Skylum Software announced the formation of a new research and development division dedicated to the advancement of artificial intelligence technologies in image processing. The Skylum AI Lab leverages the company’s prior work developing smart filters in its award-winning Luminar software, as well as technology from its “sister company” Photolemur, which was founded in 2016 by Dima Sytnik and Alex Tsepko, co-founder and CEO of Skylum respectively.

“Clearly, AI can simplify our lives. By using AI-based technologies in our products, our customers save time vs. manual editing, and can often get better results,” said Alex Tsepko, CEO at Skylum. “Our neural networks are being trained on millions of images taken by cameras from Fujifilm, Sony, Olympus, Nikon, Canon and many others, which means outstanding results for all photographers, regardless of what style they shoot and what gear they are using.”

To spearhead the new Skylum AI Lab, the company has hired Alex Savsunenko, former CEO of Let’s Enhance, a leader in machine learning for visual content. Savsunenko will manage all research and development for technologies based on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and neural networks. Promising results will ultimately be implemented in Skylum products and solutions for image and video enhancement, with the aim to help users make their workflow faster, smarter and more efficient.

Currently, the Skylum AI Lab is testing over a dozen of new solutions, including:

• Image upscaling: uses deep convolutional neural networks to improve low-resolution images and scale them up for superior viewing and printing.
• Tagging: generates tags that describe the image and its objects based on image recognition.
• Segmentation: smart recognition of image areas that can be automatically enhanced using different filters and corrections based on the type of object.
• Automatic enhancement: applies smart image corrections to photos based on a variety of issue

To further reinforce its AI prowess, Skylum has also joined forces with Photolemur, creator of the world’s first fully automatic photo enhancement solution. Photolemur app has been sold for several years, with hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide. It enhances images utilizing artificial intelligence without the need to use any manual controls. Development will continue on Photolemur, with the next evolution of the app likely to be a cloud solution that helps high-volume users enhance images as batch process.

The World Press Photo Foundation announced the results of its renowned contests, the 61st annual World Press Photo Contest and the 8th annual World Press Photo Digital Storytelling Contest, at its annual Awards Show in Amsterdam.

Patrick Brown Panos Pictures_for Unicef

28 September 2017

The bodies of Rohingya refugees are laid out after the boat in which they were attempting to flee Myanmar capsized about eight kilometers off Inani Beach, near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Around 100 people were on the boat before it capsized. There were 17 survivors.  

Story:
The Rohingya are a predominantly Muslim minority group in Rakhine State, western Myanmar. They number around one million people, but laws passed in the 1980s effectively deprived them of Myanmar citizenship. Violence erupted in Myanmar on 25 August after a faction of Rohingya militants attacked police posts, killing 12 members of the Myanmar security forces. Myanmar authorities, in places supported by groups of Buddhists, launched a crackdown, attacking Rohingya villages and burning houses. According to the UNHCR, the number of Rohingya that subsequently fled Myanmar for Bangladesh reached 500,000 on 28 September.

Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

Aish21 September 2017a, aged 14. 

Portraits of girls kidnapped by Boko Haram militants, taken in Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria. 

The girls were strapped with explosives, and ordered to blow themselves up in crowded areas, but managed to escape and find help instead of detonating the bombs. Boko Haram—a Nigeria-based militant Islamist group whose name translates roughly to ‘Western education is forbidden’—expressly targets schools and has abducted more than 2,000 women and girls since 2014. Female suicide bombers are seen by the militants as a new weapon of war. In 2016, The New York Times reported at least one in every five suicide bombers deployed by Boko Haram over the previous two years had been a child, usually a girl. The group used 27 children in suicide attacks in the first quarter of 2017, compared to nine during the same period the previous year.

Toby Melville Reuters

22 March 2017
A passerby comforts US tourist Melissa Cochran, injured in an attack on pedestrians at Westminster Bridge in London, UK. Melissa survived, but lost her husband, Kurt, in the attack.  

Story:

On 22 March, Khalid Masood drove a rented SUV along the sidewalk of Westminster Bridge, near the British Houses of Parliament in central London. Three people were killed instantly, and two more died in the days after the attack; at least 40 were injured. Armed with two knives, Masood left the car and attempted to enter the grounds of parliament, where he fatally stabbed one of the policemen who tried to stop him, before being shot and killed. Born Adrian Russell Elms in Kent, UK, Masood changed his name when he converted to Islam. Although ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack the following day, police investigating found no evidence of any links between Masood and either ISIS or al-Qaeda.

Ivor Prickett for The New York Times