Adobe Blog: “The Adobe Adaptive Profile”

The latest version of Camera Raw includes a new profile, called Adobe Adaptive. Unlike existing profiles such as Adobe Color or Adobe Landscape, Adobe Adaptive is image dependent. An AI model analyzes the photo and adjusts tones and colors to make them look just right. The effect is as if the AI had changed Exposure, Shadows, Highlights, Color Mixer, Curves and other controls for you, although the actual controls stay in their original neutral position.

The AI has been trained on thousands of hand-edited photos of people, pets, food, architecture, museum exhibits, cars, ships, airplanes, landscapes, and many other subjects. The photo collection covers various types of artificial lighting, as well as natural light during different seasons and times of day. The edited pictures were reviewed by a team of photographers to ensure a consistent style that looks appealing and natural, avoiding opinionated renderings with extreme contrast or unusual color choices.

Florian Kainz, Marc Levoy, & Lars Jebe

With Lightroom’s latest update, this feature has officially arrived in the Lightroom apps as well. I’m all for new features to enhance and expedite photo editing, but I’m a bit conflicted on this one. I like the concept of tweaking color profiles to individual images, but at the same time it feels like the implementation takes a lot of control out of the hand of the photographer and obscures it behind ‘magical’ AI algorithms.

Gry Online: “Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 review – a bit like early access, but at full price”

The American studio Firaxis promised a revolution and kept its word – Civilization 7 is a revolutionary installment. Without hesitation, he takes on the greatest sanctities of the series, destroys the old order and introduces a new order. The problem is that this revolution is still going on – barricades are still being erected in the streets, and smoke is rising over the city. And we will wait a little longer before the old goes away for good, and the new one solidifies, learns from its first mistakes and – most importantly – repairs the distortions. Because there are simply a lot of them in this revolutionary mess.

Currently, Civilization 7 is a chaotic mix of interesting ideas, classic solutions for the series, a lot of minor and major bugs, wonderful audiovisual setting, misguided simplifications and unclear mechanics. As a result, apart from the moments when the game drew me in so much that it was difficult for me to tear myself away, there were also a lot of moments when I couldn’t find basic information, key mechanics didn’t work or the gameplay was simply tiring. And above all this, there is a red flag in the form of a cut out fourth epoch (the one with computers or the conquest of space), the absence of which is simply felt. Which, by the way, is a clear reminder that the revolution in the series is not only about gameplay changes, but also about a stronger focus on monetization.

Adam Zechenter

It feels odd to link to a review in a language I don’t speak, and to comment on a game I haven’t played yet, but based on the translation this article best represents my own impressions on Civilization VII, at least from the early previews and gameplay videos from Firaxis and content creators. In short: huge changes to game mechanics that are paired with poor and even baffling implementation, bad UI, and lots of unfinished work that cannot, for me at least, justify the initial high price.