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iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

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Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#41

Post by mgraczyk »

matsemann wrote: post #12

I hate how much phones lately alters the images. Of course it most of the time makes the images look better, and cameras are a big selling point on a phone. But I don't like how my photos of people suddenly have a filter applied to the faces, how a picture of leaves during fall have vibrance exaggerated, how the sky looks clearer than it really did.

On Android you can enable a "raw" mode that will capture a dng file with much less processing. You can then adjust that raw file and render it to a jpeg according to your taste.

The dng will still have things like stabilization and multi-frame merging, but without those the image will almost always look horrible as others have explained.

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#42

Post by hughrr »

vardump wrote: post #31

I wonder if this has any implications over iPhone (or cellphones in general) photos in court. This might be brought up to overturn any photo evidence from phones.

All photos regardless of the source are a corruption of reality both semantically and technically speaking. I think they should always be used on a case by case basis with corroborating evidence.

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#43

Post by bcrosby95 »

naz wrote: post #25
matsemann wrote: post #12

I hate how much phones lately alters the images. Of course it most of the time makes the images look better, and cameras are a big selling point on a phone. But I don't like how my photos of people suddenly have a filter applied to the faces, how a picture of leaves during fall have vibrance exaggerated, how the sky looks clearer than it really did.

This is so common in consumer tech. Is there a name for it? Like how any new TV has horrible motion interpolation and sharpening enabled by default, or the bassiness of Bose/Beats headphones.

It's common in pretty much anything targeted towards the masses.

It's probably best to think about it in terms of food. Your average person has an "unrefined" palate. Be it for food, drink, art, etc.

I think everyone has one of these in some areas of life. You can't be a connoisseur in every field - it takes too much energy.

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#44

Post by CamperBob2 »

tandymodel100 wrote: post #32
kahrl wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, yes really. When real resolution is being substituted with the best guess of a completely closed source image processor, the court should be made aware of it.

This sounds like a weird rationalization for an absurd case of technical ignorance. Like when people defended nuking hurricanes or using UV lights as a Covid therapy.

Fact is, you have no idea what kind of unsolicited postprocessing the camera in the Rittenhouse trial might or might not have performed, and neither did the court.

It's a huge potential problem, and getting worse by the day.

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#45

Post by laumars »

naz wrote: post #25
matsemann wrote: post #12

I hate how much phones lately alters the images. Of course it most of the time makes the images look better, and cameras are a big selling point on a phone. But I don't like how my photos of people suddenly have a filter applied to the faces, how a picture of leaves during fall have vibrance exaggerated, how the sky looks clearer than it really did.

This is so common in consumer tech. Is there a name for it? Like how any new TV has horrible motion interpolation and sharpening enabled by default, or the bassiness of Bose/Beats headphones.

I’ve never owned Bose nor Beats specifically but more generally I find bassiness is a desirable feature rather than a gimmick for dumb consumers.

With room sized speakers it’s not a problem because you’ll have multiple cones dedicated to the low end and usually some subs too. Thus it’s easy to have a rich low end without sacrificing the fidelity of the higher end. But with headphones that’s much harder to pull off. So you either have a flatter sound or a muffled high end. Thus having headphones that can have a super crisp top end while still still producing a rich and deep low end is very much desirable.

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#46

Post by dylan604 »

hetspookjee wrote: post #28
akomtu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big tech has this uni-modal aporoach to users: they find what maximizes a metric, and works for 75% of the users, but roll it out to 100%. Dealing with the remaining 25% would have low ROI.

I never understood this one size fits all approach of a lot of companies. Controlled opposition would often result in higher market penetration and more net happiness

Mr Smarty Pants has the solution for all cameras to be 100% accurate 100% of the time pleasing 100% of the users. How humble of you to chat with us here on HN. /s

You sound like you have not dealt with humans at the scale of the number of smart phone users. I've never dealt with the numbers of something like an iPhone, but over the course of my career have had multiple SKUs totaling over 1 million units. No matter what, there are always "people on the internet" that are dissatisfied enough to go online to voice their opinions. That's the only 100% is that there will always be someone unhappy for whatever reason(s).

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#47

Post by amelius »

akomtu wrote: post #15
matsemann wrote: post #12

I hate how much phones lately alters the images. Of course it most of the time makes the images look better, and cameras are a big selling point on a phone. But I don't like how my photos of people suddenly have a filter applied to the faces, how a picture of leaves during fall have vibrance exaggerated, how the sky looks clearer than it really did.

Big tech has this uni-modal aporoach to users: they find what maximizes a metric, and works for 75% of the users, but roll it out to 100%. Dealing with the remaining 25% would have low ROI.

Not only tech. Try finding shoes or pants when your size is 1.5 times sigma away from the mean.

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#48

Post by function_seven »

pryce wrote: post #35

how do we exclude the possibility that we are just seeing a leaf on its way falling (or blowing) between the subject that the photographer? Logically an event like that would be followed by the iphone not detecting a face, and therefore not applying its usual face-related black-box features? Supposing this is the case and is 'bad', what exactly do we expect 'better behaviour' would mean in this situation?

The leaf that takes the place of the face is still attached to its branch. It's not falling down, it's hanging from the tree. And the person's head is missing in the areas you'd expect to still see it if it was a falling leaf.

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#49

Post by jiggawatts »

naz wrote: post #25
matsemann wrote: post #12

I hate how much phones lately alters the images. Of course it most of the time makes the images look better, and cameras are a big selling point on a phone. But I don't like how my photos of people suddenly have a filter applied to the faces, how a picture of leaves during fall have vibrance exaggerated, how the sky looks clearer than it really did.

This is so common in consumer tech. Is there a name for it? Like how any new TV has horrible motion interpolation and sharpening enabled by default, or the bassiness of Bose/Beats headphones.

Taste.

It takes time and experience to develop, and the masses on average don't have it. As in, they might have developed taste for a few products, but not most products. Hence, the mass-market products are aimed at people with no taste, because that captures the largest slice of the consumers.

Random examples:

- In A/B tests, the typical personal will rate louder music as better. Hence, all bars and pubs turn their music up to 11, to the point that it's horrendously distorted, causes physical pain, and forces everyone to scream at the top of their lungs to be heard.

- Sugary, salty and fatty foods are consistently rated by typical people as more tasty than foods without them. Hence, all fast-food restaurants load their foods up with those elements instead of more expensive flavourings such as herbs and spices.

- Just look at the typical gaming PC market. RGB LEDs are now almost "essential", despite adding nothing material to the performance or capability of the system other than a garish blinken-light-show. You can't see the gigahertz, but you sure can see the LEDs!

- Cars are perceived to be more sporty if they have a loud exhaust with a deep note to it. So of course, every "sports" car has literal fake exhaust that's "tuned" to make this particular noise.

Etc, etc...

It's all down to bad taste.

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#50

Post by avrionov »

I've been thinking a lot about this recently. The mobile phones photography went in a direction which makes the mobile photography quite questionable. ML algorithms can't be tested completely, there are going to be many corner cases where results like the above will be produced. The algorithms are trying to compensate for the limitations of the small sensors, limited lenses and the hands movement, but we end up getting images that are completely artificial in many cases. Multiple images are combined with data which just made up by the ML models.

Better hardware (sensors) could solve some of this I hope.

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