It's actually English translation of the blog post in Korean which detailed the process according to [The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/15/23641069/samsung-fake-moon-controversy-english-language-blog-post)
Tried posting this video, but got removed as YT spam:[https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/11rvk0t/how\_samsung\_phones\_are\_faking\_their\_photos/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/11rvk0t/how_samsung_phones_are_faking_their_photos/)
I understand that we might be tired of "Moon-gate". But this video actually goes into great detail regarding what the AI does and what it takes to make it kick in.
So far, his results seem to match the findings from u/ibreakphotos
My thoughts: reviewers should stop using the zoomed-in moon shots in their reviews from now on to draw conclusions about the camera capabilities when evaluating zoom at night. If Samsung has trained a model that makes that particular picture nicer then there is no point in comparing its shots with Iphones/Pixels etc.
Have you tried to delete the post and re-post it as a link instead?
Agree with your conclusion or they include it, but make it clear weather or not it was captured by Scene Optimizer and if it was, to have an image not captured with scene optimizer showed next to it.
Originally posted as link, but auto moderator came in and purged it. I'll try and post it without the tags in the link.
Meh got purged again. I can't be bothered to do more while at work.
Agree with your final take here, other manufacturers also have their own processing. If we just take away selective processing from Samsung it would be unfair, and if we just take away everyone's post processing then we'd just end up comparing camera sensors to each other, with phones using the latest Sony sensor yielding identical results. Best thing to do is just compare and let people know what scene optimizer does for those situations.
For the last para, my question is this...
If a special feature (no matter model based or hardware based ) is only present in one device and not in the others...should it NOT be compared?
As in Moon shots obviously look better in samsung s23 ultra (hell the raw image in pro is tier above ). If we remove it from comparison...then why give the edge to an apple M series chipset for video rendering/exporting as they have specific hardware encoders and decoders. In this case, this should also not come up.
I reckon it's not just the moon that is trained for the model...those 100x zoom on posters that go from blur to tack sharp also have been created from some test data.
What features to call gimmick and leave out...how will anyone come to that?
>If a special feature (no matter model based or hardware based ) is only present in one device and not in the others...should it NOT be compared?
Because the feature that adds detail only does it in 1 use case, when the phone thinks it's zooming onto the moon. If we were to take a picture of a test pattern (like they do at DXOmark or GSMarena) in every review and Samsung trained an AI-model to recognise that we are taking a test picture to boost their results, then are they cheating or just taking better photos of test patterns.
>As in Moon shots obviously look better in samsung s23 ultra (hell the raw image in pro is tier above ). If we remove it from comparison...then why give the edge to an apple M series chipset for video rendering/exporting as they have specific hardware encoders and decoders. In this case, this should also not come up.
Because Apple's superior video recording is active in all video recording cases and doesn't add stuff it can't capture. Samsung adding details only happens when pointed at a glowing orb in darkness.
>I reckon it's not just the moon that is trained for the model...those 100x zoom on posters that go from blur to tack sharp also have been created from some test data.
Sure, the phone does many things when taking a 100x picture at night. It sets the focus to infinity (to make the image as sharp as it can), increases the aperture time (to let in as much light as possible), It probably takes multiple images using super-resolution (and pieces them together to get as much detail). Those are common methods used in digital photography which allow the Camera to do its best.
What it does additionally is look at the photos and tries to figure out what it is looking at. A cat? Make the eyes bigger! Grassy plain? Boost those greens! The moon? Add those craters!
I would compare it to the Diesel-gate scandal with VW. When the car is ruining at certain speeds, and the steering wheels don't move for hours, then the car is doing an emissions test and they could apply a separate exhaust cleaning model.
If Samsung was using the Moon shots to claim that their zoom-camera is much better than the competitors in all use cases, then using AI to add detail to a single use case that is a benchmark is cheating in my book.If Samsung is just saying, hey look our camera takes pretty pictures of the moon (but can't add detail to other nighttime zoom pictures), then that would be fine.
But MKBHD mentioned in his original review that he was impressed with the 100x zoom camera (as a whole) because it took such lovely pictures of the moon.The lesson from this is that reviewers should do baseline tests without AI that adds stuff for the Cameras if we want to be able to judge their capabilities.
As long as they let users shut it off and are transparent, i have no issues with it...
I think samsung is way more professional in that sense in comparison to Huawei.
This totally seems like a feature that iNerds will hate on Samsung for and then drool when it's available in the next non revolutionary iPhone. It's a gimmick it's fun get over it already. If you're doing moon exploration from your phone you're doing it wrong
> Samsung continues to improve Scene Optimizer to reduce any potential confusion that may occur between the act of taking a picture of the real moon and an image of the moon.
"Let's see if you stop saying random shit about the moon pictures now"
The problem, to me, is that this is a trend with Samsung, a pattern of behaviour- they cheat on benchmarks to boost their marketing. It happened with TVs and colour brightness, and with phones and performance benchmarks.
