i linked to 3 offline image upscaling softwares, and 3 cloud image upscaling services, as well as mentioning google colab notebooks which are on the cloud. not sure if i rely on the cloud "too much".
i rely more on opengameart.org continuing to exist. the vast majority of what i do is offline, other than gathering resources online. i make music offline with acoustica mixcraft 9 pro studio and various virtual instruments. i do pixel art with libresprite, paint.net, krita, piskel. i make games with gdevelop. all offline.
i do use online ai art algorithms in conjunction with offline tools for modifying background images and title screens for projects, but the bulk of what i do i could do without the internet. except that without the internet i couldn't use opengameart.org.
if nightcafe.studio and artbreeder.com cloud ai art went away, then my games wouldn't have weird title screens anymore, my webpages wouldn't have weird background images anymore, and my youtube channel wouldn't have weird music videos anymore. that's about it.
running ai algorithms on my laptop is both resource-intensive and difficult for me as a coding novice to get working. but it's not really that important a part of my workflow that i couldn't do without it. ai stuff is more like a hobby that i am fascinated by, so i try to incorporate in other stuff that i do.
my experience with image and video upscaling came from digitizing old family photos and my mom's vhs home video tapes. and i did that offline with videoproc converter and flowframes.
these are models are natively compatiable with cupscale, above. if you can get cupscale to recognize your python 3. it still often tells me i dont have the require dependencies, even though i do. 8x sphax and 8x yanderepixelart models look nice.)
slow, free, some stuff looks great, but color interpolation can be REALLY crappy looking for some input images.
sometimes ai upscaling will preserve tranparencies. for the best results you would need to edit all upscaled sprites by hand. upscaling entire flare art library and making them look good is a big big big big big big big big big big job. which is why i don't wanna do it :p but i hope the provided info helps you to fiddle with it yourself.
there is also the world of google colabs, of which there are about 100 million.
but if i access the source, study and modify it for my own needs i am no longer "an end user" now i am a "creator"
i guess we be splitting hairs at this point. i am familiar with the stallman story though.
i will say this. when i first started putting my music out there, i had written my own custom license prohibiting people from using my art in works that were racist, sexist, or pornographic, because of my own ethical beliefs. then i decided i wanted to put it on oga, so i switched to a cc-by license, with an "ethical suggestion" in reference to same type of content.
in the end i decided that cc0 was best. even though ethically i don't want my work being used in works that i believe are abusive, i decided i would rather let people have the freedom to do evil. their evil is on them, not on me. i know that my art could be used by some nazi or misogynist whose philosophy i loathe. they are doing the wrong, not me.
my point in all that is i have altered my position multiple times on licensing issues as a creator.
as a creator i believe that by putting stuff out there with no restrictions is the most free. people are free to use it, misuse it, abuse it, whatever. it's more imporant to be that they have that right than for me to try and control what happens to it after i put it out into the multiverse.
"Free licenses are not (and never were) about the freedom of the creators, they are all about the freedom of the end users"
If the definition of a user is someone who doesn't create derivatives or fiddle with open code, then what benefits do free softwares have to these end users other than they have the ability to share the software that they got under a copyleft license? What does it matter to these end users what license the software has? And if it doesn't matter, then why have a libre software movement at all, if not for the benefit of creators whose creations can benefit from those free cultural works?
"That's only because you're confusing the object of the context. Free licenses are not (and never were) about the freedom of the creators, they are all about the freedom of the end users. Keep this in mind and everything will get crystal clear."
I would say I do more as an end user than as a creator. And as an end user, I try to use BSD-style licensed stuff whenever possible. GPL and strong copyleft limits me as a user. That's how I feel, that's my opinion. Obviously plenty of people disagree with me and agree with Stallman. I don't.
In my opinion freedom and openness in the context of collectivism is about not placing restrictions on end user, not about making sure that "information stays free because information wants to be free." Information doesn't want anything. People want stuff. People who want to make sure that information/art/data/code stays free and anyone who uses it are locked into that same license, that is what CC-BY-SA and GPL and strong copyleft are for.
For me, as a creator: I will license my art cc0, license my code expat/mit.
For me, as an end user: I will seek out art that is licensed cc0, cc-by, or oga-by, and code that is bsd-style licensed.
IMO it is as much about philosophy as it as about confusion over viral licensing.
ok good to know
edit:
it turns out https://opengameart.org/content/zelda-like-tilesets-and-sprites animations are much more stylistically compatible with zoria. and it is cc0 so my deriv can inherit zoria's license
i linked to 3 offline image upscaling softwares, and 3 cloud image upscaling services, as well as mentioning google colab notebooks which are on the cloud. not sure if i rely on the cloud "too much".
i rely more on opengameart.org continuing to exist. the vast majority of what i do is offline, other than gathering resources online. i make music offline with acoustica mixcraft 9 pro studio and various virtual instruments. i do pixel art with libresprite, paint.net, krita, piskel. i make games with gdevelop. all offline.
i do use online ai art algorithms in conjunction with offline tools for modifying background images and title screens for projects, but the bulk of what i do i could do without the internet. except that without the internet i couldn't use opengameart.org.
