A.I. and high-quality objects for your next course
Posted: February 20th, 2025, 11:04 pm
There is a thread in another forum about purchasing/creating objects for the APCD. Seriously guys, just go to Freepik. For $10 or so per month, you have access to more high-quality images than you could ever use.
I am not referring to the photos that are also available on sites such as Freepik, I mean the images which are created by graphic designers (I suspect many are using AI to do so). Many of these are already immediately available in PSD format. For those that aren't, you get access to an AI tool which will make your selected image a transparency within seconds, no matter how complex the background (have not tried those AI-edited images myself in a course as have not needed to).
These images are "even better than the real thing". If you want to, you can forget about creating your own or importing images from other courses in future. To be honest, no matter how good they (and you) are, those images drawn from photos (even if the photo comes from sites such as Freepik) can no longer compete with what is now available out there. They are now relics IMHO.
The most important benefit for me is that these designed images often come in sets (4 to 6 versions of the same plant/tree type in a single file). This means that, finally, we have trees that actually look like they belong together (in the same country let alone at the same golf course). If you then find 3 or 4 sets that belong together (as I did for Banff and Sydney) then you have about 20 (unique and different) trees that are all still a coherent group. Do your own variations to some of them and suddenly you have an entire course of trees and you've hardly lifted a finger.
If you join Freepik, you will have access to millions of images. It will blow your mind but searching for exactly what you really want is then extremely challenging. The trick I found is to find the designers who specialize in plants, released in PSD/PNG format. Then you can just search those designers' "assets". If you want to know which designers I follow, just hit me up with a PM. Some of these folks seem just amazingly talented.
My go-to designer has about 10,000 images just in his own collection. I need certain type of bushes for my current course, and he has some images which are perfect but there are not enough of them. So I am trying to commission him just to do all of the bushes for my next course.
Another great thing is that you get your own account and you can sort all of your images in to whatever categories you want. You can just flag some and download others. Great for keeping track of all the images of interest but only downloading them when you need to. Also allows you to see what you have already downloaded.
For many of the Freepik PSD plants, you will often have the dreaded white border. This is because the designers feather the alpha to make the image transition to its background appear more natural. So the alpha has a border of semi-transparent cells which you have to remove. In GIMP, you just go Layer > Transparency > Threshold Alpha. Then set the slider to 0.50 (I think that's the default value anyway). That will remove all of the alpha pixels that are less than 50% transparent (which is all you need to do). About 15 seconds of work required for each image only.
The disadvantages? However affordable (and Freepik seems the most affordable of an increasing number of similar sites) there is still a cost.
And there are just so many of these designers who would only seem to get a very small amount for each download (and many seem to be based in south-east Asia), it does make you think that this might be the modern-day equivalent of a sweatshop. I certainly hope not, but another reason why commissioning a designer directly could be a good outcome for both of us. I suspect the site rules will prevent it, but lets see what we can do!
I know how frustrating building a coherent planting set can be. Its the worst part of the planting process for me (perhaps in all of APCD design of real courses) and just takes forever as you test and then discard so many options. Then trying to plant with a set you're not overly satisfied with anyway becomes a chore. But planting when you have a set that you really like and then can just see the course come alive as you plant, is a very different experience.
I am not referring to the photos that are also available on sites such as Freepik, I mean the images which are created by graphic designers (I suspect many are using AI to do so). Many of these are already immediately available in PSD format. For those that aren't, you get access to an AI tool which will make your selected image a transparency within seconds, no matter how complex the background (have not tried those AI-edited images myself in a course as have not needed to).
These images are "even better than the real thing". If you want to, you can forget about creating your own or importing images from other courses in future. To be honest, no matter how good they (and you) are, those images drawn from photos (even if the photo comes from sites such as Freepik) can no longer compete with what is now available out there. They are now relics IMHO.
The most important benefit for me is that these designed images often come in sets (4 to 6 versions of the same plant/tree type in a single file). This means that, finally, we have trees that actually look like they belong together (in the same country let alone at the same golf course). If you then find 3 or 4 sets that belong together (as I did for Banff and Sydney) then you have about 20 (unique and different) trees that are all still a coherent group. Do your own variations to some of them and suddenly you have an entire course of trees and you've hardly lifted a finger.
If you join Freepik, you will have access to millions of images. It will blow your mind but searching for exactly what you really want is then extremely challenging. The trick I found is to find the designers who specialize in plants, released in PSD/PNG format. Then you can just search those designers' "assets". If you want to know which designers I follow, just hit me up with a PM. Some of these folks seem just amazingly talented.
My go-to designer has about 10,000 images just in his own collection. I need certain type of bushes for my current course, and he has some images which are perfect but there are not enough of them. So I am trying to commission him just to do all of the bushes for my next course.
Another great thing is that you get your own account and you can sort all of your images in to whatever categories you want. You can just flag some and download others. Great for keeping track of all the images of interest but only downloading them when you need to. Also allows you to see what you have already downloaded.
For many of the Freepik PSD plants, you will often have the dreaded white border. This is because the designers feather the alpha to make the image transition to its background appear more natural. So the alpha has a border of semi-transparent cells which you have to remove. In GIMP, you just go Layer > Transparency > Threshold Alpha. Then set the slider to 0.50 (I think that's the default value anyway). That will remove all of the alpha pixels that are less than 50% transparent (which is all you need to do). About 15 seconds of work required for each image only.
The disadvantages? However affordable (and Freepik seems the most affordable of an increasing number of similar sites) there is still a cost.
And there are just so many of these designers who would only seem to get a very small amount for each download (and many seem to be based in south-east Asia), it does make you think that this might be the modern-day equivalent of a sweatshop. I certainly hope not, but another reason why commissioning a designer directly could be a good outcome for both of us. I suspect the site rules will prevent it, but lets see what we can do!
I know how frustrating building a coherent planting set can be. Its the worst part of the planting process for me (perhaps in all of APCD design of real courses) and just takes forever as you test and then discard so many options. Then trying to plant with a set you're not overly satisfied with anyway becomes a chore. But planting when you have a set that you really like and then can just see the course come alive as you plant, is a very different experience.