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Microsoft Pix
- cmiller1 10y agoOnly for iOS? Surprised they didn't make a version for windows phone... or is this software already built into the camera functionality on WP?
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoMicrosoft's not heavily devoting resources to Windows Phone at the moment. They're phasing out Lumias, and focusing on getting the enterprise experience right on their mobile devices with the HP Elite x3. Windows Phone isn't really dead, but until Microsoft is ready, they're focusing on winning over iOS and Android users with their apps.
- brudgers 10y agoRumor is that 'Lumia' will be replaced with 'Surface' for branding.
- aluhut 10y agoSo why not stop it altogether? I'm forced to use one of those Windows Phones. The App Store is terrible. Few apps for the simplest things and god are they terrible...
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoI honestly can't fathom being forced over to another platform right now. Years of having to support them later, I still don't understand how anyone makes sense of the UI of iOS (it seems intuitive to non-tech people?) and the terrible colossal trainwreck that is where Google has brought Android in the last few years rules out... almost every other phone out there. (I carried an Android for seven years, I've finally had enough, I can't stand that trash anymore.) We need a third option. If it's not Microsoft, it's gotta come from somewhere else.
- WorldMaker 10y agoMy impression is that this is very similar to the official camera app on Windows, if not a direct port. I would not be surprised if at least some code was shared. Maybe?
- brudgers 10y agoWindows 10 Mobile has replaced Windows Phone. Much of the practical functionality appears to be incorporated into the Camera app on Windows 10 Mobile.
- mattnewton 10y agoMy untrained eye can't really notice a difference except that the pix version looks brighter (even washed out), the live photo version looks really uncanny valley (where the faces don't move but the world does around them is an unsettling effect).
- ascagnel_ 10y agoIt's not even that the Pix version looks brighter -- it looks washed-out, like the evergreen trees are more of a blue-green color.
- sp332 10y agoMy first thought when playing with the slider was that the Apple version was much better. But, if you focus on the faces (which was probably the intent of the person taking the photo) they do come out better in the Pix version. I think all the examples had the faces underexposed, so the "fix" for each of them was to brighten the photo.
- mattnewton 10y agoGotcha. It's a shame it seems to overexpose the background as a result though; that's something I could quickly reproduce in the photos app. Though if it's doing it automatically for each shot based on the faces in the photo I suppose it's novel and more convenient.
- acdha 10y agoThat's what I was thinking as well: it'd be really cool if they did some sort of automatic exposure bracketing and combined the best areas of each version since every one of their sample photos generally looks overexposed, especially compared to what Apple's built-in HDR mode would do.
- awesomerobot 10y agoThey're also using models with multiple skin tones (dark vs light), which is a classic scenario for underexposed faces.
- mtgx 10y ago> Better mobile photos are just a tap away. Enter your mobile phone number and we'll text you a link to download Microsoft Pix. Stop teaching people to click on links from SMS texts damn it!
- tdkl 10y agoNice way to gather mobile numbers, not even needed to build a social network first.
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoNice vector for maliciousness.
- mspix 10y agoWe wanted to provide an easy option for users not currently on an iOS device, but only use the number for a 1-time SMS with a link to the Pix listing in the App Store. We do not collect or store the phone numbers, out of respect for user privacy.
- asuxx 10y agoI'm in the U.K and I never receive the text, despite saying it has been sent, is it available here?
- xd1936 10y agoDoes this have Photosynth built-in? :P
- djsumdog 10y agoWhen I first saw this, I wondered if it came out of the Photosynth project.
- sp332 10y agoIt's probably related to their hyperlapse tech, which shared a few people - at least Johannes Kopf and Richard Szeliski. https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2014/08/11/hyperlapse-siggraph-2014/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2014/08/11/hyperlapse-siggr...
- Viper007Bond 10y agoHyperlapse is included in this app!
- notyourwork 10y agoDoes anyone else think of Harry Potter when looking at the last section, Live Image/Live Photo?
- ino 10y agoIt reminded me of the Google Motion Stills app. I had it for a few weeks but uninstalled it as I didn't use it much.
- tomtheengineer 10y agoThe latest version of Google Photos (2.0) builds in the Motion Stills functionality: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-photos-free-photo-video/id962194608?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-photos-free-photo-vid...