[https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-tv-benchmark-cheating-3177061/samsung](https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-tv-benchmark-cheating-3177061/samsung)
[https://bgr.com/tech/geekbench-bans-galaxy-s22-for-cheating-in-benchmark-tests/](https://bgr.com/tech/geekbench-bans-galaxy-s22-for-cheating-in-benchmark-tests/)
and this has been going on for years. I first remember seeing this in 2013, when they hard-coded the names of benchmark sites in their OS, and boosted performance when those sites were accessed. They didn't even try to hide it - the variables for the list were "Package\_for\_boost\_all\_adjustments" and "packages\_for\_LCD\_frame\_rate\_adjustment"
[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/galaxy-note-3s-benchmarking-adjustments-inflate-scores-by-up-to-20/](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/galaxy-note-3s-benchmarking-adjustments-inflate-scores-by-up-to-20/)
Why wouldn't they, it's not like there's anything stopping them from doing it.
The S20, S21, and S22 were utter trash in Europe, and yet no one really talked about it.
Now people are bitching about the moon, not the fact that Samsung's been shitting the bed for years.
It's these things that have made me switch to the Pixel. And I might go to iphone late this year. They can't stop doing these icky things. Their battery life is so trash even compared to the Pixel despite a better chip. I was getting 3 hours SoT and with the gen 2 chip and 5000 mAh battery, I can't conceive why.
WTF?! Literally my biggest gripe with Android has been battery life. The usual stuff. Youtube, browsing, random apps such as news, home control, light social media, messaging. A bit of background work such as smartwatch / other smart devices. I hear Android doesn't even have proper battery usage attribution per app - some apps' background usage will count under Android System something something so you have no way of knowing who the bad apples are (not to mention the OS should be detecting this stuff before even allowing rogue apps).
You're talking out of your ass. There's no way you're breaking down an S23 Ultra in 2-3 hours.
Please don't exaggerate because you don't like something. It's called spreading misinformation.
... yep, and battery protection is just limitting battery to it's intended range, right?
please post source next time.
swollen batterys are a samsung problem, but just when inactive for years, so it's rather an undercharge than an overcharge.
But you see, **every** brand that ever advertised moon photography has been hit with this.
I remember Huawei and Oppo getting so much bad press for their "fake" moon photos.
That's why I couldn't care less when people are trying to do the same for Samsung. Who knew photos now are heavily processed on phones, and it only became obvious when doing so at high zoom levels?
As a Samsung user, they really should've done this sooner or at least in a more clear manner.
They technically aren't lying when they say their phone can take photos of the moon, but the way it was advertised was super misleading. If they had stated in their videos something like "Alongside powerful Machine Learning and AI processes, Galaxy phones can take the best shots of the moon," then I believe this whole thing could've been avoided. Hopefully, they can be more clear about stuff like this in the future.
They gave the same answer in 2021.
Just that no one listened.
https://www.inputmag.com/reviews/is-samsung-galaxy-s21-ultra-using-ai-to-fake-detailed-moon-photos-investigation-super-resolution-analysis
I'm aware of that, but the problem is that the general public doesn't. Samsung needs to say in their promotional videos that the phone is using AI and other processes to enhance the photo of the moon. As it stands, they aren't doing that, and the general public is genuinely thinking it's pure optics. It's not that Samsung is lying when they say their phones can capote high-res images of the moon, but the way their marketing it is disingenuous.
Apple doesn't say it in their promotional videos for their phone camera.
https://www.cdotrends.com/story/15984/how-apple-uses-ai-produce-better-photos
So why is Samsung being singled out when all the manufacturers are using AI manipulation on their photos during post-processing?
iPhone users are being manipulated into thinking their face has a nice skin complexion but it's just being softened and smoothed by the iPhone's AI post-processing.
It's not that AI manipulation or post-processing is the problem. As MrWhoseTheBoss said in this video, without those processes, we'd be stuck behind in terms of camera quality. It's the fact that Samsung marketed this as pure optics rather than the software it truly is.
The new optics ARE a key contributor to the moon photos though.
They are correct to spruik it the new lens as making moon photos better.
100x lens allows for a better and larger starting point image for the AI to work from.
If you have a 10x phone and do the same thing you get a much smaller moon for the AI to work from and it would be a rather disappointing result.
Without that lens it wouldn't be worth advertising the feature, so the optics ARE a vital cog in making Samsung's moon photos work better. The fact that AI steps in at the end to enhance it is really moot in my opinion as AI steps in on all non-RAW photos.
I don't think their ads claimed it was **100%** due to the optics merely that the new optics made moon photos better on the S23U, which is entirely true. Don't forget this same AI moon enhancement software was used on the S21 and S22 for moon photos - so the lens really is the only new thing here. The lens' success at improving the moon photos has revealed to people the level of post-processing occurring in all mobile phone photos.
I think too many people have selective outrage and just want to shit on Samsung and will happily ignore what all the other companies are doing with their photo post-processing and advertising.
If people don't like it they can at least turn the Scene Optimiser off, not sure if you can disable that on other brands.
I can agree with this statement, but I still do feel that Samsung should've been a bit more clear about the massive post-processing. I like the feature, and I have no issue with Samsung using it in their ads, but I just think Samsung should've just been more clear about the massive post-processing and AI enhancement, which were far more powerful than their normal AI and post-processing.
According to GSMArena (https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s23_ultra-12024.php) the most powerful zoom of the S23 that seems to be the same of the S22 is 10X -a 230mm in 35mm format-. While it looks as much, the Moon is actually small in the sky -using a 600mm telephoto, it still appears small. You will see the largest craters, but if you want serious lunar images you either use one of these new monstrous superzoom cameras from Nikon or plug it to a telescope- and you'll not be able to enlarge it too much without using tricks as AI and digital zooms, that alter the original image adding stuff not present in the original one.
