Home » News » Is Samsung Faking the Zoomed Moon image capturing feature

Is Samsung Faking the Zoomed Moon image capturing feature

(Image Credit Google)
Image Credit: Getty Images Samsung "Space Zoom"-capable phones have long been renowned for their ability to capture incredibly detailed images of the Moon. However, a recent Reddit post made clear how much computational processing the business is engaging in, and given the supporting data, it feels appropriate to declare that Samsung's images of the Moon are fake. It is a difficult question to answer, and one that will become more significant and complex as computational techniques are further integrated into the photographic process. We can predict that soon, just as it has in the past to account for digital cameras, Photoshop, Instagram filters, and more, our definition of what constitutes a fake photo will change. Reddit user u/ibreakphotos conducted an ingenious yet straightforward test of Samsung's smartphones. With the help of a computer program, they were able to create a picture of the moon, which they then used to create a video of the moon. As you can see in the image below, the second image on the screen was a crisp and clear "photograph" of the Moon while the first image on the screen had no detail at all. Details that simply were not present before were added by the S23 Ultra. Blurred pixels were not upscaled, and supposedly lost data was not found. There was only a fake new moon. Moon Image Credit: Amateurphotographer This issue has been debated before. Ever since Samsung unveiled a 100x "Space Zoom" feature in its S20 Ultra in 2020, people have been curious about the company's Moon photography. Samsung claims that the process is more complex than that, contrary to claims made by some that the company simply copies and pastes restored textures onto images of the Moon to produce its photographs. A lengthy article on the "fake detailed moon photos" taken by the Galaxy S21 Ultra was published in 2021 by Input Mag. Samsung told the publication that “no image overlaying or texture effects are applied when taking a photo,” but that the company uses AI to detect the Moon's presence and “then offers a detail enhancing function by reducing blurs and noises.” Later, the business provided a little more information in this blog post. However, the description of the crucial step that transforms a photograph of a blurry Moon into a sharp Moon, which is the explanation's main point, is couched in obfuscatory language. To "effectively remove noise and maximize the details of the moon to complete a bright and clear picture of the moon," Samsung merely states that it uses a "detail improvement engine function". We simply do not know what that means. The kindest interpretation is that Samsung's method uses AI to upscale blurry details from the original image. This is a tried-and-true method with issues, but it would produce a fake photograph. The Reddit tests, however, demonstrate that Samsung's process is more intrusive than this: rather than merely enhancing the sharpness of blurry details, it actually generates them. Most people, for better or worse, would probably agree at this point that the resulting image is fake. The challenge in this situation is that "fakeness" is a spectrum rather than a binary. In photography, the criteria for "realness" are typically determined by the data gathered by an optical sensor, or the light that is captured during the taking of the picture. The result is not fake, but you can edit this data quite extensively in the same way that professional photographers adjust RAW images' color, exposure, contrast, and other aspects. In this case, however, the Moon photographs recorded by Samsung's phone appear to be the outcome of a computer procedure rather than optical data. Simply, it is more of a generated image than a photo. Samsung Moon photo Image Credit: Techplanet360 It is acceptable for some people to disagree with this definition. In the future, making this distinction will also be much more difficult. The proportion of "optically captured" and "software-generated" data in smartphone manufacturers' output has been changing ever since they began using computational techniques to work around the limitations of smartphones' tiny camera sensors. There is no doubt that in the future, methods like Samsung's "detail improvement engine" will spread and become more prevalent. You could train "detail improvement engines" on a variety of data, such as the faces of your family and friends to ensure you never take a bad photo of them or on well-known landmarks to enhance your vacation photos. In time, we will probably forget we ever called such images fake. For the time being, Samsung's Moon imagery stands out, and it is an especially practical application for this kind of computational photography. The Moon is visually appealing, so that is a good place to start. Even when librations and rotational differences are considered, the Moon appears to be essentially the same in every photograph taken from Earth. It has detail but lacks depth. This makes adding AI improvements simple. And secondly, moon photography is a marketing goldmine because, first, everyone is aware that smartphones do not do the Moon justice, and second, everyone can try out the feature. As a result, Samsung now has a simple way to demonstrate the superior photography capabilities of its phones. As photography evolves, so will our perception of what a "real photo" is. But for the time being, it seems fair to conclude that Samsung's Moon photographs are more fake than real. Theoretically, this might change in a few years. The Verge contacted Samsung for comment, but they did not respond right away.

By Raulf Hernes

If you ask me raulf means ALL ABOUT TECH!!

RELATED NEWS

The much-awaited Galaxy M15 5G from Samsung has fi...

news-extra-space

The Pixel Watch 3, which is expected to be a major...

news-extra-space

The Google Pixel phone may soon prove to be a life...

news-extra-space

Figure AI, a rising star in the robotics industry,...

news-extra-space

Are you considering upgrading to the AI-powered Ga...

news-extra-space

Anker's Eufy brand has just announced a game chang...

news-extra-space
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10