Since the introduction of digital photography, advancements have mostly been hardware based. Enhancing photos was largely called editing and a separate activity from actually taking the picture with your camera. With the omnipresent camera phone the software aspect of photography has become bigger and bigger. Camera’s have become better at detecting the type of scene in front of it and adjusting the settings automatically.
This week Google unveiled their “Night Sight” feature for their line of Pixel phones (and later probably all Android powered camera’s). The image below compares a Night Shift photo on the right to an (already impressive) iPhone XS photo on the left:
Combining multiple photos all with different exposure settings, alignment, merging, tone mapping and white-balance adjustment result in these amazing achievements. As a photography fan I’m enthusiastic about the possibilities this add to the camera that you carry most.
For a more in-depth look at the challenges and technology behind Night Shift see the article on the Google AI blog.
Enjoy your Friday!