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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

#381

Post by justinclift »

eyeundersand wrote: post #372
justinclift wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, that seems like a bug which should be fixed. It's pretty inconvenient for users. :(

You can change that in the settings. It's under 'Tabs' in the 'General' section of 'Settings' from the hamburger menu in the top-right (check/uncheck "Enable Container Tabs"). I quite like having that on by default.

The extra security aspect seems important, but the browser shouldn't just drop the user's previous history (for that tab) just because it's isolating things. :/

Hopefully this is just a case of "early stage feature" and bugs like this will be fixed. :)

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

#382

Post by avipars »

atomlib wrote: post #187
gnabgib wrote: post #14

Is maybe the original article[0] (referenced by this short recap piece) a better source? [0]: https://petapixel.com/2023/11/16/one-in-a-million-iphone-pho...

Why not link directly to Instagram instead then? https://www.instagram.com/p/CzPGNmJIebC/

https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/180355758585591...

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

#383

Post by [deleted] »

justinclift wrote: post #381
eyeundersand wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can change that in the settings. It's under 'Tabs' in the 'General' section of 'Settings' from the hamburger menu in the top-right (check/uncheck "Enable Container Tabs"). I quite like having that on by default.

The extra security aspect seems important, but the browser shouldn't just drop the user's previous history (for that tab) just because it's isolating things. :/ Hopefully this is just a case of "early stage feature" and bugs like this will be fixed. :)

[deleted]

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

#384

Post by kaba0 »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #366
kaba0 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different from a noise removal algorithm? Is it also taking away control from you!

The Apple algorithm visibly and significantly changes color, contrast, and likely curves, for every image, including in RAW format. Without my consent and with no option to opt out. The Apple camera app is accessible quickly without unlocking the phone and I use that feature most of the time when I travel. So I end up with thousands of crappyfied images. Infuriating.

You buying the device which makes proper images in low-light/moving situations despite its small sensor size is your goddamn consent. Buy a shitty cellphone from 2004 if you want shitty photos. Or throw some blur and noise on an iphone photo if that makes you happier.

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

#385

Post by JeremyNT »

yorwba wrote: post #192
atomlib wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not link directly to Instagram instead then? https://www.instagram.com/p/CzPGNmJIebC/

For one, the Instagram post says "Full story in my highlights (THE MIRROR)" but I can't figure out how to actually view those highlights. (Without creating an account at least.)

There exist a few shady scrapers out there [0] which ahem mirror Instagram content. (Be sure to use an ad blocker if you try them, I can't vouch for anything beyond the fact that it does work)

[0] https://imginn.com/stories/wheatpraylove/

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

#386

Post by kaba0 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #346
kaba0 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because each pixel is still correlated with reality, just modulo a simple, reversible transformation It’s absolutely not reversible. Information gets lost all the time with physical systems as well. Also, probably something like the creation of the image of the black hole is closer to computational photography than “AI”, and it seems a bit like yours is a populist argument against it.

> Also, probably something like the creation of the image of the black hole is closer to computational photography than “AI”, and it seems a bit like yours is a populist argument against it. I do have reservations about that image, and don't consider it a photograph, because it took lots of crazy math to assemble it from a weak signal, and as anyone in software who ever wrote simulations should know, it's very hard t…

So where do you draw the line? Summation and multiplication of signals is fine, but conditionals are bad?

That’s just arbitrary bullshitting around a non-existing problem.

Hell, it is pretty easy to check iphone’s performance with measurement metrics — make the same photo in identical environments with the iphone and with a camera with much bigger sensors and compare the results. Hell, that’s literally how apple calibrated their algorithm.

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

#387

Post by amluto »

Kye wrote: post #198
amluto wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple's horrible tech featured in the article had nothing to do with the lighting. Of course it did. iPhones take an “exposure” (scare quotes quite intentional) of a certain length. A conventional camera taking an exposure literally integrates the light hitting each sensor pixel (or region of film) during the exposure. iPhone do not — instead (for long enough exposures), iPhones take many pictures, aka a video, and…

This is probably harder for people to believe if they've never seen a progress video of stacking long exposures. I've seen the kinds of images people get out of stacking images for astrophotography. Individually, the images are mostly noise. Put enough together and you get stuff like this: https://web.archive.org/web/20230512210222/https://imgur.com... ( https://old.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/3gx29m/st...…

I would argue that it’s both more and less harsh. The available light is probably better, but the astrophotography use case generally benefits from tripods and compensated or at least predictable movement of the subject. On the other hand, astrophotography needs to deal with atmospheric effects, and people aren’t usually taking night mode iPhone photos through the turbulent air above a flame.

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

#388

Post by TeMPOraL »

willseth wrote: post #363
TeMPOraL wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m pretty picky about my photos and nothing I’ve shot with my iPhone has ever approached “lies”. That you know of. There could be many lies in those photos, both subtle and blunt, which you didn't notice at the moment because you weren't primed to look for them, and which you won't notice now, because you no longer remember the details of the scenes/situations being photographed, days or months ago. Are you sure I…

If we’re going to be this pedantic about it: iPhone’s camera will not add or remove things that weren’t captured in its temporal window. It won’t change the semantic meaning of an image. It won’t make a sad face person look happy, make daytime look like nighttime, or change dogs into cats. It can make mistakes like from the OP, but the point is that Apple also sees this as a mistake, so I would expect the error rate…

That's fair. I assumed they're going for similar thing to what Google has been playing with at various points over the last decade, where they were willing to effectively synthesize a new image out of several input shots and a heap of assumptions.

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

#389

Post by TeMPOraL »

kaba0 wrote: post #386
TeMPOraL wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, probably something like the creation of the image of the black hole is closer to computational photography than “AI”, and it seems a bit like yours is a populist argument against it. I do have reservations about that image, and don't consider it a photograph, because it took lots of crazy math to assemble it from a weak signal, and as anyone in software who ever wrote simulations should know, it's very hard t…

So where do you draw the line? Summation and multiplication of signals is fine, but conditionals are bad? That’s just arbitrary bullshitting around a non-existing problem. Hell, it is pretty easy to check iphone’s performance with measurement metrics — make the same photo in identical environments with the iphone and with a camera with much bigger sensors and compare the results. Hell, that’s literally how apple cali…

> So where do you draw the line? Summation and multiplication of signals is fine, but conditionals are bad?

Effectively, yes. Hard conditionals create discontinuities in the mathematical sense. So while I'm not sure of the rest of line's path, conditionals are on it (and using generative AI to hide discontinuities doubly so!).

In general, I'm fine with information loss. I'm not fine with adding information that wasn't in the photo originally.

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

#390

Post by _kb »

karlshea wrote: post #202
_kb wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That already happens, in realtime. FaceTime uses eye gaze correction, Cisco is all in on AI codecs for image and audio compression, and other vendors are on similar tracks too. When you talk to a client, a colleague or a loved one we’re on the verge of you conversing with a model that mostly represents their image and voice (you hope). The affordances of that abstraction layer will only continue to deepen from here t…

This is nothing new. Very old examples are the xerox machines that accidentally changed numbers on scanned documents, and speech coding for low bit rate digital audio over radio, phone, and then VoIP.

The Xerox comparison is apt, but importantly that is text rather than direct expression.

Media processing is experiencing a fundamental change though. Traditional compression removes information. What's happening now creates new information and interacts with semantic context.

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