APRIL 2025 – A watercolor painting showing the village Manarola which is part of the coastal stretch called ‘Cinque Terre’ in Italy. © Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com/Image: ChatGPT
The story behind the image
From Lerici in Italy, you can easily visit the famous Cinque Terre – five villages built very close to the cliff. They can be reached only by train or by using a hike called Via dell’ Amore (“Street of Love” in English) which starts in Riomaggiore (the first of the five villages). We recommend using the train from La Spezia to Riomaggiore.
The first part of the hike (from Riomaggiore to Manarola) is easy but nevertheless impressing. Despite their isolated location, the villages do have a very good touristical infrastructure. But, let’s face it, they are not really suitable for beach holidays as there are no beaches, just the ramps for the fisher boats. People do not care and get their tan anyway by using these ramps as bathing platforms.
This watercolor painting was created by ChatGPT based on image PCD-2-150 which I uploaded to the service. The prompt for the “painting” is very simple:
Create an image from the uploaded file that looks like a painting using water colors.
Upon first glance, the “painting” looks very nice and almost realistic. It had a bit of a yellow-green bias which I corrected. Still, the result looks amazingly close to a genuine water color painting from that location.
However, the “painting” has a number of changes big and small that become visible when comparing it with the original photo. One of the biggest changes is that the “painting” was created from a location further to the right. What’s more, it shows a wider angle. The platform in the middle – where the boats have been parked – seems to be quite wrong, too. A person has been added. And stairs. And rocks.
Further inspection reveals that the “painting” has so many issues that it is just remotely similar to the reality that I captured with the photo.
Go figure.
Design ideas
The high resolution image
| Creation Date | 21-APR-2025 |
| Location | Manarola, Italy |
| Image Source | PCD-2-150 |
| Digital Image Source | ChatGPT |
| Digital Image Source Format | JPEG, 24 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Format | JPEG, 24 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Dimensions | 1536 x 1024 Pixels |
| Copyright | © by Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com/Image: ChatGPT |
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