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Cellphones have been capable of HDR for a very very long time and yet none of those older phones were capable of producing a picture like the one in the article

Cellphones have been capable of HDR for a very very long time and yet none of those older phones were capable of producing a picture like the one in the article. The problem here was not HDR. The problem was using AI to create a composite image by selectively erasing the subject of the photo from parts of the image, detecting that same person found in other photos, then cutting the subject out of those other images and pasting them into the deleted parts of the original picture before filling in the gaps to make it look like it was all one picture. This was absolutely an "AI transformation" as the original article correctly pointed out: > “It’s made like an AI decision and it stitched those two photos together,”

foldr 3y ago
>Cellphones have been capable of HDR for a very very long time and yet none of those older phones were capable of producing a picture like the one in the article. I don't think this is true? You can easily get an image like this just by choosing a different keyframe for different areas of the photo when combining the stack of exposures. No AI needed. Nor is there any 'selective erasing'. You talk about 'detecting the same person found in other photos', which suggests that you're not aware that HDR involves blending a stack of exposures (where the woman may have been in various different poses) that are part of the same 'photo' from the user's point of view (i.e. one press of the shutter button). There is no reason at all to think that the phone is actually scanning through the existing photo library to find other images of the same person. I doubt that would even be computationally feasible, given how quickly the iPhone renders the final image after the photo is taken.
- autoexec 3y ago
  HDR in older phones would have only merged/blended the images resulting in ghosting (the reflections would have shown the woman as having more than two arms) or blurring because they weren't using AI to select and cut out parts of the original image to swap in parts from other images. The "other photos" weren't older pictures pulled from her photo library, but were the photos taken in quick succession using different exposures. Those are still "other images of the same person" even if they are only temporarily stored in memory, but using them for exposure adjustment isn't a problem. Any old HDR capable phone would have done that. The problem is AI detecting people and deleting them to paste in "better" versions from those other photos. HDR is additive, not destructive.
  - foldr 3y ago
    You really don’t need any kind of fancy AI algorithm to associate different keyframes with different areas of the photo. This could be done using any number of standard computational photography techniques based on straightforward criteria such as exposure, motion blur, etc. etc. For this reason I’m skeptical of your claim that ‘HDR in older phones would have only merged/blended the images resulting in ghosting…or blurring’. Even if we assume this is true for the sake of argument, you undermine your own point here, as ghosting and blurring are also distortions of reality. You’re apparently ok with a photo showing a person with ‘more than two arms’, but not ok with a photo combining slightly different time-slices of the same scene (which is actually any photo taken using a focal plane shutter above flash sync speed :)). You're entitled to your subjective preference there, but I certainly don't share it myself.

foldr 3y ago

>Cellphones have been capable of HDR for a very very long time and yet none of those older phones were capable of producing a picture like the one in the article. I don't think this is true? You can easily get an image like this just by choosing a different keyframe for different areas of the photo when combining the stack of exposures. No AI needed. Nor is there any 'selective erasing'. You talk about 'detecting the same person found in other photos', which suggests that you're not aware that HDR involves blending a stack of exposures (where the woman may have been in various different poses) that are part of the same 'photo' from the user's point of view (i.e. one press of the shutter button). There is no reason at all to think that the phone is actually scanning through the existing photo library to find other images of the same person. I doubt that would even be computationally feasible, given how quickly the iPhone renders the final image after the photo is taken.

autoexec 3y ago
HDR in older phones would have only merged/blended the images resulting in ghosting (the reflections would have shown the woman as having more than two arms) or blurring because they weren't using AI to select and cut out parts of the original image to swap in parts from other images. The "other photos" weren't older pictures pulled from her photo library, but were the photos taken in quick succession using different exposures. Those are still "other images of the same person" even if they are only temporarily stored in memory, but using them for exposure adjustment isn't a problem. Any old HDR capable phone would have done that. The problem is AI detecting people and deleting them to paste in "better" versions from those other photos. HDR is additive, not destructive.
- foldr 3y ago
  You really don’t need any kind of fancy AI algorithm to associate different keyframes with different areas of the photo. This could be done using any number of standard computational photography techniques based on straightforward criteria such as exposure, motion blur, etc. etc. For this reason I’m skeptical of your claim that ‘HDR in older phones would have only merged/blended the images resulting in ghosting…or blurring’. Even if we assume this is true for the sake of argument, you undermine your own point here, as ghosting and blurring are also distortions of reality. You’re apparently ok with a photo showing a person with ‘more than two arms’, but not ok with a photo combining slightly different time-slices of the same scene (which is actually any photo taken using a focal plane shutter above flash sync speed :)). You're entitled to your subjective preference there, but I certainly don't share it myself.