Honestly, I think the gamma normalization step don't really count as "processing", any more than the gzip decompression step doesn't count as "processing" for the purposes of "this is what an unprocessed html file looks like" demo. At the end of the day, it's the same information, but encoded differently. Similar arguments can be made for de-bayer filter step. If you ignore these two steps, the "processing" that happens looks far less dramatic.
What an unprocessed photo looks like
41–50 of 418 posts
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#42I love posts that peel back the abstraction layer of "images." It really highlights that modern photography is just signal processing with better marketing. A fun tangent on the "green cast" mentioned in the post: the reason the Bayer pattern is RGGB (50% green) isn't just about color balance, but spatial resolution. The human eye is most sensitive to green light, so that channel effectively carries the majority of t…
hey, not accusing you of anything (bad assumptions don't lead to a conducive conversation) but did you use AI to write or assist with this comment?
this is totally out of my own self-interest, no problems with its content
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing I've learned while dabbling in photography is that there are no "fake" images, because there are no "real" images. Everything is an interpretation of the data that the camera has to do, making a thousand choices along the way, as this post beautifully demonstrates. A better discriminator might be global edits vs local edits, with local edits being things like retouching specific parts of the image to make d…
> A better discriminator might be global edits vs local edits, Even that isn't all that clear-cut. Is noise removal a local edit? It only touches some pixels, but obviously, that's a silly take. Is automated dust removal still global? The same idea, just a bit more selective. If we let it slide, what about automated skin blemish removal? Depth map + relighting, de-hazing, or fake bokeh? I think that modern image proc…
What's this, special pleading for doctored photos?
The only process in the article that involves nearby pixels is to combine R G and B (and other G) into one screen pixel. (In principle these could be mapped to subpixels.) Everything fancier than that can be reasonably called some fake cosmetic bullshit.
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing I've learned while dabbling in photography is that there are no "fake" images, because there are no "real" images. Everything is an interpretation of the data that the camera has to do, making a thousand choices along the way, as this post beautifully demonstrates. A better discriminator might be global edits vs local edits, with local edits being things like retouching specific parts of the image to make d…
> "Fake" images are images with intent to deceive The ones that make the annual rounds up here in New England are those foliage photos with saturation jacked. “Look at how amazing it was!” They’re easy to spot since doing that usually wildly blows out the blues in the photo unless you know enough to selectively pull those back.
Photography is also an art. When painters jack up saturations in their choices of paint colors people don't bat an eyelid. There's no good reason photographers cannot take that liberty as well, and tone mapping choices is in fact a big part of photographers' expressive medium.
If you want reality, go there in person and stop looking at photos. Viewing imagery is a fundamentally different type of experience.
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#45I studied remote sensing in undergrad and it really helped me grok sensors and signal processing. My favourite mental model revelation to come from it was that what I see isn’t the “ground truth.” It’s a view of a subset of the data. My eyes, my cat’s eyes, my cameras all collect and render different subsets of the data, providing different views of the subject matter.
It gets even wilder when perceiving space and time as additional signal dimensions.
I imagine a sort of absolute reality that is the universe. And we’re all just sensor systems observing tiny bits of it in different and often overlapping ways.
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#46The article keeps using the acronym "ADC" without defining it.
There are also no citations, and it has this phrase "This website is not licensed for ML/LLM training or content creation." Yeah right, that's like the privacy notice posts people make to facebook from time to time that contradict the terms of service https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/facebook-privacy-notices
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing I've learned while dabbling in photography is that there are no "fake" images, because there are no "real" images. Everything is an interpretation of the data that the camera has to do, making a thousand choices along the way, as this post beautifully demonstrates. A better discriminator might be global edits vs local edits, with local edits being things like retouching specific parts of the image to make d…
Everything is an interpretation of the data that the camera has to do What about this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35107601
News agencies like AP have already come up with technical standards and guidelines to technically define 'acceptable' types and degrees of image processing applied to professional photo-journalism.
You can look it up because it's published on the web but IIRC it's generally what you'd expect. It's okay to do whole-image processing where all pixels have the same algorithm applied like the basic brightness, contrast, color, tint, gamma, levels, cropping, scaling, etc filters that have been standard for decades. The usual debayering and color space conversions are also fine. Selectively removing, adding or changing only some pixels or objects is generally not okay for journalistic purposes. Obviously, per-object AI enhancement of the type many mobile phones and social media apps apply by default don't meet such standards.
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#48Maybe it’s just me but I took one look at the unprocessed photo (the first one) and immediately knew it was a skinny Christmas tree.
I’ve been staring at 16-bit HDR greyscale space for so long…
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
In its most raw form, camera sensors only see illumination not color. In front of the sensor is a bayer filter which results in each physical pixel seeing illumination filtered R G or B. From there the software onboard the camera or in your RAW converter does interpolation to create RGB values at each pixel. For example if the local pixel is R filtered, it then interpolates its G & B values from nearby pixels of that…
What about taking 3 photos while quickly changing the filter (e.g. filters are something like quantum dots that can be turned on/off)?
Works for static images, but if there's motion the "changing the filters" part is never fast enough, there will always be colour fringing somewhere.
Edit or maybe it does work? I've watched at least one movie on a DLP type video projector with sequential colour and not noticed colour fringing. But still photos have much higher demand here.
Re: What an unprocessed photo looks like
#50I love posts that peel back the abstraction layer of "images." It really highlights that modern photography is just signal processing with better marketing. A fun tangent on the "green cast" mentioned in the post: the reason the Bayer pattern is RGGB (50% green) isn't just about color balance, but spatial resolution. The human eye is most sensitive to green light, so that channel effectively carries the majority of t…
hey, not accusing you of anything (bad assumptions don't lead to a conducive conversation) but did you use AI to write or assist with this comment? this is totally out of my own self-interest, no problems with its content
found the guy who didn't know about em dashes before this year
also your question implies a bad assumption even if you disclaim it. if you don't want to imply a bad assumption the way to do that is to not say the words, not disclaim them