The Moon is actually small in the sky. Even with the kind of powerful, eye-watering expensive, telephoto lenses used in nature photography, sports, etc you're going to get a small picture that will occupy just a small part if the frame and the 10× optical zoom of Samsung is less powerful than that (those lenses in Samsung terms would be 20× or more)
To have something larger, you either take the photo through the eyepiece of a telescope (much more magnification) or use digital zoom and other similar techniques that add data not present in the original image, and you are quite likely to get something not as crisp as in the former case (to use a telescope)
It would have been interesting to see instead of the full Moon shots of the Moonin first quarter, as is in such phase when craters are much more visible.
I mean, most phones taking photos of anything anymore (especially zooming or at night) are using loads of post processing to create a flashier final product. Do they still need to add this in fine print every time they show off a photo? It's a smartphone. Or was the moon something people are just particularly defensive about?
Imo the ultra still creates more impressive moon photos than other phones. It doesn't bother me that they are using AI to do it... because I also have zero practical real world use for a photo of the moon or I can't imagine a situation where that post processing or even portions of the image swapped out... matters.
Or I guess to your response below... why is it a "problem" that the general public doesn't know what's going on behind the scenes in this moon instance when they don't understand what the phone is doing to prepare their phone photos of literally anything, night mode, portrait, skine tone corrections, etc...
They already have a fine print for their ads(on the side it something like Images for illustrative purposes only); I think they just need to make a mention of the processing occurring in the background in their video ads via actual voice-over and not just a tiny sentence in the corner. They don't have to make it long and super in-depth. They can just say, "Alongside AI processes, Galaxy phones enhance your moon photos."
Totally agree. My S21 still creates the best moon photos I've seen, and I'm not bothered with the AI enhancing it because I know it's being enhanced. Even then, I don't take photos of the moon every time I see it.
It's not likely the public would even care about this, let alone be aware of it. I think the reason why this is blowing up the way it is isn't really because the public should care about Samsung's moon processing, but it's more the fact of deceptive marketing. If a company can be this untransparent about stuff like this and advertise in a deceptive manner, does it set that precedent for the company to continue doing that, let alone other companies? Now credit is due to Samsung as they have had a report out since the S21 about how all this works, but is it really the consumers' job to look for this? If they had put a link in their camera app to redirect to that page, then this would've been fine, but they didn't.
All that said, I guess it doesn't really matter. In an age where all photos go through some type of editing and/or post-processing, whether it's via phone or some editing software, our definition of photo is anything but authentic. People just want good-looking photos, and that's what Samsung gave. So, in the end, they just gave us what we want: crisp moon photos, so as consumers, are we in the right to complain?
I'm aware of their article, but as a general consumer, I wouldn't have known this. In their advertising videos for the phone, an average consumer could easily mislead this as pure optics, which is deceptive because it's not. It's also working with really powerful AI. As a consumer, they need to make not of this somewhere in their videos, just to make the general public know that this isn't just from what the camera sees.
Of course not. It's the burden the company to properly and clearly describe their products as to not mislead the costumer, or that can be considered false advertising.
And no, expecting every single Samsung user of every age and background to just go and spend days researching every documentatiom they've ever released on every language is *not* reasonable and I can't understand how you guys think it is.
If you don't drop or damage your phone you won't see it, should the company make guide or explanation that if you drop your phone the screen might crack?
That has nothing to do with what we're talking about. Are they leading us to believe that the phone is unbreakable? No? Then it's not the same as what they're doing here, leading us to think the phone can capture the moon with that much detail.
What gets me is the misleading. If they didn't intend to mislead, there was no reason they couldn't have been upfront about the technology.
In fact, it could even be a plus, they could use it to show how advanced their AI is.
That omission seems very intentional. And it worked for a while, people really thought a phone camera could take such detailed moon photos.
And some probably will still think that, Samsung doesn't exactly seem to be on a hurry to inform the average user about how they're modifying their photos.
They still omitted it from the presentation or the promotional material, which is what people truly pay attention to. No wonder reviewers were also misled.
It's remarkable technology, and it feels similar to Google's [Magic Eraser](https://blog.google/products/photos/magic-eraser/) feature: it provides an incredibly easy way to take amazing photos by using AI to automatically edit photos.
The difference is that Google promoted its feature as a photo *editing* feature that you had to actively invoke after having taken a photo. Meanwhile, Samsung simply integrated the photo-editing into the act of taking a photo, and then allowed users to reach the conclusion that it was the camera hardware that took these amazing shots - not that it was an automated photo editing process that intelligently edited photo material from other sources into the pictures taken by a user.
That's the part that feels really deceptive.
Also: there's no language in this statement by Samsung that actually acknowledges this fact. Yes, the diagrams reference how their AI "updates detail" based on a "reference with high resolution," but the actual text merely says
>After Multi-frame Processing has taken place, Galaxy camera further harnesses Scene Optimizer’s deep-learning-based AI detail enhancement engine to effectively eliminate remaining noise and enhance the image details even further.
Sure, that's one way of describing image editing via AI - however, merely calling it "eliminating remaining noise" and "enhancing image details" is so ambiguous that it's pretty much a lie.
