Technology has a lot of work｜Time Restorer: Use AI to make yesterday happen again

Cover news reporter Wu Deyu Trainee reporter Che Jiazhu Photo courtesy: Sun Yibo

"The old friend has passed away, and the shadow of the past has faded away. The present is back again, and the memories of the past appear with confusion."

When she saw the restored photos, a tear flashed from the corner of her eye, which made me realize the importance of technology. Sheng Yang, a class of 2022 student majoring in intelligent science and technology at Southwest University, said this when answering reporters’ questions. In early July, teachers and students from the School of Artificial Intelligence of Southwest University took advantage of three summer trips to the countryside to go into the countryside and the earth. They used AI technology to restore old photos and restore the time-traveled photos for the villagers in Zhisheng Town, Rongchang District, Chongqing. old photo. AI repair awakens sleeping memories and makes the blurry years become clearer.

Add a touch of color to life

AI Repair Old Photos

Code hard skills and computer language skills are indispensable

A piece of past events, a mottled photo. The testimony of the older generation is left in these old photos, either of the deceased or birth photos. What the villagers want to retain are the memories of the past and the traces of time. Watching the black and white photos turned into color, the blurry and yellowed old photos gradually became clearer, and the villagers smiled happily as they looked at the clearly colored old photos.

The villagers who got the old photos were so happy

In this application of technology to restore old photos, students in the student technical team chose the open source engine Stable Diffusion. In addition to the open source part, the students also used their professional abilities to make some interface calls and web pages. The development of the terminal appearance design part and the adjustment of some parameters can finally provide input text to the model and guide the model to generate appropriate answers. This is also a process of human-computer interaction.

Use AI to repair old photos on site

According to classmate Zhang Wenhan, the entire development process requires operators to have certain coding capabilities and natural language understanding and transformation capabilities. In addition, classmates also recommended that everyone can use this software for design and development. In addition to the function of repairing old photos, the software also has other drawing functions, and it is open source and free, providing a complete website and program. In previous kindergarten volunteer activities, the student team has successfully promoted this software to teachers in the kindergarten affiliated to Southwest University.

According to the introduction, the restoration of old photos is divided into three steps. First, a scanner will be used to obtain the photos and converted into scanned PNG format files. The second step is to input the scanned pictures into the program to adjust various parameters as required. In this process, the specific processing method needs to be determined based on the degree of wear and tear of the old photos and the needs of the villagers. For example, whether the color of the picture requires restoration and whether it needs to be clear. The magnified resolution multiple, and finally select the repair model for different types of pictures. After the operation is completed, output the repaired old picture and print it. If there are pictures that are still unsatisfactory after AI repair, the technical team will use PS and other traditional photo editing software to make further detailed adjustments, striving to achieve results that satisfy the villagers.

Seriously damaged and difficult to repair

Hope to solve it through more powerful algorithm

The algorithm model used by the student technical team has a better effect on facial repair, but there are also some difficult problems to overcome during the actual operation: For example, villagers accidentally caused ink or oil stains on old photos, or even damage. It's so severe that it's difficult to repair this part of the photo. Sheng Yang believes that more powerful algorithms will emerge in the future to solve this problem.

Both students expressed their opinions on the future application technology of AI. Although people's imagination is unlimited, it can be quite challenging to express their ideas. Especially for a clumsy person like me, sometimes I will have some very strange and bizarre ideas, but it is difficult to implement them. AI provides me with the opportunity to express my own ideas. Through AI creation, it may bring unique experiences. "Although AI cannot be predicted before output, the meaning of AI's existence is to liberate people from complicated mechanical labor, do meaningful and creative things, and show people's subjectivity." ”

flesh testing AI repair software

The details are slightly different

In addition to Stable Diffusion, the reporter also evaluated three commonly used AI old photo repair tools on the market: "RestorePhotos.io", "jpgHD.com", and "Old Photo Repair". The three softwares are all intuitive for repairing old photos, but there are still slight differences in the specific usage experience. In terms of repair speed, "RestorePhotos.io" is very fast and can be completed within 10 seconds, but "jpgHD.com" is slower, taking 3-5 minutes even for small pictures. Regarding the accuracy of detail restoration in old photos, the three software also gave different answers. The algorithm language of "RestorePhotos.io" is very "brainy", and it will make supplements beyond the original image in judging details. It is also easier to distort the details of portraits, but jpgHD.com is very accurate. High, even the real details in the original photos can be restored, and "old photo restoration" is between the two in terms of accuracy.

It is understood that this technology can also be used in the restoration of famous paintings. After the preliminary repair of ancient books and famous paintings, further non-destructive enlargement and intelligent coloring processing are carried out, and even manual assistance is required for color mixing, mapping and other further steps. post-processing. By using AI technology and Wenxin large-scale models, Baidu successfully followed traditional cultural habits and fully presented "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains". The painting completes and perfects the elements consistent with the style of the existing authentic work, including the harmonious context of the landscape, conforms to the aesthetic characteristics of the original painting, and also has visual appreciation value.

The application of AI restoration technology allows precious memories to be preserved for a long time. On the basis of improving the image quality, it also retains the taste of the old photos themselves, achieving "restoration as old as before". In the field of science and technology, everything presented in this photo remains true, and it happens to be the only example that does not want to have an impact on changing the world.

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