7 ms·

Live HDR+ and Dual Exposure Controls on Pixel 4 and 4a

74 points by theafh 6y ago

wiremaus 6y ago
Good concept. Well implemented HDR is a great way to get phones to reproduce more "true to life" images. Interestingly, the final rendering in the Pixel 3 looks better to my eyes.
- mnholt 6y ago
  Yeah I agree. Nearly all HDR photography is uninteresting to me because I’m attracted to contrasting light in the frame. Having everything in focus looks bland to me.
  - pier25 6y ago
    Yes most HDR is meh or just plain ugly. But it's definitely a great tool. See this HDR photo I made years ago: https://www.flickr.com/photos/petit_pierrot/3806527134/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/petit_pierrot/3806527134/
    - metalliqaz 6y ago
      That is a great photo. To me HDR on the phone is useful for capturing whatever I happen to be doing in a way that is more like how I perceive it in person.
- 1024core 6y ago
  > Interestingly, the final rendering in the Pixel 3 looks better to my eyes. Same here.
metalliqaz 6y ago
I really wish they added that feature to my Pixel 3 XL. The GPU isn't all that less capable in the older phone.
- pwarner 6y ago
  They some times back port these, I am unclear if they will or won't here? Agree it would be awesome!
- viraptor 6y ago
  And to generic android as well. I get that they want differentiation, but there's serious lack of other implementation in play store. For actually good hdr it looks like there's pixel or nothing. I'd be happy to pay quite a bit to get their new HDR+ on a OnePlus for example.
  - metalliqaz 6y ago
    the pixel phones have specialized DSPs (pixel visual core, pixel neural core) that probably can't be counted on in generic android
    - viraptor 6y ago
      That's just a speed improvement though, right? You could do the same in software if you sacrifice the live preview.
      - metalliqaz 6y ago
        true, but why spend the money on man-hours to implement it?
- seized 6y ago
  There is a hacked Camera APK that restores features and backports new features to old phones. It's not perfectly stable on my Pixel 2 but its close. Restored Burst shots as a feature (my main goal), brought focus tracking and astrophotography improvements. And it can be installed along side the stock camera. https://forum.xda-developers.com/apps/google-camera-mods/gcam-google-pixel-1-2-3-t3875663?goto=newpost https://forum.xda-developers.com/apps/google-camera-mods/gca...
formerly_proven 6y ago
Real cameras have been doing "HDR" for ages, since their sensors have 12-14 stops of dynamic range, but JPEG only has 8. And it works incredibly well, just like the color science Nikon and Canon have figured out, a thing smartphones are lacking as well. With a lot of light smartphones can take very good pictures as far as resolution is concerned, but color and dynamic range rendering are consistently poor. For me it's rare that I need to change the colors my Nikon camera produces, and if I do, it's usually just a slight tweak (a few hundred Kelvin of red-blue shift or maybe a tiny magenta-green adjustment), while the colors in practically every iPhone shot are lacking and require effort to get to a satisfactory level.
- damnyou 6y ago
  Have you tried Pixels? To my taste the photos they take are a couple notches better than iPhones.
- _coveredInBees 6y ago
  That doesn't sound right at all. DSLRs like my Canon do indeed have a larger dynamic range but they are still nowhere near being close to the dynamic range the human eye can capture. Moreover, the native image rendered by DSLRs still has a linear transfer function that still suffers all the issues that HDR tries to solve. This is why auto-bracket exposure is a thing on all DSLRs so you can try to capture high dynamic range scenes in multiple photographs that you then need to combine offline in separate software. And the sad fact of the matter is that computational photography on phones, especially when it comes to HDR, makes it absolutely no hassle to obtain exceptionally good HDR captures 80+% of the time. I've literally taken back to back comparison shots of my son on a bright sunny day on a boat when on the ocean and my smartphone picture (S9+) was far superior to my DSLR image, even after trying to capture details from highlights/shadows in postprocessing. Phones these days can perform a lot of neat tricks to reduce noise, capture large dynamic ranges and compress it all into a pleasing HDR image in fractions of seconds that lets you achieve great HDR images even with moving subjects (something notoriously hard with a DSLR). Not that DSLRs don't have a whole host of other advantages when it comes to image quality and depth-of-focus, etc, but HDR is not one of them. It is almost the sole reason why I've been reaching for my DSLR less and less when on vacation.
dharma1 6y ago
"HDR images can be challenging to edit, because some decisions are effectively baked into the final JPG. To maximize latitude for editing, it’s possible to save RAW images for each shot (an option in the app). However, this process takes the photographer out of the moment and requires expertise with RAW editing tools as well as additional storage." I wish at least 12bit (ideally 14 or 16bit) compressed image formats (like HEIF) took over jpeg on cameras. It's great to have raw as an option, but can we please just get rid of 8bit jpg as the default
- ISL 6y ago
  Part of the underlying challenge is that displays are, at best, 10-bit. Our imaging systems easily handle 14-bit depth, but the display systems cannot.
  - dharma1 6y ago
    Yep. But you can do a lot more post-processing to bring all that latitude back to 8/10bit color space, than if you start with a 8bit jpeg. Same as when shooting high bit depth raw files
    - ISL 6y ago
      To me, the biggest limitation is the limited range in luminance. By design, half of my work (ig:@charliehagedorn) is in black and white. The difference in light intensity between sunlit snow and shadowed rock is often far, far more than 8 stops. While it is the job of the photographer, these days, to collapse the dynamic range enough to get it onto a screen, there is a huge depth of experience awaiting us the day that our displays reach parity with our sensors.
      - bscphil 6y ago
        > To me, the biggest limitation is the limited range in luminance. The difference in light intensity between sunlit snow and shadowed rock is often far, far more than 8 stops. The bit depth of a photo or display device is not the same as the dynamic range at which that photo is displayed. With traditional SDR image formats, on some screens a "0" pixel will be displayed at about 1 nit brightness, and a "255" pixel will be displayed at about 100 nits. But on other screens, the same pixel will be shown at 500 nits or more. Thus with SDR images, the luminance range depends on the characteristics of the display device in use, and not the fact that it's only an "8 bit" photo. "8 bit" ≠ "8 stops". On the other hand, on displays with very high peak brightness, you may get banding even with images that are properly dithered to take advantage of the full capabilities of the 8 bit range. The point of 10 bit and higher is that you can accurately capture all the details in between a very dark portion of an image and a very bright one without banding. The point of the new HDR standards (which are just now being introduced to images) is that luma is now on an absolute scale, so that you are no longer dependent on the characteristics of the individual display. (You have to have both together for either to be very useful.) But whether you're working with SDR or HDR, 8 bit or 10 bit, fundamentally the question of how many stops you can get (the display's true contrast) is a question of what the display is capable of reproducing, not the underlying technology you're working with.
renewiltord 6y ago
Modern smartphone HDR is so insane. I tried replicating it with a tripod and HDR software but I had to apply so much compensation and the smartphones are just point and click. Great stuff. I am very impressed with the photo AI work people have been doing. Very concrete feature for people to use.
randyrand 6y ago
This is really cool. Nit: I find it really unintuitive that 100% is on the left of the slider. "Volume" knobs and sliders are almost always the other way around in my experience.

