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Fully agree. My wife and I went out on a date about a month ago, and during it, she took a selfie of the two of us. There must have been some filter on by defau

Fully agree. My wife and I went out on a date about a month ago, and during it, she took a selfie of the two of us. There must have been some filter on by default because our faces looked perfectly lit, our skin completely blemish-free, no smile lines, etc. It was a great picture, but I remarked immediately that it didn't look real. And I don't want that -- it's not us but an idealized, optimized version of us. I similarly have mixed feelings about what I've seen lately of the deep learning that 'restores' very old images to incredible quality. But that quality is fake. I'm sure there's a tug at the heartstrings to see a crisp image of your deceased father from his high school days, but to me that seems a bit revisionist. I don't know. I guess I'm just uneasy with the idea of us editing our lives so readily.

travisgriggs 5y ago
First we have the uncanny effect from trying to imitate real life too much. It will be interesting if the effect shows up on the other side of modifying away from real life imagery as well.
tobyjsullivan 5y ago
This brings new meaning to the old quote, "history is written by victors." Today, the victors are Apple, Google, etc., and they are writing their own version of history as its recorded...
- mc32 5y ago
  They are the means, but the "victors" are people's vanity. If people didn't want blemish free pictures, they wouldn't be offered --but airbrushing was a thing and old fashioned paintings also tended to skip the blemishes --unlike mirrors. So, today, this continues albeit more perfect and automated for our consumption.
  - noizejoy 5y ago
    Bad vision airbrushes even mirrors. :-)
- hughrr 5y ago
  Nope. Give me a 40 year old East German camera and a roll of Ilford and I’m still perfectly capable of corrupting reality intentionally.
hazza_n_dazza 5y ago
my kid brought home a picture of them taken at school by the school. It didn't look like her. the shiny smiley filters were not real happiness. cameras replacing happiness that is there with happiness that isnt there is quite a delusion.
noizejoy 5y ago
To be fair, human memory also liberally edits. And historical representations also undergo changes, like the colour fading on old pictures, paintings and statues. And that’s in addition to all of the issues in capturing accurate colours and other details in the first place. Add a bit of optical illusion to at least some imagery and the entire question of historical accuracy becomes very messy very fast. A prime example is astro-photography, where most of the well known imagery isn’t and may never be seen like that by even future evolved human eyes. Photos are limited representations, just like they’ve always been. But it’s understandable, that different individuals would prefer differently prioritized representations. And maybe that’s the next generation of tools. Give more choice, more facial wrinkles or fewer. More lighting and colour enhancements or less. etc.
madeofpalk 5y ago
I'm curious what model phone you have. In the past Samsung, Google Pixel, and Apple phones all had their own approaches to computational photography and would all take photos in their own "style". Samsung would priories for vibrancy and clear faces, Apple would try for "most correct" but often got quite flat photos, and the Pixel managed to do with a middleground.
eclipxe 5y ago
Are you sure it was a filter or just a lower-quality front facing camera that didn't capture details in low light like blemishes and smile lines? In an effort to reduce noise, sometimes a camera over-smoothes the image - not as a way to make your imperfections disappear, but to make the noise from the high ISO shot disappear.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  My phone has a button in the camera app labeled "AI" and it does exactly this. Even in low light conditions you can see the differences between denoised and smoothed skin. It's also clearly optimized for Chinese faces, which makes for some comedic side effects sometimes when it tries to apply what seems to be the beauty standard in China to my very much non-Asian face structure. Sadly, there's no differentiation between the stupid face filter and the landscape-fixing AI. I like the AI processing for a lot of static scenes where there are no people around, because the small camera sensor simply can't catch the necessary details, but I always forget to turn it on because of the stupid face filter that comes with it.
lathiat 5y ago
Lots of phones have a selfie beautification mode now. Even Apple had appeared to add one in the iPhone XS/iOS12 but was apparently an issue with Smart HDR and was rolled back. But many Android phones advertise it as a feature and it's something many filters etc do. It's also possible some HDR type functionality causes this on other implementations.

travisgriggs 5y ago

First we have the uncanny effect from trying to imitate real life too much. It will be interesting if the effect shows up on the other side of modifying away from real life imagery as well.

tobyjsullivan 5y ago

This brings new meaning to the old quote, "history is written by victors." Today, the victors are Apple, Google, etc., and they are writing their own version of history as its recorded...

mc32 5y ago
They are the means, but the "victors" are people's vanity. If people didn't want blemish free pictures, they wouldn't be offered --but airbrushing was a thing and old fashioned paintings also tended to skip the blemishes --unlike mirrors. So, today, this continues albeit more perfect and automated for our consumption.
- noizejoy 5y ago
  Bad vision airbrushes even mirrors. :-)
hughrr 5y ago
Nope. Give me a 40 year old East German camera and a roll of Ilford and I’m still perfectly capable of corrupting reality intentionally.

hazza_n_dazza 5y ago

my kid brought home a picture of them taken at school by the school. It didn't look like her. the shiny smiley filters were not real happiness. cameras replacing happiness that is there with happiness that isnt there is quite a delusion.

noizejoy 5y ago

To be fair, human memory also liberally edits. And historical representations also undergo changes, like the colour fading on old pictures, paintings and statues. And that’s in addition to all of the issues in capturing accurate colours and other details in the first place. Add a bit of optical illusion to at least some imagery and the entire question of historical accuracy becomes very messy very fast. A prime example is astro-photography, where most of the well known imagery isn’t and may never be seen like that by even future evolved human eyes. Photos are limited representations, just like they’ve always been. But it’s understandable, that different individuals would prefer differently prioritized representations. And maybe that’s the next generation of tools. Give more choice, more facial wrinkles or fewer. More lighting and colour enhancements or less. etc.

madeofpalk 5y ago

I'm curious what model phone you have. In the past Samsung, Google Pixel, and Apple phones all had their own approaches to computational photography and would all take photos in their own "style". Samsung would priories for vibrancy and clear faces, Apple would try for "most correct" but often got quite flat photos, and the Pixel managed to do with a middleground.

eclipxe 5y ago

Are you sure it was a filter or just a lower-quality front facing camera that didn't capture details in low light like blemishes and smile lines? In an effort to reduce noise, sometimes a camera over-smoothes the image - not as a way to make your imperfections disappear, but to make the noise from the high ISO shot disappear.

jeroenhd 5y ago
My phone has a button in the camera app labeled "AI" and it does exactly this. Even in low light conditions you can see the differences between denoised and smoothed skin. It's also clearly optimized for Chinese faces, which makes for some comedic side effects sometimes when it tries to apply what seems to be the beauty standard in China to my very much non-Asian face structure. Sadly, there's no differentiation between the stupid face filter and the landscape-fixing AI. I like the AI processing for a lot of static scenes where there are no people around, because the small camera sensor simply can't catch the necessary details, but I always forget to turn it on because of the stupid face filter that comes with it.

lathiat 5y ago

Lots of phones have a selfie beautification mode now. Even Apple had appeared to add one in the iPhone XS/iOS12 but was apparently an issue with Smart HDR and was rolled back. But many Android phones advertise it as a feature and it's something many filters etc do. It's also possible some HDR type functionality causes this on other implementations.