- djokkataja 10y agoI had the exact same thought... but then I was surprised at how "creepy" it seemed to me instead of "neat". That said, I think I would actually like that sort of thing more than completely static images once I get used to it.
- etatoby 10y agoThey should take that single feature and package it into a Harry Potter-themed app, along with some sepia filters and parchment textures. It would be a blast! In fact, I might start using it like that, as soon as the Android version comes out.
- danso 10y agoThere'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/2016/07/Live-Photo.mp4 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/... The Pix-enhanced version: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Live-Image.mp4 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 instability helps give context to the video, that it's some kind of impromptu selfie on a windy day. The Pix version offers a clearer image at what I feel is a large cost to the image's integrity. It looks a bit creepy. That said, there are probably lots of good situations for Pix's stabilization tech, but that example didn't seem optimal as a landing page demo.
- hbosch 10y agoLooks like a much lower frame-rate too, like Pix is choosing a specific number of "like" frames and dropping the rest in the name of stabilizing the comp.
- awqrre 10y agothey didn't pick the most in-focus frame for the still picture in the pix-enhanced version
- jandrese 10y agoThe 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...
- r00fus 10y agoKind of like the SF2 Ryu victory pose (except in that case, it's intentional, and makes him look badass, not creepy). [1] http://street-fighter-sprites.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Street_Fighter_II:_The_World_Warrior_Poses?file=Ryu-SF2-Victory-Pose-1.gif http://street-fighter-sprites.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Street...
- Analemma_ 10y agoThis feels sort of redundant... that feature list (multiple face detection with auto exposure/white balance, burst mode with an algorithm to guess which one is "best") is all stuff the built-in camera app on iOS does already. Okay, the color and white balance look a little better for Pix in the example shots, but everyone's RAW processing is better in some situations and worse in others. I'm sure Apple could come back with just as many example shots where their own settings were better than Pix's, and we could go round and round like that forever. There's nothing wrong with this app, but I'm having trouble understanding why it exists. What does this do for users or Microsoft?
- kemiller2002 10y agoI could be totally wrong, but if I had to guess, they are using it to show off / validate their work on Microsoft Cognitive Services (Project Oxford). It has facial recognition, along with a number of other things, and so this would be an easy way of getting data on possible problems they have and how well their algorithms work. Just a guess though.
- rodgerd 10y agoFacial recognition is pretty much solid for most cameras now, though. Face registration, which Sony have been rolling into some E-mount cameras, would be more impressive.
- awesomerobot 10y agoIt's a bit different if you're prioritizing exposure of different faces based on their attributes though right? If you're taking a photo of a black person and a white person together you're often underexposing someone or overexposing someone.
- wepple 10y agoThere's a certain threshold in terms of added-value that has to be met in order for "yet another" app to live on my home screen. This pix app looks like it may have a bit of cool technology behind it, but will I install it? big nope.
- Osiris 10y agoOnly for iOS?
- senthil_rajasek 10y agoGreat demo page. I really love the "People-Centric" feature, especially how the demo shows after shot enhancements for a variety of skin tones. Thank you Microsoft.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gisenberg 10y agoInsane. That page loads in 111 network requests totaling about 40MB.
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoWeb development is eventually going to collapse under the weight of itself. This just seems so ... sloppy.
- nathancahill 10y agoI got 130 totaling 20MB, but still insane. At least some of them are loaded after the initial render.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jandrese 10y agoThis is what happens when you make everything an API and try to hide all of the details. People program as the docs tell them to, not realizing that what they're doing requires a hideous amount of complexity under the hood. It is sadly rare for an API to actually mention that a particular method is expensive.
- addedlovely 10y agoHuh, this is a badly coded WordPress site with HTML and CSS?
- sotojuan 10y agoI don't know how all these big companies talking about the mobile web and PWAs manage to build sites so inefficient for mobile loading.
- addedlovely 10y agoCame to say the same, crazy. A 4MB+ gif?!
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- ebbv 10y agoThe Pix images just look mostly like the contrast was reduced and all the dark pixels were made brighter. That's not improving the images in my mind, it's just throwing away color depth and subtlety.
- drinchev 10y agoI'm amazed how low-quality this MS landing page is. - The "How it works" tab is just a huge image. - The search box ( top right ) has some problems with the border. Both in Chrome & Safari. - It uses `font-family: 'Segoe UI';`, which makes all elements with that font on my Mac "serif"
- r00fus 10y agoThe "How it works" image is also very pixelated for me (is that intentional?)
