“A Quick Job”
The client, a fan of Steve McQueen's films, wanted a 5 × 2.7 metre poster for his garage wall. The motif was to be a scene from his favourite film, Bullitt. He sent us a freeze-frame screenshot from the film. The brief was to complete the scene so that the whole car was visible and the image was sharp enough to look good even up close.
Problem no. 1 – the missing part of the image
Not only the car but the rest of the scene had to be completed so that everything looked believable – and, in the case of the car, technically accurate. The client certainly wouldn't want to look at something with a mistake in it in his garage every day. His eyes would keep going back to it and he would be unhappy – every single day, perhaps several times a day. We were well aware of this, so we watched every detail.
First, we took the source image and had an AI tool complete the scene. The result pleasantly surprised us, but it was clear we still had a long way to go. AI tools are useful, but they can't do the whole job.
The scene as a whole looked convincing, but on closer inspection we noticed several problems. The car had three oddly placed exhaust pipes, which was clearly wrong. The driver had several issues – above all, he didn't look like Steve McQueen. The car in the background on the street corner didn't sit naturally in the image. Otherwise, though, the San Francisco scene looked very convincing.
We solved all the problems one by one and added a little more colour to the scene. The client was thrilled with the result. That left the second problem.
Problem no. 2 – image quality
It's one thing to fix all the details so that the photo looks right. It's quite another to enlarge it so that it prints well. You can't simply upscale it in Photoshop and sharpen it. AI came into play once again: using a specialised application, we enlarged the image and then worked on it further so that even its textures, such as the tyre smoke, looked right.
The client received the print-ready file on the third day after the brief. Complete satisfaction on both sides. As a small thank-you for a great job, we gave him a Matchbox model of exactly this car :-)