74 points by theafh 6y ago

Good concept. Well implemented HDR is a great way to get phones to reproduce more "true to life" images. Interestingly, the final rendering in the Pixel 3 looks better to my eyes.

mnholt 6y ago
Yeah I agree. Nearly all HDR photography is uninteresting to me because I’m attracted to contrasting light in the frame. Having everything in focus looks bland to me.
- pier25 6y ago
  Yes most HDR is meh or just plain ugly. But it's definitely a great tool. See this HDR photo I made years ago: https://www.flickr.com/photos/petit_pierrot/3806527134/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/petit_pierrot/3806527134/
  - metalliqaz 6y ago
    That is a great photo. To me HDR on the phone is useful for capturing whatever I happen to be doing in a way that is more like how I perceive it in person.
1024core 6y ago
> Interestingly, the final rendering in the Pixel 3 looks better to my eyes. Same here.

metalliqaz 6y ago

I really wish they added that feature to my Pixel 3 XL. The GPU isn't all that less capable in the older phone.

pwarner 6y ago
They some times back port these, I am unclear if they will or won't here? Agree it would be awesome!
viraptor 6y ago
And to generic android as well. I get that they want differentiation, but there's serious lack of other implementation in play store. For actually good hdr it looks like there's pixel or nothing. I'd be happy to pay quite a bit to get their new HDR+ on a OnePlus for example.
- metalliqaz 6y ago
  the pixel phones have specialized DSPs (pixel visual core, pixel neural core) that probably can't be counted on in generic android
  - viraptor 6y ago
    That's just a speed improvement though, right? You could do the same in software if you sacrifice the live preview.
    - metalliqaz 6y ago
      true, but why spend the money on man-hours to implement it?
seized 6y ago
There is a hacked Camera APK that restores features and backports new features to old phones. It's not perfectly stable on my Pixel 2 but its close. Restored Burst shots as a feature (my main goal), brought focus tracking and astrophotography improvements. And it can be installed along side the stock camera. https://forum.xda-developers.com/apps/google-camera-mods/gcam-google-pixel-1-2-3-t3875663?goto=newpost https://forum.xda-developers.com/apps/google-camera-mods/gca...