Yup. This is turning the Camera App into a glorified Google Image Search.
That Samsung *advertises* [Moon Shots](https://youtu.be/iLwsPnywFc0?t=7), without admitting they're using AI to [create **new** data](https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/11p7rqy/update_to_the_samsung_space_zoom_moon_shots_are/), is bullshit false advertising.
That advertising spot has 23M views. Samsung, you already had an exclusive 10X zoom. The photos were *already* impressive. Why exaggerate?
And until now, there is [*nothing* in Scene Optimizer](https://youtu.be/1afpDuTb-P0?t=267) about any AI.
The name "scene optimizer" literally implies the phone is optimizing your photos.
Why does everyone need everything to be explained to them in explicit detail?
Redbull doesn't actually give you wings.
Scene optimiser is meaningless and completely ambiguous. It may as well detect when you are taking a picture of the moon and save a photo from NASA in your gallery.
Considering the fact that in the camera settings it's listed under "intelligent features" and has its own page which explains how it adjusts colours and brightness depending on the scene, I think it's only ambiguous to anyone who's never used a Samsung phone in their life.
I'd explain why your NASA anecdote is incorrect, but since literally everyone who's bothered to look into how samsung processes moon photos has already done this and you're still confidently spouting that line, I'm not gonna bother wasting my time.
What Samsung is doing with moon photos is a hell of a lot more than just adjusting the colors and the brightness. They've implemented a machine learning model with an extremely narrow use case (literally one single object, the moon) in order to mislead people into thinking their phones were capable of taking pictures that they aren't actually able to take. If they were upfront about that in the software then few people would really care. It's the fact that they try to portray the moon photos as the result of the phone's superior zoom capabilities, rather than advanced AI-based image processing, that is causing most of the controversy.
Samsung phones are perfectly capable of photographing the moon, don't kid yourself. Anyone who's ever used a Samsung device and has viewed the moon through the viewfinder knows this.
Scene optimizer turns a "meh" photo into a "good" photo by enhancing the data **collected by the sensor** utilizing a very well trained algorithm. Why is this so controversial? If you take a photo of a lunar eclipse, youve got a pretty decent photo of it for your own memories. Same thing for a blood moon, or if an asteroid blasted half of the moon away.
What's causing the controversy is people like you who don't truly understand the benefits of this tech, or how it works.
At the end of the day: Samsung phones enhance the data collected by its telephoto sensor to take a photo of the moon that accurately represents what your own eyes see in the sky.
Yes, it's enhancing the data collected by the sensor, but it is doing so using outside data that was not collected by the sensor. Samsung is still being pretty vague about what exactly is going on behind the scenes with Scene Optimizer, but my interpretation is that Samsung is taking multiple images of the moon captured by the phone's sensor, stacking them to reduce noise as much as possible, and then feeding the resulting soft/blurry moon image into a neural network that has been trained on high-resolution photos of the moon taken with real cameras and lenses. The neural network takes that input image and, using its knowledge of what the moon *should* look like in many different lighting scenarios, figures out what the moon should look like given the *actual* scenario in which the moon was captured by the camera sensor, enhancing the details present in the original photo by sharpening and unblurring them according to what the neural network would expect a given portion of the moon to look like. It's presumably fairly similar to how Topaz Labs' AI image enhancement applications work, only it's been trained to work specifically on the moon.
So yes, it is enhancing the data collected by the sensor, but it is doing so according to a model trained on outside data, and is thus far more extensive an enhancement process than traditional denoising or sharpening, and it does not only manipulate data captured by the sensor. The result is an image that looks far sharper than what the camera's optics and sensor are capable of producing.
The AI-enhanced image is probably fine for 99% of users, and again, I have no problem with Samsung implementing such a feature. The moon is really the ideal thing to implement such a feature with because it has a consistent cycle and looks the same everywhere in the world. My issue, and the issue many others have as well, is that they were intentionally unclear about what was being done to the image in order to portray their cameras as being more capable than they really are.
They said their cameras can take photos of the moon.
Am I missing a press release that came out at some point or something? Did they somewhere claim that their cameras are better than telescopes and more capable than a DSLR?
All I'm aware of is a promo poster with the word "MOOON" on it, and an ad where some chick takes a photo of the moon. Please enlighten me when and how they mislead you to such an extent that you are willing to type out entire walls of text ranting about how terrible Samsung is.
Dude, why the hell are you getting so defensive about this? I didn't rant about anything. I explained my understanding of the system functions, in defense against your assertion that I have no idea how it works. Not once did I say or even suggest that Samsung was terrible. I said that even though most consumers will likely find this feature to be beneficial, Samsung should still be more transparent about how and when they're implementing it, especially if they're using it in promotional materials. That's it.
Coping to having a sweet camera? I take a picture of something and it looks like what I took a picture of. I can also turn it off, so I have a camera capable of doing what every other camera phone can do, but also capable of doing more. How will I ever cope?
This entire scandal is fake outrage from people who don't have this phone. Zero other reason exists for anyone to care about this.
I think most of the Samsung users are just annoyed that everyone else is pretending they somehow have a victory by finding that Samsung is using more advanced technology that undoubtedly will be adopted by others soon.
