AI - Artificial Intelligence

"Artificial Intelligence is rapidly transitioning from a "bit of fun" and an improved search engine to a profound, structural transformation of the future. Today, AI is evolving from a standalone tool into an embedded "partner" or "agent" that handles complex, multi-step tasks in professional and daily life. While it offers massive productivity gains, it also brings significant risks regarding job displacement, misinformation, and ethical dilemmas."

I didn't write that, I cut and pasted it from somewhere on the web. However, from a 10 years retired, website wallah's perspective, it is just a bit of fun, but it has undoubtedly transformed our website.

I've spent many happy hours over the last few years making changes to our sizable collection of photos, cuttings, magazines etc. - cropping and straightening, removing scratches and blemishes, brightening shadows, reducing highlights and finally creating a lightweight version of a suitable size and quality such that it loads quickly and looks presentable on PCs, tablets and phones. 

I use various software tools to process photos, the main ones are Lightroom, Photoshop and Topaz Photo. They all have their strengths and weaknesses but they all play a part. Lightroom is great for its indexing and catalog and for making minor adjustments quickly and for exporting. Photoshop is incredibly powerful but it's too time consuming to learn and to use. The web will tell you that Photoshop is great at colouring old photos but I refute that. I have only had limited success and the time taken to achieve limited success is, in my view not worth the effort. Topaz is great for noise reduction, sharpening, face enhancements and especially for enlarging.

Then, in 2025, along came Nano Banana and Veo. Both developed by Google DeepMind, Nano Banana is an AI image generation and editing model, while Veo is a state-of-the-art generative AI video model which can be used to create high-definition (up to 4K) videos from text, image, or video prompts. Many other AI models exist but at the moment I'm enjoying these two and also Kling AI. Kling AI is a powerful, next-generation generative AI studio developed by Kuaishou that creates high-quality, realistic videos up to 1080p resolution and 3 minutes long from text or images.

Many of the latest AI models are available as free trials but usually you end up having to pay. There are also many websites that provide access to many different AI models. These websites also offer free trials and when your trial runs out, they are often a less expensive option, presumably because they buy in bulk from the major AI providers.

So.. recently I have been using Nano Banana to restore and colour many of our black and white photos and usually it does a very good job. I have completed colouring the Headmaster's retirement photos and most of the Henry Grant Collection, and I will be working through the many sports photos soon. Generally, when I have an acceptable colour version, I use the Google Sites "Carousel" widget to store both the original black and white photo and the AI generated colour version. The carousel is navigated by clicking the left and right arrows located within the photo and usually visible when your mouse hovers over the image. The black and white version is always uppermost in the carousel and the colour version is "underneath" the black and white version.

In addition to colouring the old photos, I also used Nano Banana to generate a few images related to St. Nicks and to this website (see below Section 1). Then I did some experiments with the stained glass horse/owl/fish/lion to see what Nano Banana could come up with (Section 2). Then I used Google Veo and Kling AI to animate a few photos, especially prefect and headmaster photos (Section 3). Finally, there is a selection of failures. If you decide to have a go yourself, be prepared for more failures than successes.

All these experiments are accessible from the links below.