- addedlovely 10y agoAlso running on WordPress and exposing version number - which is out of date: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/readme.html https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/readme.html
- pault 10y agoThe worst part is some certified microsoft vendor probably charged $60,000 for it.
- WhitneyLand 10y agoNo, I know some MS vendors and the work is usually competitive and tightly budgeted. Think of the power Walmart has over vendors to get good pricing and you'll get the idea.
- angersock 10y agoSo, anybody else notice the somewhat limited skin palette they seem to be working on? I'd be very curious what it does with really dark skin.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- muzster 10y agoSorry for my naivety and maybe a little off topic - but where are the raw image files used in the comparison images ? I'm sure someone is going to cry foul if the images have been passed through Photoshop.
- mspix 10y agoNone of the comparison images have been altered via Photoshop. All comparisons were shot simultaneously on a side-by-side rig, using a trigger that prompted the shutter press for both apps (Apple Camera and Microsoft Pix) at the same time, so conditions would be as equivalent as possible. See a photo of the rig in action here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/product/microsoftpix/#about https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/product/microsoftpi.... We did crop the edges of some photos to fit into the available space, but otherwise the images are the unaltered files that were produced by each app.
- muzster 10y agoA curious mind, like myself, found the "Photoshop 3.0" in the jpeg meta data and came to the conclusion that the comparison images had been altered via Photoshop (or similar tool) To avoid doubt, I would advise that all image comparisons should have references to the original source files. Thanks for taking the time to reply.
- trzeci 10y agoI thought that they released new version of DirectX SDK and PIX for debugging :( https://tomtech999.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/pix_intro.png https://tomtech999.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/pix_intro.png
- banachtarski 10y agoI'm not the only one! :(
- robbies 10y agoYeah, I'm not sure...why they just let the name get cannabilized. Looks like they moved over to "Visual Studio Graphics Debugger".
- ksml 10y agoOoh, they mention it includes Hyperlapse! I haven't looked into Pix too much so I don't know if this is a full implementation (someone commented on an unnatural-looking stabilization demo, but I think it was just a poor choice of an example), but Hyperlapse is one of the coolest research projects I've come across: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/hyperlapse/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/hype... The video demo there is worth checking out.
- mspix 10y agoPix includes the full implementation of Hyperlapse Mobile, which shipped on Windows Phone and Android last year.
- piyush_soni 10y agoIncidentally, Google has very recently come up with something very similar to Hyperlapse : https://plus.google.com/u/0/+GooglePhotos/posts/ajfo6Nwyn5n https://plus.google.com/u/0/+GooglePhotos/posts/ajfo6Nwyn5n
- fane 10y agoWill there be an app for windows phone or does microsoft support only iOS?
- fane89 10y agoWill there be an app for windows phone or does microsoft support only iOS?
- fane89 10y agothat was a joke...
- fane89 10y agoWill there be an app for windows phone or does microsoft support only iOS?
- donatj 10y agoI wonder if there is a plan for an Android version. I'd love to play with this.
- usaphp 10y agoI wonder who is responsible for their site design at Microsoft, their whole website looks very unpolished and quickly made, especially typography.
- bdcravens 10y agoIt's Wordpress, whereas other parts of www.microsoft.com are not. I suspect the Research group was responsible for their own site. Even though it has a marketing feel, I suspect it should be held more to an engineering blog type of standard.
- usaphp 10y agoWhat do they mean by "Apple camera"? Is that camera in macbook, iphone 3g, iphone 7?
- mspix 10y agoWe were referring to the default Camera app that ships with iOS devices. All side-by-sides were shot on the same model of iPhone with the most recent version of iOS at the time of the shoot, as well as the latest version of the Apple Camera app and the latest version of Microsoft Pix app, respectively.
- therealmarv 10y agoThe results remind me of older special effects or manual brushing in Photoshop... they are not very natural and not very good. Beeing myself also a photographer: Don't do this to your photos. The best A.I. and filters cannot compensate a well lighted photo. I'm happy that Apple does not include such destructive filtering. IMHO even a flash from your phone is better than this filters.
- tga 10y agoI'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 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.
- mspix 10y agoPix runs all the image processing on your phone - we do not use the cloud for any of this.
