While I have been laid up on the couch, I have been doing a lot of experimenting with A.I., both for long iterative conversations about various topics, research on my injury, a lot of Spanish practice and I've also been fiddling around with images and creating artificial landscapes.
Here, for example is my yard, more or less, with the crabapple grown mature and plantings under it filled out. It's clearly fake, and "off", but it gives me a feel for how it will look in a few years.
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| The big Chinese privet is missing on the right side, but still. . . |
And here is a faux vignette of red chairs on a deck with a flagstone walkway leading to it, compared to my own arrangement. Similar, but a different layout of stonework compared, side by side, to mine. It's really instructive on how my space could look.
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| Similar look, same elements on the left as my real garden on the right |
Here's another side by side comparison I did looking the opposite way from the view above. Again, I made the flagstone path wander through the center of the yard leading from garage door to the deck, compared to my own walkway and garden and stone patio.
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| An example of how my narrow yard could have been configured |
I really like this and wish our hardscape could accommodate gardens on either side of a central path.
Here's another I created to show the central flagstone path and gardens on either side, leading to a deck, with the house on one side. It has a waterfall and pond, though, which is nice, but I wouldn't want that.
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| Another example of how the back yard could have looked |
I got creative one night and had A.I fill out the tiny yard at Greg's house -- it's the other side of his duplex, and is currently rented out. The "before" photos of the empty yard are from the real estate listing for the rental. I just asked Gemini to make a garden out of the bare space in the photo, and I tweaked it a bit from there.
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| Greg's neighbor's yard, currently bare but with potential |
A little "before" and "after" fun. I did a view looking the other way toward the garage too.
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| Looking the other way |
All these A.I generated shots look fake, and they have plants flowering way too profusely at the same time that wouldn't in real life. Some details are either too perfect or slightly distorted. Gemini has a hard time deciding if a tree trunk is behind or in front of a fence.
But for getting a feel for what a landscape might look like it's a real help in visualizing design changes. And I am having fun creating and recreating whole scenes.