| ><photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> >Photographs were never (that I can think of) perfect reproductions of subjects. These systems have taken the “next step” by doing the retouching etc. as the image is prepared for display. Darkroom work behind the scenes so to speak. >Problem? Maybe. I saw something that indicated computers were able to make portraits of people that did not exist. Interesting … what will they think of next. >One thing that they have not tackled yet, that I know, is correction of the “wide angle” effect. Many portraits are made with the camera too close to the face and noses appear larger that from a normal viewing distance (in life) and ears too >small. Has the perspective of photographs been tackled by AI people? >Andy When you unfurl the panoramic algorithms and see what they're doing, you'll notice they attribute a barrel like space to the square frame and adjustments are made accordingly in creating the adjusted final image.. so they're kinda doing it already. It wouldn't be difficult if a similar spherical space was recognized for wide angle shots and the reality distorted by software to meet our subjective expectation . It could already be in use in cameras, who would know ? Most of what digital cameras do under the covers is a mystery to all of us - would we even recognize it if it was being done .. how would you begin to compare an unadjusted shot with a compensated one? It wouldn't benefit the camera maker to tell us since drawing attention to it would encourage other manufacturers to do it to - they'd be better off just saying 'hey our camera makes better images' and leaving it at that. I haven't been keeping up lately,but the place to look would be at the Asian phone'scameras, they've proven years and in some cases a decade ahead of what we've had in the West - though more recently brands like Huawei, Leagoo, Oppo, Xiaomi, Samart, Dopod, Honor and a myriad others are making it to the West. If anyone's doing it you'd find it there. Heck most people couldn't tell you how much has been constructed or interpolated by software into being by their camera phone in even simple scenes > On Dec 19, 2018, at 7:54 AM, John Palcewski <palcewski@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Here's an interesting piece in the Atlantic....Link & excerpt: > > https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/12/your-iphone-selfies-dont-look-like-your-face/578353/ > > Speaking as a longtime iPhone user and amateur photographer, I find it undeniable that Portrait mode—a marquee technology in the latest edition of the most popular phones in the world—has gotten glowed up. Over weeks of taking photos with the device, I realized that the camera had crossed a threshold between photograph and fauxtograph. I wasn’t so much “taking pictures” as the phone was synthesizing them. Some may recall a satirical bit I wrote here about 15 years or more back envisioning a future where 'cameras' (or rather their algorithms) constructed photos for you from the safety of your home.. At that time it was clear camera software was already imposing false data in scenes to improve - interpolating things like crisp straight lines that due to lens imperfections would have fuzzed out in the real shot. Common now, Sony were adjusting chromatic aberrations by finding edge fringing and compensating (I think it was the f828 that showed horrendous fringing earning them poor reviews until a software update made it all go away) - that was an artifact of the lens, but the software did something we could never do with film - fix a lens flaw. It created an artificial reality that matched our subjective expectations. I also said that software was doing magic tricks exceeding the resolving power of lenses by interpolating, as usual it was the consumer cameras driving the advances in the pro cameras, much as autometering, autoexposure and autofocus started in the realms of consumer stuff to make it easier for the masses to get what they wanted with little effort.. and how it crept into 'pro' cameras quite a lot later. My perception was consumer cameras in phones would surpass anything pro cameras could do - the exception being the recording of what was actually in the scene ;) I recognized lens interchangeability and aperture selection is still obviously the domain of more manual cameras of course but they're already fitting some cameras with switchable lenses and aperture adjustments, frame size is still a determining factor though, but 35mm photographers could hardly quibble about that unless they had access to really fast lenses, for those who shot across formats to say 5x4 or 8x10 then we had a bit more leeway... but it was also worth considering why 35mm and all those other small formats came into being - convenience. Add convenience to quality and the camera that's always in your pocket is going to beat the 8x10 in the back of the car that is going to take you 20 minutes to set up. Add to that camera the smart beetles inside that can make masterfully good images with clueless operators and you have a winning formula. . As I said at the time, I still felt a "photographer" was a bloke or lady with the skills of the art whom you could hand a shoebox and a sheet of film and they could get you the shot - that art was craft was knowledge was skill - and camera operators who lacked any of that could still take amazing pictures, but that didn't make them photographers. Of course my perspective was that of a bloke teaching physics and chemistry and science, the course being a hard science based photo course for doctors, dentists, police, geologists, lens designers, chemistry techs medical photographers and all that sort, so I had a lot less to do with people who sought pretty images and more those who sought accuracy. That didn't mean they couldn't make pretty pics, hell they certainly had the skills to do it, I was just less involved in the subjective side and left that to them.. who the heck was I to evaluate a person's vision, their own personal ideas or creations.. I taught that stuff that'd let them build anything they wanted and they did the building. |
