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Microsoft Pix

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Re: Microsoft Pix

#21

Post by ebrewste »

mattnewton wrote: post #3

My untrained eye can't really notice a difference except that the pix version looks brighter (even washed out), the live photo version looks really uncanny valley (where the faces don't move but the world does around them is an unsettling effect).

Agreed on the uncanny valley comment. It's interesting to me that very uniform "smile and look at the camera" is the desired outcome of pictures for so many. This page seems to work on the unspoken assumption that the perfect smile in front of some other thing is the ideal picture. I definitely prefer pictures of people doing something other than staring at a lens with a rehearsed smile. It seems that this and so much other camera algorithmic work is aimed at idealizing that posed picture style.

Re: Microsoft Pix

#22

Post by WorldMaker »

cmiller1 wrote: post #2

Only for iOS? Surprised they didn't make a version for windows phone... or is this software already built into the camera functionality on WP?

My impression is that this is very similar to the official camera app on Windows, if not a direct port. I would not be surprised if at least some code was shared. Maybe?

Re: Microsoft Pix

#23

Post by sp332 »

djsumdog wrote: post #15
xd1936 wrote: post #5

Does this have Photosynth built-in? :P

When I first saw this, I wondered if it came out of the Photosynth project.

It's probably related to their hyperlapse tech, which shared a few people - at least Johannes Kopf and Richard Szeliski. https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2014/08/11/hyperlapse-siggr...

Re: Microsoft Pix

#24

Post by hbosch »

danso wrote: post #9

There's an interesting example they use to show the ostensible improvement of Pix over the Apple's Live Photo: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/... The Pix-enhanced version: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/... Sure, the Live Photo version has distracting movement, but it also has much more natural motion in terms of hair flow. And I feel that the camera instabili…

Looks like a much lower frame-rate too, like Pix is choosing a specific number of "like" frames and dropping the rest in the name of stabilizing the comp.

Re: Microsoft Pix

#25

Post by ebbv »

The Pix images just look mostly like the contrast was reduced and all the dark pixels were made brighter. That's not improving the images in my mind, it's just throwing away color depth and subtlety.

Re: Microsoft Pix

#26

Post by jasonlotito »

mattnewton wrote: post #3

My untrained eye can't really notice a difference except that the pix version looks brighter (even washed out), the live photo version looks really uncanny valley (where the faces don't move but the world does around them is an unsettling effect).

Downloaded it myself and tried it, and the difference is noticeable. I have to say, the result was better than what the default iOS camera app took. The Live Image is hit or miss (it really depends on what you are capturing), but it works.

Re: Microsoft Pix

#27

Post by drinchev »

I'm amazed how low-quality this MS landing page is.

- The "How it works" tab is just a huge image.

- The search box ( top right ) has some problems with the border. Both in Chrome & Safari.

- It uses `font-family: 'Segoe UI';`, which makes all elements with that font on my Mac "serif"

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