Expert Insights: How AI Changed Digital Artistry

How are AI tools changing the game for digital artists? We asked CEOs, creators, and professionals how AI is changing their creative work. Discover how these tools are reshaping everything from blog design to content creation through ten expert viewpoints.

Enhances Blog Aesthetics

MidJourney has been a huge factor in helping me get more traffic to my website and brand via Pinterest! The images are amazing and make the aesthetic of my blog overall so beautiful. The key to any AI tool, whether for image generation or content, is to know how to create a prompt. The more general you are, the more generic the outcome will be; but if you're too nit-picky and specific, it won't know which direction to go. I always think of AI image generation tools as freelance graphic designers: you want to be specific in your direction, but you don't want to micromanage them.

There are many artists who are against AI but think about this: Big companies have been using AI for years. So, why can't small and growing businesses finally be able to utilize those same tools to achieve their biggest creative goals, too?

Kira Violet, Singer-Songwriter, Content Creator, Violet Gaze

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Streamlines UI Design Workflow

AI tools for image generation, editing, and enhancement have transformed how we work in UI design. We often need specific images that perfectly match our design goals. In the past, we relied on paid image libraries, spending time searching for the right fit. Now, with AI-generated images, we create exactly what we need, tailored to our design requirements, without the limitations of existing stock libraries.

In a recent project, we needed custom illustrations that matched a specific color palette and style. Instead of spending hours searching through libraries or hiring an illustrator, we used AI to generate these images quickly and accurately. This saved us time and allowed us to maintain a consistent visual style throughout the project.

Juan Carlos Munoz, Co-Founder, CC Creative Design

Learn more: Turn words into impressive artwork and digital assets for your projects with a text-to-image AI generator

Boosts Artistic Efficiency

AI-powered image generation, editing, and enhancement tools are shifting the paradigm of work for the modern digital artist. Such tools save time by automating many tiresome tasks in the background, such as background removal and color correction, to even generating a full image based on a text prompt.

For instance, Adobe Firefly is fully integrated with Photoshop, thus allowing artists to use generative AI features such as the automated selection of subjects and neural filters that drastically alter the style and mood of an image.

One particular project where AI tools made a huge difference was when I used Pixlr to enhance a series of portraits. With the aid of AI-powered features, skin-tone smoothing and changes in lighting were very much possible without the use of such complex tools as Photoshop.

This sped up the workflow a lot. In addition, it improved the quality of the final artwork and gave me the ability to experiment with different styles quickly, enhancing creativity and efficiency.

Tom Jauncey, Head Nerd at Nautilus Marketing, Nautilus Marketing

Generates Brand-Consistent Backgrounds

AI tools for image generation, editing, and enhancement are reshaping the landscape for digital artists by streamlining workflows and pushing the boundaries of creativity. For instance, in a recent project aimed at creating marketing visuals for Omniconvert, I utilized an AI-based tool to generate backgrounds that complemented our brand aesthetic.

This saved significant time during the design phase and allowed me to focus on refining the composition and messaging. The result was a striking visual campaign that resonated well with our audience, demonstrating the powerful impact of AI in enhancing both efficiency and creativity in digital artistry.

Valentin Radu, CEO & Founder, Blogger, Speaker, Podcaster, Omniconvert

Create beautiful AI backgrounds with Claid.ai. Learn more: Backgrounds 2.0: Get studio-quality product shots in seconds

Expands Creative Design Possibilities

AI tools are revolutionizing digital artistry by automating tasks that once took hours, allowing artists to focus more on the creative aspects. I recently worked on a client’s branding project where we needed to create a series of visually cohesive social media graphics. Typically, this would involve meticulous editing to ensure consistency across images. However, using AI-powered image enhancement tools, I quickly standardized colors, contrast, and sharpness across all graphics, maintaining the brand’s aesthetic while saving significant time.

The real game-changer came when I used an AI image generator to experiment with different design concepts. The tool produced variations that I hadn’t considered, sparking new ideas and ultimately leading to a more dynamic and engaging final product. This combination of efficiency and creative expansion has fundamentally shifted how I approach design, blending technology with artistry to achieve results that were once out of reach.

Vaibhav Kakkar, CEO, Digital Web Solutions

Acts as an Artistic Co-Creator

AI in digital art is not just about automation, but also about collaboration between the artist and the machine. These tools serve as a co-creators, offering suggestions, enhancing the artist's initial ideas, and sometimes even inspiring new directions. For instance, AI-generated images can serve as a starting point, with the artist then adding their unique touch to finalize the piece. This partnership between human intuition and machine learning leads to artwork that is both deeply personal and innovatively executed, pushing the boundaries of what art can be in the digital age.

In a collaborative art installation, we used AI to generate dynamic visuals that responded to audience interactions in real-time. The project involved creating a digital mural that changed and evolved as viewers engaged with it. AI tools were essential in designing and implementing the algorithms that drove these changes, allowing the artwork to continuously adapt and surprise the audience.