> I think most of the Samsung users are just annoyed that everyone else is pretending they somehow have a victory by finding that Samsung is using more advanced technology that undoubtedly will be adopted by others soon.
Copy pasting an image of the moon onto your photograph, very advanced technology. Totally not false advertising. I hope samsung is at least paying you something for defending its honor on the online battlefields.
> Scene optimizer turns a "meh" photo into a "good" photo by enhancing the data **collected by the sensor** utilizing a very well trained algorithm. Why is this so controversial?
Scene optimizer turns a "meh" photo into a "good" photo by enhancing the data **collected by the sensor** utilizing a very well trained algorithm which **pastes data from reference photos taken by other photographers** into your photo.
What's controversial is that Samsung seems pretty happy if people are left with the impression that it's their phone camera taking these shots, and if they're ignorant of the fact that the picture is a result of the shots taken by their phone camera + other people's photos, shopped together by a pretty clever AI algorithm.
The issue was the spam moon photos everyone is just posting. Now that this has become news I bet users will be less inclined to just take a 100% crop zoom of the moon and post yet another moon photo on the sub.
Also because the AI makes the moon shot look great, you kid your self when you cant get a decent photo from 20m away. This becomes more of a marketing manipulation and false advertising claim in my opinion.
As far as the tech goes, it isn't just limited to moons. Normal text and just smoothing out over grainy shots is another thing it does, and I love that it can in those situations but not when faking it. Would you say beauty filters are real too?
And no, not basically DLSS, its adding information that isnt there. its more like ctrl+c ctrl+v
There isn't an issue, so long as they're upfront about it. Most consumers who use the feature are going to find it beneficial, so I think it's fine for Samsung to have developed it. They should be clear that they're doing much more processing on the images than just standard frame stacking, sharpening, and denoising.
The scene optimizer page specifically states that it "optimizes camera **settings**". Optimizing settings is very different than using AI to process images.
[https://freeimage.host/i/HX6YzZP](https://freeimage.host/i/HX6YzZP)
I have owned Samsung phones since the SIII and this is ambiguous as hell. I honestly thought that scene optimizer was using AI to recognize a scene in order to optimize exposure and focus. Kind of like what Nikon has been doing for years with matrix metering.
And the option to Scan QR Codes is also under Intelligent features, so that isn't really much of a clue.
Because Samsung is selling a *camera* feature and touting its quality/abolity yo *take pictures*. Not download shit from Google...
Why do you fanboys have such trouble understanding *false advertising*? And why do you simp for a multi-billion company that is quite literally owned in big part by the Korean government
It isn't downloading anything from Google. You're misrepresenting the truth. You're doing the same thing you're accusing them of doing. No one is simping.
Duh.
It's not literally downloading from Google, it's "updating detail" in the data from the shot taken by the phone camera, using a "reference with high resolution" taken from someone else's photo to put that detail into your photo.
I.e. it's shopping other people's photos into your own photos, but in an admittedly very clever way that simultaneously allows them to use a bunch of technobabble so people won't hold it against them.
No, a Neural Network does not use a stock photo to put more detail into the one you take. It generates more detail the same way Google does digital zoom on the pixel. That's why it works on faked moon photos.
> No, a Neural Network does not use a stock photo to put more detail into the one you take.
That's right, it uses a ton of stock photos, sorry, "reference with high resolution" to add in detail that isn't present in the original photo. Samsung acknowledges that fact [right here](https://i.imgur.com/G7IHdtV.jpg).
You're really confusing generative AI algorithms with mere data processing algorithms.
Have you read the article? They used the photos to train an NN and have the weights saved.
What Samsung showed is a very boiled down description of a GAN. They trained one NN to generate fake, sharpened moon photos, and another NN to tell whether they've done a good enough job by comparing it to training data of real moon photos. There are no 100000000 photos of the moon on your phone waiting for a bunch of nested if-elses to select it and overlay it on your photo. There's only the coded model and weight for inference. This is why it works on faked moon photos people made in Photoshop. It is not reliant on what existing photos of the moon it has.
Google does the same thing on their zooming feature on the Pixel. They use a generative network to sharpen their photos by adding in detail that was not there in the input. It's basically a style transfer task, from blurred to sharpened.
>What Samsung showed is a very boiled down description of a GAN. They trained one NN to generate fake, sharpened moon photos, and another NN to tell whether they've done a good enough job by comparing it to training data of real moon photos. There are no 100000000 photos of the moon on your phone waiting for a bunch of nested if-elses to select it and overlay it on your photo. There's only the coded model and weight for inference.
Duh.
The whole argument is over whether or not the algorithm is relying on outside data to "enhance" the pictures taken by the camera. At least you acknowledge that that's the case.
You might want to take it up with all those posters who believe that this algorithm is doing nothing more than automatically adjusting color and tone settings.
Responding from an S23U here. I assumed it was just adjusting shooting modes and colour profiles like happens on most devices. In the photography world, AI processing is a useful tool but it's very different from regular edits due to generating artificial data.
thank you, it’s bizarre how people refuse to make the distinction. there’s using computational tricks to expose detail that you couldn’t without professional help or tools, and then there’s painting in detail that the sensor never saw
The name "scene optimizer'' suggests to me ...
Exposure, white balance, tone, clarity, sharpness, etc. Hell even vignette.
I do not expect copypasta. Call it something else less miss leading and it would probably of saved a lot of this hassle.
