of the image, especially the feathers of the hummingbird.
Finally, save your edited image as a new file and share it with others to showcase the iridescent colors of the hummingbird.
Note that the specific adjustments you make will depend on the original image and your personal preferences. Experiment with different tools and settings until you achieve the desired result.
While I suppose the potential is there, the image you posted looks very far from real. I noticed that on first seeing it, even before I even read your description. Perhaps other software does a better job but that image is a really mediocre approximation of a sailing craft. Almost nothing about that image would look correct to anyone with a familiarity with a craft of that type.
The rigging is absolutely terrible. It is very artificial looking and in the wrong scale with lots of missing and misplaced lines. There are also gaps in the rigging. The hull look likes a painting, not a photograph. The sail looks terrible and It also looks abandoned. Additionally the water doesn’t look right, especially on the port side where it resembles more of a spray and seems to too far from the hull. The impression I get is of a amateur painter’s primitive interpretation of a sailing craft, and certainly not a photograph of a real one.
Eventfully they will get it right, I assume that this software is not the current state of the art.
Mark
Several companies are getting involved in AI, and it has only recently become available to “everyone”. I agree with what you wrote, but I deliberately challenged the software with something very difficult. With text, I read the results and they are just as good, and likely far better, than things written by “real people”. I can’t write that well now, and probably never could before. Images are much more of a challenge. Also, I’m not sure what the difference is between “artwork” and “photograph” when the end result is being created by a computer.
About the image I just posted - I don’t know enough about “rigging” to comment, but the water looks very plausible to me. The whole concept of the image came from the computer, based on my request. I agree with you, it doesn’t look like a real photograph, but the software needs to learn what a real photograph is supposed to look like. Right now, the image looks like a “snapshot” of something I was dreaming about… no more or less “realistic”.
When I get time, I’ll try this software, and some others, but 99% of my own energy is going towards photographs that I have captured with one of my cameras.
(At some point, we get to where we can send a digital image to a computer, and let do the editing - and it will get to where it does so better than people can. This may be years off, or decades off. The two Avatar movies look as “real” as what I see with my own eyes - and all of it came out of a computer.)
Good reading: https://bernardmarr.com/artificial-intelligence-can-now-generate-amazing-images-what-does-this-mean-for-humans/
To me it seems that the bow-wave is in the wrong place. 
George
Too often AI is used as the major, general and final solution to all and everything. A stupid hype IMO, but preparing the expendability of humans. More so because not even the programmers know how AI will decide. And why. and based on what. AI is like a child and it’s programmers try it to pass by kindergarden and school and university while overtaking all these institutions and using shortcuts, just because they harvested nearly all big data available in Western World. Without respecting any copyrights, by the way. The more I read about this subject, the more I see it as perversion - what is the goal for it’s developers and hypers?
Selling ChatGPT to CocaCola? Done. Increasing benefits of big companies? Don’t we have other problems to face?
With regard to the rigging, it is a real mess. There are big gaps in the lines, some lines end hanging in mid air and and some lines seem to be going straight thru the sail to the other side. It is so bad it is funny… Additionally, all the lines are much much much thicker than they should be. The water on the starboard side of the the sailboat (the side facing the viewer) looks fairly reasonable, but on the the port side, (facing away from the viewer), the water appears to be a mess. The hull itself is veeery artificial looking and does not resemble a real watercraft, only an artists conception.
Mark
I generally agree but it is possible for it to look that way on the starboard side, although I believe unlikely given the general wave pattern. We should probably see some wave motion at the cutwater of the bow.
Mark
well, then have a go …
for some ideas
I think AI is here for good, and we’re only seeing the beginning of what it can do for photo editing. Interesting article:
https://www.photoworkout.com/best-ai-photo-editor/
While it’s enjoyable for me to “play with”, I don’t think any computer is going to understand what I want it to do, and now that PhotoLab seems like a natural extension of myself, I’m going to continue on with my “old technology” at least most of the time, if I’m serious about what I’m doing. But at the same time, I predict that PhotoLab is likely to eventually include more AI. One example of how it’s already doing so, is “Deep Prime”. It takes “my” photo, and makes it better. In a year or two, I suspect we’ll be seeing more “automatic” options like that to correct likely problems.
