5 ms·

I had a related experience with my Pixel 7 a few months ago. In this picture of a deer: https://photos.app.goo.gl/qChwaw9C29WVdAmr6 https://photos.app.goo.gl/q

by dgacmu 3y ago

I had a related experience with my Pixel 7 a few months ago. In this picture of a deer: https://photos.app.goo.gl/qChwaw9C29WVdAmr6 https://photos.app.goo.gl/qChwaw9C29WVdAmr6 If you zoom in, you'll note that .. everything at a detail level looks like an oil painting, especially the deer's face and the wall behind it. Very weird effect, and that's certainly not what the wall or deer actually look like. No filters applied. Computational photography is really awesome and modestly worrisome.

rafram 3y ago
That’s due to basic denoising, not anything more advanced. I have photos from my iPhone 6s circa 2016 that look similar when you zoom in.
- dgacmu 3y ago
  interesting - thank you!
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  That's not "basic denoising" and photos from my 8 look nothing like that; the "watercolor" or "oil painting" look started around the iPhone 12. Basic denoising is stuff like chroma or hue smoothing. This is very aggressive patterning. That's a daylight photo that the phone turned into an oil painting. https://www.google.com/search?q=pixel+photo+oil+painting+look https://www.google.com/search?q=pixel+photo+oil+painting+loo...
  - dagmx 3y ago
    It’s just what happens when you really aggressively do noise reduction on small sensor data. The noise pattern of any sensor that small will blotch in patterns that when combined with aggressive noise reduction, it will look this way. It’s less apparent on bigger sensors but you’ll see the same if you really crank the noise reduction
    - panarky 3y ago
      Yes, it's denoising and sharpening due to extreme digital zoom that only uses a small portion of an already tiny sensor.
      - dgacmu 3y ago
        That deer image definitely had digital zoom (I wasn't standing next to the critter).
  - alt227 3y ago
    If you go into photoshop and mess around with filters for 5 mins, you will soon see that if you over aggressively apply any filter to a photo it soon starts looking like a cartoon or painting due to the way that image processing groups blocks of colour together for manipulation.
tmalsburg2 3y ago
This effect likely resulted from aggressive noise filtering. You can probably reduce the amount of filtering in the settings.
jimmux 3y ago
It looks like it's treating the deer and wall as the same subject, averaging the texture, and applying it to both.
Aurornis 3y ago
That’s denoising. Those mosaic like patterns are more pleasing to the eye than a noisy photograph. The laws of physics put a limit on how well a tiny phone lens and sensor can capture light. We’re not at the limit yet even though hardware is quite good. Still, you wouldn’t like if your phone spat out raw, noisy images everywhere without any processing (beyond what’s necessary to translate it to the right pixel grid and color space).
- kortilla 3y ago
  Is there any way to get the noisy version? Or is that all forced by the hardware.
  - Ambroos 3y ago
    Shooting in RAW gets you the real sensor data without any computational magic.
    - helf 3y ago
      That's not entirely true and deoends heavily on the phone.
    - datadrivenangel 3y ago
      Incorrect. It gets you less editorial magic, but all cameras make decisions about how they create RAW images. Even cameras that don't make any intentional decisions end up making decisions because of the physics of the sensor as an electrical device and how you read each sensor element.
    - dharmab 3y ago
      My Fuji XA5 has denoising in the RAW files.
  - helf 3y ago
    Depends. The DNG/Raw photos you can force out of gcam will sorta have the noise. Less processing /sorta/. HDR+ with gcam is going to be exceptionally "touched" no matter what. You can modify the camera drivers etc on some devices to get nearly no processing output (other than the debayering color filtering etc by the ISP). I custom modded an LG V20 that I use for my mobile photography. I've either totally disabled or adjusted nearly every function of the signal processor as well as modified the camera program itself. I also use a custom modified gcam on it. Some samples: https://imgur.com/gallery/W42TVGf https://imgur.com/gallery/W42TVGf Look at my user (helforama) on imgur and pretty much every uploaded photo I took and edited on my V20... I need to update that account with newer photos :) been using the phone aince 2016 for photos!
zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
This is how all my bird and squirrel photos look. It really disappoints me
- Toutouxc 3y ago
  Well, in the big camera world, birding and wildlife means huge and expensive lenses that are both fast (i.e. they let a lot of light in) and have a large focal length. The fact that you can even attempt to take similar photos on something as tiny as a phone camera and have the object come out recognizable is nothing short of amazing.
  - zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
    Hmm. Good point. I don't know anything about cameras
luuurker 3y ago
Was that picture taken with zoom? I ask because the Pixel 7 doesn't have a dedicated zoom camera, so any zoom was digital which reduces quality a lot. The processing part has to use low quality frames and what you have there is often the result. Phone users shouldn't have to think about this, but from experience I think that on phones without a zoom camera it's often better to take a photo without zoom (or avoid going past 2x) and crop the image afterwards.
- dgacmu 3y ago
  Yes, it was.