- vatotemking 10y agoIs there any chance for the image proc algo used here to go open source?
- tga 10y agoThank you for the clarification, that's awesome! A small note to that effect on the website would be great, I can't be the only one wondering.
- evan_ 10y agoYou're correct that Prisma uploads images and processes them "in the cloud" - but only for about half the filters. It's kind of weird and it isn't immediately obvious what the difference is between "cloud" filters and "local" filters.
- grumblestumble 10y agoAh, Microsoft. Will they ever figure out that the Microsoft name is a liability for consumer app adoption? There's a reason it's not called "Facebook Instagram", and Facebook, deservedly or not, still has a much less tarnished image than MS.
- Viper007Bond 10y agoQuite the opposite for me. I'm much more likely to try a cool new app from Microsoft than I am from some random startup I've never heard of. Lots of cool technology innovation going on at Microsoft (yes, really). One of many examples: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/hyperlapse/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/hype... (according to another comment here, this is also included in the app)
- JeremyBanks 10y agoMicrosoft's on a very strong redemption arc. You don't want to stall that by burying the brand when they do good work.
- ceejayoz 10y ago> There's a reason it's not called "Facebook Instagram" That reason is probably (at least partially) that it started out not owned by Facebook.
- MaulingMonkey 10y agoAnd here I assumed this was about PIX (the DirectX SDK tool.)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- metaphorical 10y agoEverything looks perfect. Every face looks plastic. I think I prefer the imperfect photos. But that's just me.
- mspix 10y agoWe're from the Microsoft Pix team, and we are interested in your feedback. Happy to answer questions.
- suyash 10y agoCan you make better windows phones please. Please create better apps for your platform before running towards iOS.
- the_watcher 10y agoOr, create apps for the platform used by 7x as many people before bothering creating them for the worst of them all.
- coredog64 10y agoI wouldn't say Windows Phone is the worst. It performs well on low spec hardware, it gets updates, and the Nokia lineup provides better value than equivalently priced Android phones. Disclaimer: Posting from my Lumia 640
- pjmlp 10y agoHaving developed for all major three mobile platforms, I would order them as Windows Phone, iOS, Android in what concerns developer tooling, with Windows Phone having the best experience. Sadly Microsoft management has shot themselves on both foots multiple times.
- the_watcher 10y agoFor development, perhaps. I am speaking about actual usage.
- ThomPete 10y agoFirst of all I want to just say that I think it's great to see MS isn't giving up and keeping to try and reinvent yourself. Sooner or later you are going to get something really big right. Second of all. I think there is something wrong with the top animation, it's very janky.
- suyash 10y agoApple Camera picture and video quality looks more real than Microsoft's. It seems like this app artificially list up the image.
- IgorPartola 10y agoI 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.
- mspix 10y agoHappy to hear you are enjoying it! We are working on a widget that will allow you to quick launch Pix from the Lock or Today screens, which we hope will help lessen the frustration of not being able to set it as default.
- xs 10y agoDoes it automatically take horizontal video when you are holding your camera vertically? When will we get that technology?
- danielbarla 10y agoI think the limiting factor for this is that the sensor itself is rectangular, pretty much in line with what you're expecting (aspect ratio of image produced, etc). You could always have a square sensor, but then when shooting landscape pictures, you'd be throwing away a lot of the sensor data. In short, people generally want rectangular photos, and coupled with economics this means that sensors are that shape. On the extreme end, I guess you could have some kind of rotating lens / sensor, which would automatically keep level.
- andyfleming 10y agoThe comparisons up top basically look like HDR for faces™.
- btym 10y agoNeat, I was just thinking to myself how much I wanted an app that would automatically wash out all my photos for me.
- milesf 10y agoDid they buy this from some other company and then rebrand it?
- rplnt 10y agoSlightly off-topic, but this reminds me of Google Camera with the Lens Blur (IIRC) feature. I can't find it on the play store now, was it discontinued? I wouldn't be surprised given it's Google, but why don't just leave the old version there with some sort of warning?
- soylentcola 10y agoAs far as I can tell, the Google Camera app still has this option. Not sure about an iOS version but if they made one I wasn't aware of it. It was actually what I thought of when they mentioned similar functionality in the new iOS camera app.
- rplnt 10y agoIt might have that option, but it is not available anymore (or I can't find it). This was different from the stock Camera app. If it replaced the stock app, then it's not available for devices that use different Camera app (namely Samsung).