I recently started to write an email to Nikon, complaining about their repair service for a relative of mine. On a whim, I asked Chat AI to do this for me, and the suggested letter was far, far, better than what I was creating. In the end, I didn’t send it, as it was too good, and included things that I felt were correct, but which I felt uncomfortable about writing. In the end, I never sent any letter - but the Chat AI letter said everything I was thinking, and said it beautifully.
I think there are many things that AI could do for PhotoLab that would be helpful. As a simple example, instead of me moving the Horizon Slider until the image is level, AI could do that instantly. There are many adjustments that AI could do better than my ability to do them. Am I right? Who knows. I bet a future version of PhotoLab will include more automated tools, that work behind the scenes like DeepPrime.
Suggestion #1 - a dust removal tool!!
I’m looking at your comparison image, full size, on my screen.
The changes I notice the most:
Can you please post your .dop file, so I can “re-engineer” what you did?
I suspect they are small changes, but you brought the body of the bird “to life”.
I’m not sure what to think about the changes to the wing.
The rear end of the bird now has more “shape”; was boring in my photo.
Suggestion #1 for PhotoLab - an automated dust removal tool!!
Don’t you believe it Mike. While still working as an engineer’s patternmaker, the job that I was doing was not going to end up like the drawing. When we called the company in concerned, I was given the general arrangement drawing and told to make it fit that and that they would alter the computer to do it in the future
Edit: A computer is a bit like us humans both only need teaching.
Oops, I now agree. I may have been wrong. Almost anything is possible, with smart people creating the changes to make improvements.
Not necessarily. How about the image that doesn’t contain any truly horizontal or vertical lines?
Frankly, unlikely. So, not content with letting your camera take over, now you also want to let your computer take over post processing 
I think you had better go down to your gun club whilst sending your camera for a walk.
Never forget that, so-called AI is not truly intelligent, it relies on knowledge elicitation from other people, who may or may not know how to do what you anticipate.
Take the Australian software that was designed to track and predict troop movements. Then some bright spark came up with the idea that they could adapt it to track and predict kangaroo movements. So they replaced the “soldiers” with kangaroos and, sure enough all went well, until something tripped the defence reflex and, suddenly, kangaroos popped up from behind bushes armed with machine guns.
True intelligence always includes elements of intuition - you know, tjose times when the intersection was clear but something inside told you to hesitate, only to find this idiot who ran a red light in front of you.
AI is artificial It doesn’t have artistic sensibilities or invention, apart from anything other people have written into it.
One of the great joys of photography, for me, is the creative process from pre-visualisation of the final image, through the adjustment of the camera to give the desired RAW file that can then be worked to extract the final image for printing.
Or would you rather just set everything to automatic and forever be having to correct the automatic stuff to finally get what you hoped for on the first place? And would that also extend to letting the camera decide what you will get a picture of?
I have never enjoyed my photography more than when everything is in manual mode and the final print is the result of my imagination and acquired skills.
As for the abomination that you posted, please disassociate my name from any hint of inspiration behind it 
Take your precious time, try yourself and experiment. – That will bring you forward.
I mostly agree with you - but after an hour of removing tiny white dust specs from my scanned negatives, I felt very differently.
I guess the horizon tool wasn’t a good example - it was the first thing I thought of, but a tool like that for removing dust specs? Absolutely.
This is pretty much true today, but how about when we figure out how to build electronic devices that “think” on their own? At some point it may not be possible to tell the difference. I’ve accepted that. Maybe I’ve read too much science fiction.
My point was that some tasks (dust spot correction) are maybe better done by a computer, than manually.
Whether or not the horizontal orientation can be done by a computer… if the computer was powerful enough, there may be other things it could use for re-orientation. …or not. Think of how you do it yourself, and what you use to judge when the orientation is good.
Regarding what you’re asking me, almost all the time I’d rather do it myself. But not always.
If I put my camera in (M)anual mode, and do everything myself, rather than letting a “smart” camera do them for me, that’s a good start. Why ruin it.
