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Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-processor

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11–20 of 102 posts

Re: Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-processor

#11
post #3

Cool, but am I the only one who thinks the photos on the right (toward the bottom) are a little overexposed / bland / washed-out?

The point is they recovered the shadow detail of people’s faces which would otherwise be lost.

What's the point in recovering something just to waste it again?

Re: Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-processor

#12
post #3

Cool, but am I the only one who thinks the photos on the right (toward the bottom) are a little overexposed / bland / washed-out?

As landscapes, they may well be less interesting. As communicative portraits, they're (IMO) more successful. The first one is probably the best example. Having a clearer and brighter picture of (for example) your partner and daughter would likely be preferable. If it was a candid and unposed shot, it might look weird and unnatural though. This is why the fourth example is probably the least successful, that hazy summer glow in the "before" picture is somewhat desirable.

To my eyes, the shadow boost is a little too much. I'd ideally like a slider to customise exactly how much brightness you're adding. Personally, I'd probably turn most of these down a touch.

Google clearly has fantastic technology driving this image processing, but I think they need a little more work on their taste.

Re: Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-processor

#13
post #3

Cool, but am I the only one who thinks the photos on the right (toward the bottom) are a little overexposed / bland / washed-out?

No, I noticed it right away and I'm no photography expert. I suppose it's easy to control that in software, though, preferably before they actually enable the feature in Android 8.1.

I also don't know if Google actually consults with real photography experts when creating these machine learning techniques. Apple made a big deal out of doing that at the last event to create "beautiful photos". It's not enough to just "mathematically improve" something. It should look very pleasing to the human eye, too.

Perhaps if Google did that, too, it would have avoid issues such as this one, or the somewhat unrealistic look of its portrait mode blur in photos. It's hard to explain, but to me the Pixel 2 portrait shots look like the person doesn't "belong" in the environment. Like they have a linear-blur wallpaper behind them and they photograph themselves in front of it. Or almost like they are photoshopped into the image. I wouldn't say it's that bad. And a majority of people probably won't notice it immediately, but I still think it needs to be improved (perhaps, I don't know, by actually using a dual-camera setup like Apple and Samsung?).

https://www.gsmarena.com/google_pixel_2_xl-review-1670p4.php...

Re: Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-processor

#14

It looks like they are releasing these bits and pieces before the Finale. Custom ARM core, SOC in entirety.

I'm not so sure... Have they bought or hired any taken like apple did?

You're begging the question here. Apple's acquisition of PA Semi filled a void. You assume a similar void.

Re: Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-processor

#15
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure... Have they bought or hired any taken like apple did?

You're begging the question here. Apple's acquisition of PA Semi filled a void. You assume a similar void.

Absence is the default for any ontology.

Re: Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-processor

#16
post #3

Cool, but am I the only one who thinks the photos on the right (toward the bottom) are a little overexposed / bland / washed-out?

Yeah, agreed. I screen captured the unprocessed image from the webpage (which has been jpeg'd and therefore lost lots of the shadow detail). I loaded it into a paint package and did a simple (and computationally cheap) histogram adjustment. IMO, the results were at least as good as theirs. And these are the results they cherry picked. Not impressive.

I guess most people won't load the image into a paint package to fix it, so their aim is just to automatically do a job nearly as good as a trivial change a human would make. Still, I was hoping for more.

Re: Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-processor

#17
post #13
post #3

Cool, but am I the only one who thinks the photos on the right (toward the bottom) are a little overexposed / bland / washed-out?

No, I noticed it right away and I'm no photography expert. I suppose it's easy to control that in software, though, preferably before they actually enable the feature in Android 8.1. I also don't know if Google actually consults with real photography experts when creating these machine learning techniques. Apple made a big deal out of doing that at the last event to create "beautiful photos". It's not enough to just…

>Apple made a big deal out of doing that at the last event to create "beautiful photos". It's not enough to just "mathematically improve" something.

There are many non-obvious issues with this as well. You're most likely thinking of, for example, an non-centered subject can create an interesting composition and algorithmically centering the subject would not create better looking photos.

However, in film's history, we've seen older technology briefly preferred for no other reason than momentum. An example off the top of my head is higher frame rate video does not have the "movie feel" that 24 fps film does. That doesn't mean 24 fps is ideal, its simply familiar.

Re: Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-processor

#20
post #12
post #3

Cool, but am I the only one who thinks the photos on the right (toward the bottom) are a little overexposed / bland / washed-out?

As landscapes, they may well be less interesting. As communicative portraits, they're (IMO) more successful. The first one is probably the best example. Having a clearer and brighter picture of (for example) your partner and daughter would likely be preferable. If it was a candid and unposed shot, it might look weird and unnatural though. This is why the fourth example is probably the least successful, that hazy summ…

IMO from a photography point of view the first is the worst displaying very clear haloing around the subjects, one of the clear signs of "not good" HDR. I guess it depends what exactly you're optimising for but the results aren't pleasing to my eye.
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