formerly_proven 6y ago

Real cameras have been doing "HDR" for ages, since their sensors have 12-14 stops of dynamic range, but JPEG only has 8. And it works incredibly well, just like the color science Nikon and Canon have figured out, a thing smartphones are lacking as well. With a lot of light smartphones can take very good pictures as far as resolution is concerned, but color and dynamic range rendering are consistently poor. For me it's rare that I need to change the colors my Nikon camera produces, and if I do, it's usually just a slight tweak (a few hundred Kelvin of red-blue shift or maybe a tiny magenta-green adjustment), while the colors in practically every iPhone shot are lacking and require effort to get to a satisfactory level.

damnyou 6y ago
Have you tried Pixels? To my taste the photos they take are a couple notches better than iPhones.
_coveredInBees 6y ago
That doesn't sound right at all. DSLRs like my Canon do indeed have a larger dynamic range but they are still nowhere near being close to the dynamic range the human eye can capture. Moreover, the native image rendered by DSLRs still has a linear transfer function that still suffers all the issues that HDR tries to solve. This is why auto-bracket exposure is a thing on all DSLRs so you can try to capture high dynamic range scenes in multiple photographs that you then need to combine offline in separate software. And the sad fact of the matter is that computational photography on phones, especially when it comes to HDR, makes it absolutely no hassle to obtain exceptionally good HDR captures 80+% of the time. I've literally taken back to back comparison shots of my son on a bright sunny day on a boat when on the ocean and my smartphone picture (S9+) was far superior to my DSLR image, even after trying to capture details from highlights/shadows in postprocessing. Phones these days can perform a lot of neat tricks to reduce noise, capture large dynamic ranges and compress it all into a pleasing HDR image in fractions of seconds that lets you achieve great HDR images even with moving subjects (something notoriously hard with a DSLR). Not that DSLRs don't have a whole host of other advantages when it comes to image quality and depth-of-focus, etc, but HDR is not one of them. It is almost the sole reason why I've been reaching for my DSLR less and less when on vacation.

dharma1 6y ago

"HDR images can be challenging to edit, because some decisions are effectively baked into the final JPG. To maximize latitude for editing, it’s possible to save RAW images for each shot (an option in the app). However, this process takes the photographer out of the moment and requires expertise with RAW editing tools as well as additional storage." I wish at least 12bit (ideally 14 or 16bit) compressed image formats (like HEIF) took over jpeg on cameras. It's great to have raw as an option, but can we please just get rid of 8bit jpg as the default

ISL 6y ago
Part of the underlying challenge is that displays are, at best, 10-bit. Our imaging systems easily handle 14-bit depth, but the display systems cannot.
- dharma1 6y ago
  Yep. But you can do a lot more post-processing to bring all that latitude back to 8/10bit color space, than if you start with a 8bit jpeg. Same as when shooting high bit depth raw files
  - ISL 6y ago
    To me, the biggest limitation is the limited range in luminance. By design, half of my work (ig:@charliehagedorn) is in black and white. The difference in light intensity between sunlit snow and shadowed rock is often far, far more than 8 stops. While it is the job of the photographer, these days, to collapse the dynamic range enough to get it onto a screen, there is a huge depth of experience awaiting us the day that our displays reach parity with our sensors.
    - bscphil 6y ago
      > To me, the biggest limitation is the limited range in luminance. The difference in light intensity between sunlit snow and shadowed rock is often far, far more than 8 stops. The bit depth of a photo or display device is not the same as the dynamic range at which that photo is displayed. With traditional SDR image formats, on some screens a "0" pixel will be displayed at about 1 nit brightness, and a "255" pixel will be displayed at about 100 nits. But on other screens, the same pixel will be shown at 500 nits or more. Thus with SDR images, the luminance range depends on the characteristics of the display device in use, and not the fact that it's only an "8 bit" photo. "8 bit" ≠ "8 stops". On the other hand, on displays with very high peak brightness, you may get banding even with images that are properly dithered to take advantage of the full capabilities of the 8 bit range. The point of 10 bit and higher is that you can accurately capture all the details in between a very dark portion of an image and a very bright one without banding. The point of the new HDR standards (which are just now being introduced to images) is that luma is now on an absolute scale, so that you are no longer dependent on the characteristics of the individual display. (You have to have both together for either to be very useful.) But whether you're working with SDR or HDR, 8 bit or 10 bit, fundamentally the question of how many stops you can get (the display's true contrast) is a question of what the display is capable of reproducing, not the underlying technology you're working with.

renewiltord 6y ago

Modern smartphone HDR is so insane. I tried replicating it with a tripod and HDR software but I had to apply so much compensation and the smartphones are just point and click. Great stuff. I am very impressed with the photo AI work people have been doing. Very concrete feature for people to use.

randyrand 6y ago

This is really cool. Nit: I find it really unintuitive that 100% is on the left of the slider. "Volume" knobs and sliders are almost always the other way around in my experience.