if nightcafe.studio and artbreeder.com cloud ai art went away, then my games wouldn't have weird title screens anymore, my webpages wouldn't have weird background images anymore, and my youtube channel wouldn't have weird music videos anymore. that's about it.
running ai algorithms on my laptop is both resource-intensive and difficult for me as a coding novice to get working. but it's not really that important a part of my workflow that i couldn't do without it. ai stuff is more like a hobby that i am fascinated by, so i try to incorporate in other stuff that i do.
my experience with image and video upscaling came from digitizing old family photos and my mom's vhs home video tapes. and i did that offline with videoproc converter and flowframes.
cheers
oh i forgot to add links
https://github.com/AaronFeng753/Waifu2x-Extension-GUI
(can be decent and is easy to use)
https://github.com/n00mkrad/cupscale
(works very nice if you can get python to cooperate.
https://nmkd.de/?esrgan
these are models are natively compatiable with cupscale, above. if you can get cupscale to recognize your python 3. it still often tells me i dont have the require dependencies, even though i do. 8x sphax and 8x yanderepixelart models look nice.)
https://github.com/xinntao/Real-ESRGAN
(sucks for just about everything but photos)
AI upscaling in the cloud:
(i don't know what ai models these use, you can probably find that info if dig around their tos) results are different for each site
https://www.aiseesoft.com/image-upscaler/
free and good looking. can be super super slow.
https://www.imgupscaler.com/
limited to 10 upscales a week unless you pay. results can look nice, but output is jpeg.
https://vance.ai/
slow, free, some stuff looks great, but color interpolation can be REALLY crappy looking for some input images.
sometimes ai upscaling will preserve tranparencies. for the best results you would need to edit all upscaled sprites by hand. upscaling entire flare art library and making them look good is a big big big big big big big big big big job. which is why i don't wanna do it :p but i hope the provided info helps you to fiddle with it yourself.
there is also the world of google colabs, of which there are about 100 million.
I have experience upscaling art, but I'm not at all interested in Flare.
However I did take the time to do some upscaling with different algorithms to give you an idea of what type of results would be possible.
AI upscaling takes time. You either do it on your own computer (which takes time) or you do it in the cloud (which costs money)
Bicubic and similar types of upscaling is super simple but looks like turd.
This is from https://opengameart.org/content/flare-skeleton-mod-skeletal-knight
original size:
various types of upscaling:
but if i access the source, study and modify it for my own needs i am no longer "an end user" now i am a "creator"
i guess we be splitting hairs at this point. i am familiar with the stallman story though.
i will say this. when i first started putting my music out there, i had written my own custom license prohibiting people from using my art in works that were racist, sexist, or pornographic, because of my own ethical beliefs. then i decided i wanted to put it on oga, so i switched to a cc-by license, with an "ethical suggestion" in reference to same type of content.
in the end i decided that cc0 was best. even though ethically i don't want my work being used in works that i believe are abusive, i decided i would rather let people have the freedom to do evil. their evil is on them, not on me. i know that my art could be used by some nazi or misogynist whose philosophy i loathe. they are doing the wrong, not me.
my point in all that is i have altered my position multiple times on licensing issues as a creator.
oh. look at https://www.screentogif.com/ and https://getsharex.com/
as a creator i believe that by putting stuff out there with no restrictions is the most free. people are free to use it, misuse it, abuse it, whatever. it's more imporant to be that they have that right than for me to try and control what happens to it after i put it out into the multiverse.
but to each their own.
i'm gonna go play super tux kart now. :p
Your original statement
"Free licenses are not (and never were) about the freedom of the creators, they are all about the freedom of the end users"
If the definition of a user is someone who doesn't create derivatives or fiddle with open code, then what benefits do free softwares have to these end users other than they have the ability to share the software that they got under a copyleft license? What does it matter to these end users what license the software has? And if it doesn't matter, then why have a libre software movement at all, if not for the benefit of creators whose creations can benefit from those free cultural works?
In RE: @bzt
"That's only because you're confusing the object of the context. Free licenses are not (and never were) about the freedom of the creators, they are all about the freedom of the end users. Keep this in mind and everything will get crystal clear."
I would say I do more as an end user than as a creator. And as an end user, I try to use BSD-style licensed stuff whenever possible. GPL and strong copyleft limits me as a user. That's how I feel, that's my opinion. Obviously plenty of people disagree with me and agree with Stallman. I don't.
In my opinion freedom and openness in the context of collectivism is about not placing restrictions on end user, not about making sure that "information stays free because information wants to be free." Information doesn't want anything. People want stuff. People who want to make sure that information/art/data/code stays free and anyone who uses it are locked into that same license, that is what CC-BY-SA and GPL and strong copyleft are for.
For me, as a creator: I will license my art cc0, license my code expat/mit.
For me, as an end user: I will seek out art that is licensed cc0, cc-by, or oga-by, and code that is bsd-style licensed.
IMO it is as much about philosophy as it as about confusion over viral licensing.
EZGif is best online solution IMO. They have a nice spritesheet cutter too.
I am sure there are plenty of downloadable softwares as well, I just prefer to use EZGif.
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