I have been using Pix for a few weeks now and am very happy with the quality. Too bad you can't use it as the default camera app on iOS. Also it takes significantly longer to start up. But if you are taking multiple shots of, say, your kids, the quality is better.
Microsoft Pix
91–100 of 205 posts
Re: Microsoft Pix
#92There's an interesting example they use to show the ostensible improvement of Pix over the Apple's Live Photo: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/... The Pix-enhanced version: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/... Sure, the Live Photo version has distracting movement, but it also has much more natural motion in terms of hair flow. And I feel that the camera instabili…
I am imagining a developer at Microsoft somewhere holding their head in their hands when they saw the Live Photo comparison made by the marketing team. To me, they don't really seem to be aiming for the same thing at all - the Pix version is a highly stylised animation whereas the Live Photo is simply a very short, silent video.
[deleted]
Re: Microsoft Pix
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Easy pick: the Apple version is natural, the Microsoft one is artificial. Maybe some cultural thing and Americans like the unnatural steady shot, I'm from the old continent and am completely distracted by the unnatural look of the Microsoft version. Microsoft research came up with http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/hype... and it was great. But Microsoft Pix, not for me.
This has nothing to do with Americans and more of a personal preference.
Apple has apparently ceased to be an American company there, as well.
Re: Microsoft Pix
#94I'd like one point clarified: is this app entirely local or does it make use of any kind of cloud backend? I've already seen apps that upload photos away for processing without making it obvious (for example http://prisma-ai.com , if I'm not mistaken). I really shouldn't have to ask if only iOS had a permission for network access.
Pix runs all the image processing on your phone - we do not use the cloud for any of this.
Is there any chance for the image proc algo used here to go open source?
Re: Microsoft Pix
#95There's an interesting example they use to show the ostensible improvement of Pix over the Apple's Live Photo: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/... The Pix-enhanced version: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/... Sure, the Live Photo version has distracting movement, but it also has much more natural motion in terms of hair flow. And I feel that the camera instabili…
The Pix example looks like a cinemagraph. They can be really neat and beautiful. There is a popular subreddit, /r/cinemagraphs, and other various google results. Maybe those are examples of what you could accomplish with Pix - but surely you would still need some manual touchup to make it loop perfectly as it should.
There was something happening to "cinemagraphs" in the few years since they became popular. I'm pretty sure it started with this blog: http://iwdrm.tumblr.com/ It took movie scenes/moments and tried to capture their essence in a few frames (of a GIF beneath tumblrs file size restrictions, as an additional challenge). The resultes were quite breathtaking and some of the best, to me, feel very "alive". You could see people breathe and blink and stuff:
http://67.media.tumblr.com/cf5c72b69133541626d6c1e7ff313926/...
Reddit has turned this into a kind of Matrix-time-freeze effect that looks totally unnatural:
It's a totally different thing. If Pix managed to do the first type of "cinemagraph" automatically, that would be pretty cool. But it seems to be more the second type of "cut out some part of the image and make it not move" type of animation. Too bad.
Re: Microsoft Pix
#96We're from the Microsoft Pix team, and we are interested in your feedback. Happy to answer questions.
I can see that its only available for apple devices, is there a technical hurdle in doing this for android?
Re: Microsoft Pix
#97There's an interesting example they use to show the ostensible improvement of Pix over the Apple's Live Photo: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/... The Pix-enhanced version: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/... Sure, the Live Photo version has distracting movement, but it also has much more natural motion in terms of hair flow. And I feel that the camera instabili…
The Pix version looks like one of those old computer games when they wanted to animate some wind, but cut only afford to animate a handful of sprites on the screen. So everything is stiff as a board except for some flipping scarves/hair/etc...
I think you're referring to color cycling, and it's a much interesting technology than just a handful of sprites:
http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article-Old_School_Color_C...
Re: Microsoft Pix
#98Does it automatically take horizontal video when you are holding your camera vertically? When will we get that technology?
Re: Microsoft Pix
#99The comparisons up top basically look like HDR for faces™.
Re: Microsoft Pix
#100Neat, I was just thinking to myself how much I wanted an app that would automatically wash out all my photos for me.