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Microsoft Pix

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Re: Microsoft Pix

#61

Post by aaronharnly »

untog wrote: post #44
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…

I am imagining a developer at Microsoft somewhere holding their head in their hands when they saw the Live Photo comparison made by the marketing team. To me, they don't really seem to be aiming for the same thing at all - the Pix version is a highly stylised animation whereas the Live Photo is simply a very short, silent video.

I know the Live Photo example on this Pix page is silent, but it's important for people to realize that Apple Live Photos are not -- they capture several seconds of sound.

I "know" this but often forget. When I look through iMessage history at pictures I've sent and received, there are often stray bits of overheard conversation that the sender wouldn't necessarily want or intend to include.

Re: Microsoft Pix

#63

Post by ricket »

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…

The Pix example looks like a cinemagraph. They can be really neat and beautiful. There is a popular subreddit, /r/cinemagraphs, and other various google results. Maybe those are examples of what you could accomplish with Pix - but surely you would still need some manual touchup to make it loop perfectly as it should.

Re: Microsoft Pix

#64

Post by therealmarv »

The results remind me of older special effects or manual brushing in Photoshop... they are not very natural and not very good. Beeing myself also a photographer: Don't do this to your photos. The best A.I. and filters cannot compensate a well lighted photo. I'm happy that Apple does not include such destructive filtering. IMHO even a flash from your phone is better than this filters.

Re: Microsoft Pix

#65

Post by hammock »

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…

The original creates the perception of realness and dimension through the effect of wiggle stereoscopy.[1]

Wiggle stereoscopy: http://i.imgur.com/FhA9aZI.gif

In contrast, the Pix version removes that sense of depth, and turns it into what is essentially a cinemagraph.[2]

Cinemagraph: http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5303/5659130034_7fc3dcfb8c_o....

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiggle_stereoscopy [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinemagraph

Re: Microsoft Pix

#66

Post by mangeletti »

thecosas wrote: post #45
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…

My first reaction to the Pix version was to shudder and think "that's creepy". Glad I'm not the only one.

I only saw the grass blowing scene in the main video and was like, "what do all these people mean about it being creepy?". That's some shit right there though.

Imagine looking back at your younger years from your pixel hammock overlooking the digital sunset, and you see a picture like that... now you're depressed because you remembered the physical world as being so beatiful compared to the digital world, esp after the big virus slowdown of 2251, but now you think "it must have been a creepy world after all".

Re: Microsoft Pix

#67

Post by tga »

I'd like one point clarified: is this app entirely local or does it make use of any kind of cloud backend?

I've already seen apps that upload photos away for processing without making it obvious (for example http://prisma-ai.com, if I'm not mistaken). I really shouldn't have to ask if only iOS had a permission for network access.

Re: Microsoft Pix

#68

Post by grumblestumble »

Ah, Microsoft. Will they ever figure out that the Microsoft name is a liability for consumer app adoption? There's a reason it's not called "Facebook Instagram", and Facebook, deservedly or not, still has a much less tarnished image than MS.

Re: Microsoft Pix

#69

Post by kkoomi »

ebrewste wrote: post #21
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 muc…

prefer + perfect = prefect? D:

Re: Microsoft Pix

#70

Post by Angostura »

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…

It might be attractive to people who want to loop an image, I suppose.
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