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A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

appleinsider.com

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Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#31

Post by adastra22 »

Aurornis wrote: post #16
tmalsburg2 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine such an image being used as evidence is a court case. E.g. showing someone pointing a gun at another person when that actually never happened.

Seems extremely unlikely. The phone isn’t going to make drastic alterations to reality. It’s just combining multiple exposures. It can’t make someone point a gun if they’re not pointing a gun. You could try to imagine a scenario where someone was moving extremely fast through the frame while someone was whipping a gun around at high speed in the same direction and the phone just happened to stitch two moments a fract…

What the comment you're replying to is saying could absolutely have happened. Imagine a "Han shot first" sort of situation: two people with guns, one shoots the other. The shooter claims it was self-defense, as the other guy went to fire first but was just slower. An iPhone picture captures the moment, but has the shooter firing, and the other guy's gun still at his side.

This is perfectly analogous to TFA--notice that the woman has enough time to move her arms into very different positions in the same composited moment.

Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#32

Post by afavour »

Aurornis wrote: post #12

Purists will always hate the idea of computational photography, but I love how well my iPhone captures handheld nighttime, low-light, and motion images. I’ve captured some photos at night that I never would have thought possible from a physically small sensor due to the laws of physics. Is it 100% pixel perfect to what was happening at the time? No, but I also don’t care. I’ve used HDR exposure stacking in the past.…

I have no objection with what we have today either but it does feel slippery slope-y, especially in the AI era. Before we know it our cameras won’t just be picking the best frame for each person, it’ll be picking the best eye, tweaking their symmetry, making the skin tone as aesthetically pleasing as possible, etc etc etc. It was always this way to an extent but now that we’ve given up the pretence of photos being “real” it feels inevitable to me.

I’m reminded of that scene in WALL-E where it shows the captain portraits as people get fatter and fatter. It’s clearly inaccurate: over time the photos should show ever more attractive, chisled captains. They’d still be obese in real life though.

Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#33

Post by kortilla »

Aurornis wrote: post #17
dgacmu wrote: post #3

I had a related experience with my Pixel 7 a few months ago. In this picture of a deer: https://photos.app.goo.gl/qChwaw9C29WVdAmr6 If you zoom in, you'll note that .. everything at a detail level looks like an oil painting, especially the deer's face and the wall behind it. Very weird effect, and that's certainly not what the wall or deer actually look like. No filters applied. Computational photography is really aw…

That’s denoising. Those mosaic like patterns are more pleasing to the eye than a noisy photograph. The laws of physics put a limit on how well a tiny phone lens and sensor can capture light. We’re not at the limit yet even though hardware is quite good. Still, you wouldn’t like if your phone spat out raw, noisy images everywhere without any processing (beyond what’s necessary to translate it to the right pixel grid a…

Is there any way to get the noisy version? Or is that all forced by the hardware.

Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#34

Post by tmalsburg2 »

dylan604 wrote: post #28
tmalsburg2 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine such an image being used as evidence is a court case. E.g. showing someone pointing a gun at another person when that actually never happened.

images like this would easily be torn apart by experts brought in to testify against it. then again, for something this obvious, it probably wouldn't need an expert.

If this phenomenon is so obvious, why is this story the top post on HN? And why did it take a picture of the mirror scenario to make people aware of this issue? Hell, the article even implies that this an issue only with images of mirrors when that is of course completely false.

Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#35

Post by mleo »

xyztimm wrote: post #22

So the mirror with the hands clasped?… is just completely made up? Because she’s clearly not doing that irl.

The arms are in three different positions with the processing composing three different frames based on which frame/composite it thought that “person” looked best.

Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#36

Post by leephillips »

dylan604 wrote: post #26
leephillips wrote: post #2

The article says that “The final composite image should be the best, most realistic interpretation of that moment.” But that doesn’t make any sense. If the there were three real people, rather than one person and two reflections, the algorithm would have created an image of a moment that never existed, stitching together different images taken at different times. The only difference is that we might not notice and mi…

How is what it is attempting to do any different from when someone takes multiple pictures of a group shot, and then uses the different shots to ensure no blinks and "best" expression from each subject? There's a reason professional photogs use the mulitiple snaps mode for non-sports. It used to be a lot of work in post, but a lot of apps have made that easier to now it's a built in feature of our phones.

The difference is in what some photographers call “editorial integrity”. There’s nothing wrong with any kind of image manipulation, as long as it’s done knowingly and deliberately, and as long as the nature of the manipulation is known to the audience. But the typical iphone consumer is just taking snaps and sharing them around, and almost no one knows what’s really happening. It’s creepy and unethical.

Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#37

Post by 0cVlTeIATBs »

Aurornis wrote: post #16
tmalsburg2 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine such an image being used as evidence is a court case. E.g. showing someone pointing a gun at another person when that actually never happened.

Seems extremely unlikely. The phone isn’t going to make drastic alterations to reality. It’s just combining multiple exposures. It can’t make someone point a gun if they’re not pointing a gun. You could try to imagine a scenario where someone was moving extremely fast through the frame while someone was whipping a gun around at high speed in the same direction and the phone just happened to stitch two moments a fract…

Well, the Rittenhouse case had a very important moment when the victim admitted that, while looking at a freeze-frame view of a video taken when he was shot, he had raised his pistol which was pointed at Rittenhouse only a fraction of a second before. [0]

That photo was critical for the defense getting him to say that.

There were also concerns over wether or not zooming in on an iPad should be allowed in that case--like if a red pixel next to a blue could create a purple one, etc.

[0] https://www.denverpost.com/2021/11/08/shooting-victim-says-h...

Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#38

Post by [deleted] »

dylan604 wrote: post #26
leephillips wrote: post #2

The article says that “The final composite image should be the best, most realistic interpretation of that moment.” But that doesn’t make any sense. If the there were three real people, rather than one person and two reflections, the algorithm would have created an image of a moment that never existed, stitching together different images taken at different times. The only difference is that we might not notice and mi…

How is what it is attempting to do any different from when someone takes multiple pictures of a group shot, and then uses the different shots to ensure no blinks and "best" expression from each subject? There's a reason professional photogs use the mulitiple snaps mode for non-sports. It used to be a lot of work in post, but a lot of apps have made that easier to now it's a built in feature of our phones.

[deleted]
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