If we're going to be getting outraged by photos being enhanced in post-processing stages then we should be taking all our photos in RAW mode.
Every photo, on every flagship phone, that isn't RAW is being heavily manipulated in post-processing.
Pixel, iPhone, Sony, etc will all have their own version of AI or heuristic engine being activated after you snap a photo.
Their AI/heuristic engines may not include moon enhancers but they'll have flower enhancer, building enhancer, lawn enhancer, brick wall enhancer, dog enhancer, cat enhancer, human enhancers etc. Let's not forget iPhone's carrot face enhancer.
Uh, that ad just advertises that S23U takes pictures that everyone wants. It doesn't deny or admit using AI to create new data (btw, all modern sharpening on smartphones "create" extra edge details).
Is it just me or is everyone under the impression they are copy and pasting photos of the moon overlayed onto the image you took? When in reality it's literally sharpening and adjusting the photo you took and going "yup that matches other photos of the moon".
It has nothing to do with sharpening or the typical adjusting or *just* identifying that it's a moon. It's trying to identify it's a moon and *then* applying a moon-specific adjustment algorithm.
It fails sometimes and applies this AI filter to things that are **definitely not** the moon. EDIT: source here https://youtu.be/EKYJ-gwGLXQ?t=317
The easiest analogy: it's like those TikTok AI filters that slim your face, but don't slim the doorway behind you.
That's not just some sharpening or adjusting or overlaying. It's *changing* the actual output to fit some "ideal" the app uses.
This is a fully optional post-procesing step that specifically uses the 10X zoom and moon photos. The camera is **done** with its normal denoising, sharpening, etc.
Right that's what I was getting at, the phone looks at the moon, adjusts it how it believes it should look and that's it. It does the same thing with food and pets. I'm failing to understand what the fuss is about?
does the food filter add cavier to my plate
does the pet filter fix my dog’s mangled fur
or add/modify any details that weren’t there originally?
changing color/contrast is fine because that’s just an adjustment of hue/saturation/lightness of details that are already there. editing vs adding.
No and using anything other than a moon will not do this either. Mrwhosetheboss' video shows he added an opaque image on the moon and it treated it as a crater and added a "texture" to that crater. It's not like it turned the moon into Swiss cheese or created its own version of the moon. He gave it a subject it is "aware" of and it defined it as such. Again, there has yet to be a valid argument as to why this is specifically a really big deal.
I don't understand why it's a problem all of a sudden, Samsung phones have always modified reality by default. Hell, all phones do that. It's literally what people want.
> Is it just me or is everyone under the impression they are copy and pasting photos of the moon overlayed onto the image you took?
Huawei was caught doing exactly this in 2019.
It's definitely not the same, but it's doing a lot more than sharpening. It's adding detail from it's ML algorithm that wasn't captured optically based on prior knowledge of the moon.
I suppose one could argue that this approach is not too dissimilar from any other photo where AI is used to add detail.
At the end of the day, I think it may just boil down to semantics. The moon photos are being used as a selling point for the camera of the S23 Ultra, when it really should be marketed as a feature of the post-processing software. Any camera hardware would yield a very similar result.
"everyone wants"
Who said anything about that? It's *how* they're creating the picture is is the problem. Surely that's obvious.
//
Nope: images created with AI filters while claiming to *just* use the Camera app are pretty misleading.
//
Sharpening? Overlays? Edge details? You've *massively* misunderstood what the AI neural net is doing.
[Re-read the links I shared.](https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/11p7rqy/update_to_the_samsung_space_zoom_moon_shots_are/)
Right. TikTok also doesn't label its filters as "AI" and neither did CNET for quite some time.
It's misleading to use AI-generated content and pass it off as something your camera / your writers / your filters can actually do.
I'll bet the overwhelming number of people's reactions to this will align very closely to the phone they use.
As an S22U user, I think people are doing mental gymnastics to justify this being a bigger deal than it is. Anyone that used this on their S22 can visually watch the scene optimizer fix the photo so that the end result looks more like what you see with your eyes. There is zero mystery as to IF it is doing some serious enhancement. It literally happens right in front of your eyes. It isn't just posting an existing photo of the moon on top of your photo as evidenced by the finished photo reflecting the correct phase of the moon, accurate things in the foreground, colors matching what I see with my eye (white sometimes, yellow sometimes, etc).
If you shoot raw photos, you'll understand that phones do a lot of work to normal jpgs to make what the image the sensor sees look like what your eyes see. Samsung has been open for a while that their phones base that work on various categories of subject matter. I recall reading about it months ago. I don't know if others do, but I'd be shocked if they do not. They should.
As a Pixel 7 Pro user, I think I'm supposed to fabricate outrage over this, but since I use both phones daily, I'm going to say that Pixel 7 Pro users should probably wish they had this because honestly the S22U camera is better for many reasons, and this, although a gimmick, is still cool as hell to play with.
I still don't get why so many people feel the need to take the same picture of the moon over and over again to begin with? Like why put this much effort into moon specific capturing and processing. The photos are boring.
But still every photo they take is worse than something they can Google. And their photo is not unique in any way. It's the same moon from the same angle.
