Sunday, October 18, 2026

Scary Staircases

After taking this photo of  a downtown staircase way back in April. I used AI to add the cat, raven and ghost, one by one, designating the locations and telling AI what I wanted in each separate case.. Then, I kept it in my blogger folder for a time closer to Halloween, which is now-ish  


Just recently, I decided to try again with these instructions and not specifying the location of each: put a raven, a black cat and a ghost on this staircase.

Somewhat surprisingly, Gemini chose the same order although it varied the locations. I think it did a much better job with the ghost.


I think that AI, at least as it pertains to photos, has improved quite a lot six months, not so much in results but what we can execute with one command.

And now, when I write that ↑ about the one command, I decide to do something that I have never done before and try to have AI create a whole similar image from scratch.

My instructions: 
Make an image with a dark, narrow, outdoor staircase in black and white with about 16 steps and with brick walls on either side and a covered landing at the top. Put a black cat, a raven and a ghost on the stairs.

That last photo (above) was in ChatGPT because I had used up my Gemini photo for the day, or I think I had. It's a female ghost up there, and the cat and raven are very dark, even after trying to lighten them a bit. So, it is not as good IMO, but the staircase looks pretty authentic and fairly similar to the original.

And so, I keep experimenting with the photo editing and dabbling in AI, just a bit. 

19 comments:

  1. I like your number 2. Though the perspective of size of cat and bird are off, which is the opposite but same problem I noticed in number 1. Crow should be maybe half the size of cat, don't ya think? But your staircase is definitely preferable...textures of treads, and the bricks showing where the camera was located by the vanishing lines they create!

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    1. I guess, but realism was never part of this little project. 😁

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  2. The one you did has the best cat, but the other two have better ghosts. I agree with the above that the raven is too big in the last two pics. Definitely like that staircase texture though! I have very mixed results with AI images. I find if they don’t get close with the first one, it’s best to begin over not tweak. I use Meta AI and Google Nano Banana. Sometimes I trawl through Pixabay, but it often takes forever to find what I want now (they have loads of AI images too, and they’re often really good, but they aren’t to our own specs). Fun to play with these!

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  3. Yours is better. We turned the furnace on yesterday. ;-)

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  4. #2 is the best in my opinion. I like seeing photos of Mari everywhere this time of year. She's famous!

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  5. I like the ghost in number 2 best but otherwise the first is better.

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  6. You got great effects here and I liked them all.

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  7. Your curiosity is immense.

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  8. Scary...but as soon as I saw the cat I felt very much at ease. :)

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  9. Oh I so love this. You are very talented. You should link this with SITAR.

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  10. You sure have fun with this!

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  11. AI has gotten quite good, to the point I no longer trust the pictures or videos in my feeds to be real anymore. Somewhere I read that over 50% of all videos now on social media are AI generated.

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  12. The ghost in #2 gets my vote, but the cat looked better a little lower on the stairs.

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  13. the second and third photos are great, though I liked the first one well enough.

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  14. Someday I need to take the time to play with the AI. I love what you do with it!

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  15. I think take out the cat and raven, leave the ghost and it would be perfect.

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