Samsung is improving qualities of moon-picture with pre-stored detail, you can try it out yourself!

[D13H4RD]

I purposely refrained from commenting earlier because I needed time to frame my thoughts and discussing with some of my other fellow photographers who are also into technology.

 

Ultimately though, I just feel that this is yet again another case of Reddit taking something, and then overblowing it to insanely ridiculous proportions. Samsung (and many tech reviewers) themselves probably didn't help the situation by mismanaging expectations, but this just feels like a whole lot of hot air. 

 

1) The "revelation" that this user has claimed to unearth with obvious effect is not at all a revelation. In fact, none of this is new. Smartphone cameras, over the past half-decade (or longer) have made extensive (and increasing) use of ML-based processing algorithms and whatnot to help improve the perceived quality of the final image, even for information that the sensor itself might be unable to capture convincingly. Superimposing details on objects like the moon is also not really all that new. Really, everyone's getting worked up on something a competent smartphone camera has been able to do for the past half-decade, or longer.

 

2) Why are people so suddenly obsessed with shooting (bad quality) moon pictures on their phones? Especially when you can find literally hundreds upon thousands of moon pictures online that look exactly the same. I understand this fad will eventually die off, but the obsession over this is ridiculous.

 

3) They know this feature can be disabled, no? So I don't understand the whole outrage. It's not like it is being forced to be applied all the damn time.

[Leslie0]

But what about this older post: 

 

[HenrySalayne]

20 minutes ago, Leslie0 said:

But what about this older post: 

What about it?

 

[Leslie0]

31 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

What about it?

 

This confirms what the others said about something being added to the image, going further than just ML applying dynamic presets to effects such as sharpening and multiple exposure. 

 

Though it pretty much just looks like some kind of specific "moon craters-like" noise pattern. that makes even more sense considering some of those APK/ROM explorers didn't find any kind of image or texture that could have been used by the phone to process the moon picture.

[HenrySalayne]

1 hour ago, Leslie0 said:

This confirms what the others said about something being added to the image, going further than just ML applying dynamic presets to effects such as sharpening and multiple exposure.

Though it pretty much just looks like some kind of specific "moon craters-like" noise pattern. that makes even more sense considering some of those APK/ROM explorers didn't find any kind of image or texture that could have been used by the phone to process the moon picture.

It doesn't look like craters, it's just a homogeneous grainy look. Look at the craters around the outer edge of the moon. Where are they? This is most likely noise from the camera or the screen door effect of the monitor being extrapolated.

If anything, this proves the opposite - there are no added details. Side by side it is blatantly obvious that it's just grainy.

 

That's another case of over-interpretation, under-understand and over-blowing.

On 3/18/2023 at 6:48 AM, D13H4RD said:

Ultimately though, I just feel that this is yet again another case of Reddit taking something, and then overblowing it to insanely ridiculous proportions. Samsung (and many tech reviewers) themselves probably didn't help the situation by mismanaging expectations, but this just feels like a whole lot of hot air. 

 

Here are two more takes that cover this topic exhaustively. I can recommend watching the MKBHD video; he explains the details quite well.

Edit: Bonus round!

Here is a picture of a homogeneous black wall close to the albedo of the moon (which has actually an albedo of 7% which we would consider dark grey or black) and the "enhanced" version of the very same wall. The clearly visible structure is simply processed noise. No AI involvement whatsoever. Just a few filter steps in Gimp.