- soylentcola 10y agoYeah, sorry. I was referring to the stock, standard "Camera" app I've always used. I even used it when I had a MotoX which included the "Moto Camera" app. I always preferred the plain Google one so that's the one I've used for the past several years. Looking at the Play store on my old Nexus 5 I don't see it so maybe Moto just included both for some reason or maybe I installed it when it was still in the Play store but has since been discontinued in that incarnation. This is the version that I have (newer one may need 7.0 according to the comments) https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/camera/camera-3-2-045-release/ https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/camera/camera-3-2-0... Feel free to disregard if you don't trust apkmirror but they pull directly from Google's servers and validate signatures.
- kevinliang 10y agoam i the only one who thinks the iphone 6s images look better?
- dx034 10y agoNo, I think the same. The Pix photos look a bit washed out. Faces are brighter, but it doesn't look natural to me anymore. I'd rather use a flash for the pictures where faces were really dark, would probably deliver better results.
- dimman 10y agoDefinitly not. Two faces, say 5% of the total image are correctly exposed at the expense of the other 95%. If you're serious with photo editing you increase the exposure of the faces afterwards a bit... Thanks but no thanks Mickeysoft.
- ecabuk 10y agoWhy microsoft developing an Iphone app?
- tomc1985 10y agoAnother photography app? le sigh
- DominikR 10y agoTo be honest the only difference that I see is that the Microsoft Pix images seem to be brighter and with less contrast. Maybe this is an amazing app full of amazing technology but the sample images that should advertise this were picked badly.
- dragon_ninja 10y agoThis is so stupid.
- sctb 10y agoWe've banned this account for repeatedly violating the guidelines.
- pjdorrell 10y agoThis is a bit like the beat "quantization" options in music apps, where you tidy up the raw user input. The best result comes when you choose not 100% quantized. The Pix app needs a slider so you can choose how much stabilisation you want on the target part of the image.
- nell 10y agoTo anyone on the Pix team reading this: In the section under "Hover Zoom Comparison", the Apple Camera photo is to the left of the Pix photo. In every other comparison, the Pix photo comes first. You should maintain that order because people don't read the title always and could confuse them. Once you've established a pattern, such as Pix on the left and Apple's on the right, don't change it. It's an inconvenience that the user doesn't mention but feels. Also, a consistent pattern takes a less cognitive load. You can call it nitpick or details :)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- vba 10y agoLooks like they were testing it when they got burgers at Feed Co in Redmond. I would of got the halloumi cheese grits
- vadym909 10y agoI wish they would create a simple and fast basic photo editor for the PC first. Their current Photo takes 5-7 secs to open a photo.
- frik 10y agoThe camera features are based on technology developed for MS Photosynth (also from Research department, former Live Labs), and originated from research projects from University of Washington.
- kriro 10y agoI know very little about photography. Why do I want such an app. I point and shoot with my S7 Edge and get decent enough pictures. Am I simply not the target audience? I'm also naively assuming that if I don't particularly like the photo I could do some post processing on it and would rather have the "raw" version. [also there is pretty much no left margin on the website, Firefox latest on OSX latest]
- daveblt 10y ago@mspix Looking forward to using it (Samsung S5). I hit the Send button and noticed some questionable grammar. It reads "Message has been send successfully on your mobile number." I guess it should be "A message has been sent successfully to your mobile number." or something similar.
- deviate_X 10y agoThe still picture faces look better with Pix ... They are using face-tracking and stabilisation around the faces in the videos which look's odd to most people because we definitely are not used to seeing this and probably disturbs our brain neurons which have not evolved in any way to compute this.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3KvI4yDAwM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3KvI4yDAwM
- gambiting 10y agoUhmmmm, is Microsoft unaware, that they already have a product call PIX? It's profiler used for DX programming and for X1. So now when you look for some PIX debugging tips on google, you will get results about the photo app.
- iraldir 10y agoVery cool. Just did a few shots to try it out and the results are definetely nice. Love the smart live picture, and I don't know if it's in my head are real but it feels like it is doing a field of depth if the situation call for one, which is really nice
- thatgerhard 10y agoI understand the branding department wanted to have their say, but I think it will be better as just "Pix" and nor "Microsoft Pix" (meh)