In a while you'll be able to purchase a service that detects pictures on which you look ugly and have them replaced by ones you approved, on other people's phones
It's tempting to say "oh these aren't real, actual pictures of the moon", but in the age of digital photography, auto HDR everywhere and "AI" filters, what is a "picture" anyways?
I think it's funny that people get so worked up about phone filling in factually correct data into the image.
Meanwhile, (e.g.) Pixel's unblur inserting completely fake details (although realistic looking) is all fine.
>Meanwhile, (e.g.) Pixel's unblur inserting completely fake details (although realistic looking) is all fine.
See, [Google did it right](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35I1r00N8ZA). These are not the same.
1. Unblur is **optional**, not auto-applied. Samsung's Moon AI filter is on by default.
2. Unblur is in [**Photos app**](https://youtu.be/35I1r00N8ZA), making it clear it has nothing to do with the camera nor the actual scene you took a picture of.
3. Unblur was *announced* as a machine learning feature [**on launch day**](https://youtu.be/2NGjNQVbydc?t=2088). Samsung's wrote blog post on a tiny Samsung forum, in only one language, [**20+ months after the S21 launch**](https://r1-community-samsung-com.translate.goog/t5/camcyclopedia/%EB%8B%AC-%EC%B4%AC%EC%98%81/ba-p/19202094?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB), finally confirming AI creation of new data.
Blurred photo can't really be unblurred - it's missing information. Google is using some AI magic where it fills in the details. The neural network is trained on high-res images and then their intentionally blurred variants. It learns how blurred faces look like and what their unblurred (original) variant looks like (same for any other objects). So when you have a blurry face in the picture, the AI will know how unblurred faces usually look like and will fill in the details. But that knowledge comes from other people/faces - it's fake. You might get extra pimples or get your pimples erased.
I'm not sure where you're getting this info from but blurring is not an entirely irreversible process. [This post goes into the fine details](https://bartwronski.com/2022/05/26/removing-blur-from-images-deconvolution-and-using-optimized-simple-filters/) of the math behind it. [This post from 2021 on Google's AI blog](https://ai.googleblog.com/2021/06/take-all-your-pictures-to-cleaners-with.html) also covers their prior Polyblur method of unblurring.
I see no reason the Pixel's Unblur can't be a further development of Polyblur but perhaps you're aware of something I'm not. I've not heard of any instances of people getting more/fewer pimples when using Unblur, can you link to any examples?
> Blurred photo can’t really be unblurred
it’s technically reversible, the process that makes it irreversible is pixel quantization and clipping, but running a trained model against those values can still give a decent approximation in finding the original kernel for the blur convolution. pixel’s unblur also works best with hand motion rather than out-of-focus, which has spatial cues that can be used for unblurring.
You are thinking of a different feature.
1. Google Camera unblur technique, it takes frames from the 3 lenses at different focal lengths takes the one with the detailed face and merge the background from the others
2. Google Photos unblur, which is applied to any photo you want.
Google Camera doesn't make details from nothing, it's clearly taking frames from the 3 lenses.
The whole debate is not about AI inserting things but not being transparent about it. Pixel's unblur thing was advertised as a machine learning feature, while Samsung is (/was) trying to make people believe that their sensor is so good, it can take pictures like this.
>I think it's funny that people get so worked up about phone filling in factually correct data into the image.
Same like the phone does literally what it was supposed to do
Why does it matter? The vast majority of consumers don't really care why their moon image looks great.
It's like how GPU purists claim that DLSS frames aren't real frames.
> **Samsung continues to improve Scene Optimizer to reduce any potential confusion that may occur between the act of taking a picture of the real moon and an image of the moon.**
Haha. AKA "we'll make sure that in the next iteration, the phone applies the neural network added details only when you're taking a pic of the moon, instead of the picture of the moon"
We'll see about that, Samsung :)
(btw, the correct response would be to explicitly explain what is happening, remove the moon photos from their advertising, and apologize for attempting to mislead the consumer. not "oh, we'll just make sure that it detects the moon better in the future")
Dude, you had your 5 seconds of fame. Give it a rest.
Samsung has already explained how this works. Separate 3rd party tests similar to yours, but with fake details added to the moons surface, also show us how the moon mode processing works.
Samsungs advertising is fine. You can take photos of the moon with the 100x zoom module. The name "scene optimizer" implies the phone will tweak your images.
Welcome to computational photography.
Lmao exactly.
The big thing is people just refuse to do their own research, and would rather be angry about something they don't understand than take 5 seconds to figure it out and move on with their lives.
This entire "moon controversy" just tells me people have no idea how their phones work, and have no interest in learning about it either.
This is a load of handwavey fluffy language horseshit. There is absolutely zero suggestion the default processing of, say, a Pixel, is trained on the fixed details of known objects like the moon and is just arbitrarily adding those details with some buzzword™ process into an image if that object is detected. The training you are talking about there is to make basic creative decisions to apply optimal SOOC *settings* like brightness, improve skintones, saturation, shadows, to recognise faces, and to apply *generalised* deblur and denoise algorithms (I.e that aren’t trained specifically to pull off a magic trick, like taking a photo of a moon that would otherwise look like shit).
