Deep Learning To Soon Bring Pro-Level Photography To Smartphones

[Lucian Armasu]

Google's new research in using deep learning technology to turn mediocre-looking photos into professional-quality pictures shows that regular smartphones could soon be able to create professional-level photography, as well.

Deep Learning To Soon Bring Pro-Level Photography To Smartphones : Read more

 

[Novell SysOp fire phasers 5 time]

Wrong. You need a Quadro card to edit 10-bit color, and a true 10-bit IPS monitor, not some BS scam 8+FRC, and it better be 100% Adobe RGB. Try finding one. Pros take pics in RAW 16-bit format. No damn stupidphone can do that.

I'll edit this to give you a hint. SONY X300 V2 4K OLED. $45,000, and only 10-bit panel. Dolby has a 12-bit panel. You want the best? You only have 2 choices, and you can't afford either of them.

 

[Matt_ogu812]

I concur.

 

[Novell SysOp fire phasers 5 time]

There are only a handful of pro apps that let you edit 10-bit color, and Adobe is the only one the pros use and care about. And you need a Quadro card to do it. Geforce is not allowed. google are full of idiots who dabble in things they know nothing about. google fiber is dead and gone and moved on to Wi-Fi because larry page is a moron and knows nothing about the expense of rolling out fiber. google videos is dead and gone too. Never trust corps or anyone with your data. Pay cloud services have folded overnight and all your info is gone.

Just who are these "experts" google used to examine these pics? I doubt any of them are pros and none of them have access to or use the $40,000 equipment I listed above. And I can guarantee NONE of you on this forum knew of it either.

 

[Krazie_Ivan]

i'm just going to downvote Novell till his smugness balances out with his knowledge. knowing stuff is great, nice, but nobody wants to learn from a personality like that.

 

[CobraMatte]

Does it do selfies?

If beauty is the only goal, its ok i suppose. It seems strange that the edited pictures no longer accurately depict what you took a picture of.

 

[hannibal]

Heh! Take picture of chetto and dying people and the AI change that to "Bold and beatifull" with luxury cars!
Photo manipulation in a big way

 

[msroadkill612]

Big hit with; estate agents, used cars, dating sites, tourism in war zones, the mid west & texas, investment brochures,...

 

[derekullo]

There are only a handful of pro apps that let you edit 10-bit color, and Adobe is the only one the pros use and care about. And you need a Quadro card to do it. Geforce is not allowed. google are full of idiots who dabble in things they know nothing about. google fiber is dead and gone and moved on to Wi-Fi because larry page is a moron and knows nothing about the expense of rolling out fiber. google videos is dead and gone too. Never trust corps or anyone with your data. Pay cloud services have folded overnight and all your info is gone.

Just who are these "experts" google used to examine these pics? I doubt any of them are pros and none of them have access to or use the $40,000 equipment I listed above. And I can guarantee NONE of you on this forum knew of it either.

I have been able to edit 10 bit color per channel in gimp for free for about 2 years.
https://www.gimp.org/news/2015/11/27/gimp-2-9-2-released/

 

[Crystalizer]

There are only a handful of pro apps that let you edit 10-bit color, and Adobe is the only one the pros use and care about. And you need a Quadro card to do it. Geforce is not allowed. google are full of idiots who dabble in things they know nothing about. google fiber is dead and gone and moved on to Wi-Fi because larry page is a moron and knows nothing about the expense of rolling out fiber. google videos is dead and gone too. Never trust corps or anyone with your data. Pay cloud services have folded overnight and all your info is gone.

Just who are these "experts" google used to examine these pics? I doubt any of them are pros and none of them have access to or use the $40,000 equipment I listed above. And I can guarantee NONE of you on this forum knew of it either.

You are making a lot of assumptions.
1. You think google cannot afford the best professionals?
2. Because one of the many google features is not successful suddenly it all comes crap?
3 You also think Google has no cash for professional gear.
4..You think no one on this forum has no knowledge of what you are talking about.

And the most funny thing is I think all of those are wrong. That I think makes you either a troll, idiot or a guy who is desperately fighting against this to not lose his job or something by throwing"Impossible I'm pro comments".

Here is something to think about(you could have asked nicely too you know).
Even an intermediate programmer is not limited to bits in image processing. An AI programmer involved in deep learning is most often far beyond intermediate. Access to pro equipment can be made using a company's dedicated credit card with approved funding for the project. Google seems to wan't the very best so that should not be a problem. In this case it's easier to just hire a professional photographer with pro equipment.

5. You should never trust anyone with your personal information! But that would be boring? Why not just lay and die?

I think using artificial intelligence to enchant images beyond their original scope is great idea. Ai is great at analyzing and processing. So it shouldn't be a problem to use shapes and some color information to make even better images. Human has powerful imagination and teaching deep learning ai to make images beyond what human can do is like winning another chess against humans. If you have tons of 10 bit hdr images to get data from where do you need an expensive camera when you can just fake it until you can't know about it. Scary isn't it, or is it? Not for me at least.

Have a nice day. It seems like you need it!

 

[peterf28]

we live in virtual reality, in a simulation , humans were created by some more advancen civilisation

 

[Rock_n_Rolla]

As far as photography in general and taking pics like the "Pros" do you dont need a $45,000 monitor to edit and or post process to produce one awesome pic or pics thats for sure, the brand and model of the monitor that Novel Sysup guy mentioned mainly targets professional video editing for movie and broadcast tho you can us it for image editing but its not its mainly for it, and doing that is like buying a $300 mlllion dollar Boeing passenger plane only to travel 6 miles from your home to a nearby super maket just to buy groceries and back. Tho some can do it but it depends on the level of their stupidity and ego.