by dgacmu 3y ago

rafram 3y ago

That’s due to basic denoising, not anything more advanced. I have photos from my iPhone 6s circa 2016 that look similar when you zoom in.

dgacmu 3y ago
interesting - thank you!
KennyBlanken 3y ago
That's not "basic denoising" and photos from my 8 look nothing like that; the "watercolor" or "oil painting" look started around the iPhone 12. Basic denoising is stuff like chroma or hue smoothing. This is very aggressive patterning. That's a daylight photo that the phone turned into an oil painting. https://www.google.com/search?q=pixel+photo+oil+painting+look https://www.google.com/search?q=pixel+photo+oil+painting+loo...
- dagmx 3y ago
  It’s just what happens when you really aggressively do noise reduction on small sensor data. The noise pattern of any sensor that small will blotch in patterns that when combined with aggressive noise reduction, it will look this way. It’s less apparent on bigger sensors but you’ll see the same if you really crank the noise reduction
  - panarky 3y ago
    Yes, it's denoising and sharpening due to extreme digital zoom that only uses a small portion of an already tiny sensor.
    - dgacmu 3y ago
      That deer image definitely had digital zoom (I wasn't standing next to the critter).
- alt227 3y ago
  If you go into photoshop and mess around with filters for 5 mins, you will soon see that if you over aggressively apply any filter to a photo it soon starts looking like a cartoon or painting due to the way that image processing groups blocks of colour together for manipulation.

tmalsburg2 3y ago

This effect likely resulted from aggressive noise filtering. You can probably reduce the amount of filtering in the settings.

jimmux 3y ago

It looks like it's treating the deer and wall as the same subject, averaging the texture, and applying it to both.

Aurornis 3y ago

That’s denoising. Those mosaic like patterns are more pleasing to the eye than a noisy photograph. The laws of physics put a limit on how well a tiny phone lens and sensor can capture light. We’re not at the limit yet even though hardware is quite good. Still, you wouldn’t like if your phone spat out raw, noisy images everywhere without any processing (beyond what’s necessary to translate it to the right pixel grid and color space).

kortilla 3y ago
Is there any way to get the noisy version? Or is that all forced by the hardware.
- Ambroos 3y ago
  Shooting in RAW gets you the real sensor data without any computational magic.
  - helf 3y ago
    That's not entirely true and deoends heavily on the phone.
  - datadrivenangel 3y ago
    Incorrect. It gets you less editorial magic, but all cameras make decisions about how they create RAW images. Even cameras that don't make any intentional decisions end up making decisions because of the physics of the sensor as an electrical device and how you read each sensor element.
  - dharmab 3y ago
    My Fuji XA5 has denoising in the RAW files.
- helf 3y ago
  Depends. The DNG/Raw photos you can force out of gcam will sorta have the noise. Less processing /sorta/. HDR+ with gcam is going to be exceptionally "touched" no matter what. You can modify the camera drivers etc on some devices to get nearly no processing output (other than the debayering color filtering etc by the ISP). I custom modded an LG V20 that I use for my mobile photography. I've either totally disabled or adjusted nearly every function of the signal processor as well as modified the camera program itself. I also use a custom modified gcam on it. Some samples: https://imgur.com/gallery/W42TVGf https://imgur.com/gallery/W42TVGf Look at my user (helforama) on imgur and pretty much every uploaded photo I took and edited on my V20... I need to update that account with newer photos :) been using the phone aince 2016 for photos!

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago

This is how all my bird and squirrel photos look. It really disappoints me

Toutouxc 3y ago
Well, in the big camera world, birding and wildlife means huge and expensive lenses that are both fast (i.e. they let a lot of light in) and have a large focal length. The fact that you can even attempt to take similar photos on something as tiny as a phone camera and have the object come out recognizable is nothing short of amazing.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
  Hmm. Good point. I don't know anything about cameras

luuurker 3y ago

Was that picture taken with zoom? I ask because the Pixel 7 doesn't have a dedicated zoom camera, so any zoom was digital which reduces quality a lot. The processing part has to use low quality frames and what you have there is often the result. Phone users shouldn't have to think about this, but from experience I think that on phones without a zoom camera it's often better to take a photo without zoom (or avoid going past 2x) and crop the image afterwards.

dgacmu 3y ago
Yes, it was.