Jason Hennessey, CEO, Hennessey Digital

Accelerates Photo Editing Tasks

AI tools like machine learning have been a game-changer for my agency's creative work. For example, I use AI photo-editing software to automate time-consuming tasks like skin retouching, color grading, and lighting fixes. This allows my team to focus on the creative aspects of our photo and video projects.

One campaign that benefited tremendously from AI was for a boutique hotel. We shot lifestyle photos of guests enjoying the hotel amenities but needed to edit hundreds of images. Using AI tools, we polished all the photos in a single day instead of several days. The end result was a vibrant, appealing set of photos for the hotel's social media and website.

AI also sparks new creative ideas. I follow many AI art accounts and am fascinated by the surreal images they generate. Seeing what AI is capable of pushes me to experiment more in my own work. For a recent video project, I used an AI filter to alter footage in unexpected ways, creating a dreamy, futuristic vibe that matched the client's vision.

While AI will never replace human creativity, it is a powerful partner for digital artists and marketers. Used thoughtfully, AI can improve creativity, inspire new concepts, improve quality, and boost productivity. The future of design will be a collaborative effort between human and machine.

Josh Cremer, CEO, and Creative Director, Redfox Visual

Inspires Original Website Designs

As the founder of a digital agency, AI tools have transformed how we work. We regularly use generative AI for creative inspiration and to speed up menial design tasks. For example, when designing a new website for a client, we generate hundreds of unique homepage layouts using AI. We then pick and choose elements from different layouts to inspire an original design. This process used to take days; now, it only takes hours.

We also use AI filters and presets to quickly edit product photos for e-commerce clients. With one click, AI can stylize a photo by changing the color palette, adding film grain, or adjusting lighting. These automatic edits allow us to scale e-commerce photography for larger clients. Manual photo editing for a catalog with thousands of SKUs would be nearly impossible without AI.

Most recently, we used a text-to-image AI to create social media images for a fitness brand. We entered a short prompt describing the type of image we wanted, and the AI generated dozens of images in different styles. Within a few minutes, we had lifestyle images representing our prompt to use on Instagram. Using AI sped up the design process for that campaign by 80% compared to sourcing stock or taking our own product shots. Overall, AI allows our small team to take on more ambitious projects and deliver better results to clients.

Benjamin Alicea, Lead Consultant, Hedera LLC

Augments Animation and Gameplay

As a digital artist and AI researcher, AI tools are integral to my entire creative process. At a basic level, I use image enhancement tools to improve resolution in all my visual works. For example, in my animation "Hyborg Forest," exhibited at Gwanghwamun in Seoul, I first rendered the animation using 3D software and Unreal Engine, then applied Stable Diffusion to generate enhanced sequential frames, and finally upscaled the footage. In this process, AI served as a creative tool, augmenting my initial work.

On a more advanced level, in my game "1001 Nights," AI becomes the core engine itself. Players collaborate with an AI system to co-create stories, making the technology not just a tool, but an essential part of the gameplay and narrative experience.

Yuqian Sun, AI Research Artist, Computer Science Research Centre, Royal College of Art

Speeds Up Digital Content Creation

I produce YouTube content and print images. I worked with computer graphics in 1980 because I saw many advantages to using digital tools. As I discovered AI, I’ve come to find similar results in speeding up production.

The primary AI tools I use are background removal and enlargement. The ability for AI to quickly separate something from the background is a huge time-saver, as I no longer spend much time refining the outline cutout in my paint system. The ability to quickly remove elements from an image provides greater flexibility with my compositing work.

AI image enlargement is great because I can upsample lower-resolution images and use them in high-resolution compositions. It also works well in that I can take video-resolution images and upscale them to print resolutions. The AI image enlargement tool opens print possibilities using older, lower-resolution content.

I also use OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 with DALL-E to generate concept art and render individual illustration elements. I’ll request that AI generate an object or character against a solid color that I can separate from the background and upscale as needed for digital composition. While the images produced by AI are remarkable and incredibly fast, controlling DALL-E is a challenge.

I can query the AI on how to write my prompts to get my desired results. For example, I follow the instructions and create a prompt for a single item, but DALL-E returns two items, while ChatGPT tells me that DALL-E just produced a single item. This is a frustrating situation where no matter what I request in my prompt, DALL-E renders something different.

The other issue I find with DALL-E is how it generates complex images. At a quick glance, it looks great; however, on closer inspection, you find strange AI anomalies in background elements or even the main composition. On one hand, you could say that DALL-E is using an impressionistic technique as opposed to rendering every detail; on the other hand, it seems unlikely that AI is considering this point in image generation.

Overall, I find DALL-E useful for concept art from which I go on to create finished images. The speed is great, and the quality of the image is great; it’s just that I cannot consistently control the output, which therefore makes it an unreliable tool. Though some images are spectacular, most have issues making them less viable for commercial use.

Randy Koons, Digital Artist

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