There are a lot of pro photographers and graphic deisgners who dont use that kind of monitor bcoz there are a lot of alternatives that is way way cheaper and can suit them in their "Pro photography needs" in many many ways.

Regarding to technicalities of photography when it comes to color and image depth it doesnt concern much about monitors but its more on the quality of image it self "taken by the camera" and how far you can go on editing it (to make it short).

About Google and Ai and Mobile Photography???
Well,.. we can never understand estimate to power of Ai and the technology and the processing power of mobile processors now a days.

If, google's ai can produce or can post process simple portrait pics taken by a 7 yr. old boy and his cute dog somewhere in their backyard or porch and make it look like the details, color reproduction and tone of the image was taken by a $6,400 Nikon D5 full frame pro dslr with very expensive portrait lens with natural appearing background bokeh well,.. that would be an awesome innovation in mobile photography and lot of people will surely like it IMO.

 

[d_kuhn]

Ya cannot change the laws of physics. Cell phone cameras only look good if you don't look too hard - and while "deep learning" (rebadging of multilayer neural network technology that's been around for quite a while) could definitely be used to enhance images that have solid fundamentals, you can't get those fundamentals with a cell phone camera (at least not without fabricating data).

 

[Rock_n_Rolla]

Somehow agree,.. I think thats what Google's ai project is all about, manipulate image data (post process using deep learning) to enhance it and make it more appealing regardless of the quality of the image taken...

 

[hdmark]

"As far as we know, Google’s AI also doesn’t yet have feelings and emotions to be able to see "beauty" with its own "eyes.""
this sentence is amazing to me. "as far as we know" . gotta love technology!

 

[cryoburner]

Given the title of this article, I assumed it might be something about smartphones using multiple lenses and image sensors to make up for some of the inadequacies of tiny camera modules by combining multiple inputs, but no, it's just about using software routines to find the best settings for what amounts to a Photoshop filter.

Note that those "Turing Tests" were apparently not even done using images from smartphone cameras, but from images taken by their Streetview cameras, that are very expensive pieces of photography equipment that undoubtedly use high-quality professional-grade lenses and sensors. So sure, while the unprocessed Streetview images might look mediocre, since they are configured to look as consistent as possible under different lighting conditions, and the compressed and haphazardly patched together versions available online undoubtedly look even worse, they likely have the raw capture data from those high-quality professional cameras that can be processed to look good. Images from phone cameras could of course be processed in similar ways to improve how they look, but you can only do so much with low-quality source input, and you can't really reconstruct data that was lost in the capture process.

 

[passivecool]

"Wrong. You need a Quadro card to edit 10-bit color, and a true 10-bit IPS monitor, not some BS scam 8+FRC, and it better be 100% Adobe RGB. Try finding one. Pros take pics in RAW 16-bit format. No damn stupidphone can do that."

Novell, almost /absolutely everything/ you wrote is /completely/ wrong.

for example:
I can make a giant panorama from raw material I shot in adobe rgb on a D5, convert it to 10/16/32bit/chanel and edit it quite fluidly on my GTX 670.

There are several of monitors that offer 99% Adobe RGB and 10 or 14 bit for around $1000. JFGI

None of the "Pros" i know i.e people, who live from their photography, and invest $10k every year in new equipment, have any interest in creating photographs that can only be viewed or appreciated by the .001% who spend 45k on a monitor. None of them have a quadro. Several do all their editing in Lightroom and never touch psd.

Correct is that google/page are all complete morons. Must be the dumbest self-made billionaire on the planet. We are so lucky so lucky that we have YOU around – so much cleverer than page is – to put him in his place!

 

[bit_user]

To achieve those kinds of complex edits, smartphones are going to need specialized chips that can do all of those operations on a tight power budget.

Well... it can certainly be done in the cloud. Some phones already upload their photos automatically.

The other possibility is that it's not done in real-time. Perhaps it optimizes your photos in the background, maybe while your phone is charging. Then, as you review your photos, you might have the option to chose an optimized version instead of the original.

 

[bit_user]

Wrong. You need a Quadro card to edit 10-bit color, and a true 10-bit IPS monitor, not some BS scam 8+FRC, and it better be 100% Adobe RGB. Try finding one. Pros take pics in RAW 16-bit format. No damn stupidphone can do that.

Sounds like you didn't read the article. Sorry, please try again.

 

[bit_user]

Ya cannot change the laws of physics. Cell phone cameras only look good if you don't look too hard - and while "deep learning" (rebadging of multilayer neural network technology that's been around for quite a while) could definitely be used to enhance images that have solid fundamentals, you can't get those fundamentals with a cell phone camera (at least not without fabricating data).

You're right to point out that this isn't "free". Basically, you will cede some control in how your photo is framed, its effective resolution, local & global contrast, and which details are visible. At an abstract level, this thing can only improve the look of the input by reducing the amount of information in the original photo.

I think it will amount to something like an Instagram filter on steroids. Perhaps you'll be provided with a few different improved versions of your photo and you'll have the option of choosing one or just sticking with the original.

Of course, it could also run while you're setting up the photo, advising you on how better options for framing it and choosing better focus and exposure settings. That would probably require a beefy GPU (or deep learning hardware engine) and eat battery life.

BTW, it seems that Qualcomm's Zeroth isn't actually a hardware engine, but rather a software framework that harnesses their Adreno GPU, "Hexagon" DSP, and the CPU cores to optimize deep learning/inferencing.

 

[francis_32]

so true
Point-and-shoot without consideration for composition, lighting etc.
Good photos from general population without a background in photography. Nothing artistic stands out.
Semi-pro. Great photos showing clear artistic aspects. The photographer is on the right track of becoming a professional.
Pro.