How Software is changing the photography

a few weeks Ago, the so-called beauty gate has enabled the social media in an uproar. Some people have found that the people in your photos would just look too pretty. Specifically, in the case of photos of the iPhone XS and XS Max, the skin appeared in some of the photographed people is unnaturally smooth. Immediately, the theory was, because of an overzealous algorithm might be at work. Or is there intention behind it? Apple wants to make the iPhone users more beautiful than they really are?

The hypothesis is not plucked out of the air. Samsung, for example, has built into his camera - "Beauty Mode". Not only skin blemishes Disappear, but also subtle changes to the proportions of a face: He makes the cheeks look slimmer and the eyes bigger. And: skin digital to be eliminates impurities. This mode is switched on with the Selfie camera by default. Probably Samsung wants to demonstrate to the new possibilities of technology. Or is there more to it? For example, the idea, the enthusiasm of the users for your new phone with a particularly advantageous self-portrait will be liable to increase?

this is how I look in 3-D!

one way or the other: Some Users are outraged: Melissa Wells is a Influencerin, the white back in your photos on Instagram quite in the right light. She moved neatly from the leather: "Thank you, Samsung, for this vote of confidence!" She wanted her freckles and imperfections to retain ion but rather, she wrote to her a good 60'000 Followers: "I see in 3-D, and so get to know me my friends!"

In the case of Apple, the heavily smoothed skin turned out to be a Mistake, which was remedied with the next Update. But also the iPhone, a photo is no longer just the result of light falling on a Sensor. The iPhone XS is a artificial neural network processes the data before it is saved as an image. On the processor, the so-called Neural Engine that makes every image on every Pixel millions of calculations sits. For example, for the Smart HDR function: With their differences in brightness can be compensated for. In very bright and very dark areas in the image details preserved in the classic Analog and digital photography are lost.

The Algorithms perfected photography is unstoppable. Also, Google is pushing ahead with the new Pixel 3, the Computational Photography. The (in Switzerland only as a grey import) Smartphone has the Night-Sight mode, the "turns night into day", as testers raving. In low-light conditions, images on how it has been achieved so far only with a tripod and long exposure times. However, the Pixel 3 perfected shots from the Hand by the camera movements to be recorded and then weggerechnet. The phone makes up to 15 shots, which are then combined to a final image.

the impossible is possible

The portrait mode of the iPhone simulates the effect of big cameras and expensive Lenses, by Betticket simulating the limited depth of field. The Smartphones let the models look old: while the effect of the image in the photos of single - lens reflex and system cameras is created by the optics and is unchangeable, in the case of the phones, as desired: The user may subsequently adjust the aperture of its recording, or the point of focus adjust. It is also possible, single areas of the blur is exempt if it is used for the image effect. Physically this is impossible, however, for the Software is a no brainer. Even the Background subtract, and through more beautiful Scenery to replace.

of Course, the Resistances provoked. "Is this still photography?", a author of the great photo blogs fstoppers.com asked the other day. Photographers are feeling the competition from the Algorithms: Amateurs, thanks to the clever technology results in professional level. But nevertheless, you'll find hardly any votes, Computational Photography, in principle, would reject. Photographers are aware that photos have been trimmed always on effect, and manipulations are not an invention of the digital Era. In the dark chamber it has adapted cut-outs, contrast optimized. Even more far-reaching changes are analogous to possible techniques for this include: more Negative on a photo-exposure, the unwanted areas of the recognition away or add to retouch overexposed or things.

eternal dispute of the photographer

The Computational Photography a latch slide of the US Association of press photographers (NPPA). John Long, the head of the ethics Committee, says there have always been opposing positions: the one, the request that a photo should reflect exactly what you have recorded, the camera – and the other, the postulate that the "truth" of an image is more important than the actual recording. Nevertheless, these new methods for press photography is not acceptable: "It feels like a deception, a distortion of the Moment, the camera has been triggered."

However, most photographers agree that in your field of activity, more and more Software wide power – some with an enthusiasm for the new opportunities, other, gritting his teeth. At the photo blog fstoppers.com slogans are staying as well: Craft and creative skills would continue to remain crucial. A perfect image could be mad boring if the photographer don't know anything about composition: "It is at the end of every shoot, and finally, whether or not you have something produced that you can show to the world."

(editing Tamedia)

Created: 28.11.2018, 13:23 PM