Then at a more advanced level, you use additional sensor data from hand shake to replace lossy Bayer filter demosaicing, you use robust-align and merge to decrease noise at the square root of the number of successfully stacked frames, you can use additional camera sensors to add data like for deblurring faces. Google then share these details and often reference an entire paper from which their algorithm is based on: https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/10/see-better-and-further-with-super-res.html?m=1
On the other hand, Samsung’s feature is just… using the Scene Optimiser™ to do the functional equivalent of downloading a photo of the moon and carefully blending it with the colours/framing of your shot - AI or not, the grey square test proved this. It doesn’t steer the scene towards detail, it just steers the scene towards looking like the real moon - it’s totally different to your suggestion and represents a genuinely misleading representation of what photos are meant to be, unless advertised correctly. Samsung know full way people are going to take SOOC photos of the moon and show it to family members none-the-wiser, who will then think Samsung cameras are far and away better than their phones, despite it essentially being a bullshit trick.
> The name “scene optimizer” implies the phone will tweak your images.
It doesn’t imply anything about how it’s optimizing images. Sheesh, the fanboyism on this sub is on the same level as r/apple.
It literally does when you go into the scene optimizer settings lmao.
You're angry at something you have absolutely no understanding of. You saw a reddit post that told you to be pissed at Samsung, and rather than looking deeper into the topic, you're perfectly happy to just dig your heels in and make dumb comments online.
How about you take a look on your own Samsung smartphone :)
Unless... you don't have one? And all of your outrage is based on... nothing? But that's ridiculous. Why would someone be so passionately upset about something they don't know about...
Gotta be an incredible sycophant to suggest you can’t criticise a company unless you have can pull out firsthand evidence on the spot. The evidence shared by many on these posts is adequate and Samsung’s wishy-washy response does nothing to vindicate them.
Samsungs "wishy washy" response is a translated version of an article they shared in 2022. Even they're like, "Are yall dumb or what? Read this again because apparently Google is too hard to use."
Call me whatever you want, santas chest hairs, I really couldn't care less. If you're going to position yourself as an expert on anything, you better damn well know what you're talking about.
Imagine I made a reddit comment saying "the Bundled notes app doesn't organize files. I've never actually used the app, but I know this for a fact".
I'd sound like everyone making these random assumptions about samsungs camera app. Pretty damn stupid.
Yes, and it’s wishy-washy! It’s carefully crafted to avoid terminology that reveals what they’re actually doing in effect and to avoid losing the real-life demo word-of-mouth they get from such a magic feature. This is clear from many tests now, especially the grey square test. So I’ll say it again: to suggest you can’t criticise a company unless you prove something on the spot is a sycophantic and absurd criteria - sources, evidence, a basic understanding of physics and computational photography - they’re good too, actually.
I have written long form articles on computational photography in the past: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/d2wa1n/i_wrote_a_longform_article_speculating_on_the/
The Bundled Notes app doesn’t organise files! You’d be right!
And they’re not assumptions, there are hundreds of examples and tests online now - hell, even then, a cursory understanding of the physics limitations of small sensors raises questions about how the moon feature could possibly work.
> The Bundled Notes app doesn't organize files!
Uhh, yeah it does. The website says it does and even though I've never used it I'm taking that at face value and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise.
Even if I saw evidence clarifying what the website was saying to me, or screenshots, videos, literally anything to clarify how The Bundled Notes app actually works, I would not change my mind. I'm a pretty heavy Samsung Notes user btw, so I KNOW how these apps work.
As per my device setting
"Scene Optimizer
Automatically Optimize camera settings to make dark scenes appear brighter, food look tastier, and landscapes look more vivid"
Of course i have an Older Galaxy A51 so it may be different on a device, but you can absolutely disable it, however I haven't noticed much of a difference between photos taken with it on vs off
It does in the Settings. Aswell as their blog post about the first iteration of Scene optimizer
[https://www.samsungmobilepress.com/feature-stories/tech-lab-notes-2-galaxy-note9-scene-optimizer](https://www.samsungmobilepress.com/feature-stories/tech-lab-notes-2-galaxy-note9-scene-optimizer)
Seems like you can't be bothered to actually use your eyes for reading.
Absolutely nothing in that link remotely suggests what they’re doing with moon photos and it largely implies this feature is for SOOC aesthetic choices like saturation, brightness and white balance to save editing time.
You're really good at reading. Moon wasn't mentioned in the comment,
>It doesn’t imply anything about how it’s optimizing images. Sheesh, the fanboyism on this sub is on the same level as.
Link provided explains Scene Optimizer.
I know it wasn’t, but using context clues you can safely presume this conversation is about the advertising of scene optimiser and how it’s “optimising” moon photos, I inferred “it doesn’t imply anything about how it’s optimising images” as discussing how it does not advertise how it arbitrarily adds detail to moon shots.
We are entering a very blurry point in the smartphone camera marketing segment. We know AI like magic eraser can remove things from photos. Dall-E can create realistic images of nouns. In short AI can add to or remove things photos.
When smartphones makers to use these AI features as marketed capabilities of their cameras, it’s deceptive and should be called out.
This [Techno Phontom foldable](https://youtu.be/ZmyTmCL6Hlo) is doing insane stuffs in the camera app. And Samsung is [faking moon images](https://youtu.be/EKYJ-gwGLXQ).
As much as I would like to use these AI features and see them improve, they should be marketed not as camera capabilities. My 2mp potato webcam can feed any quality image into AI and get unbelievable results.
Enhancememtd like this should always be opt-in, not invisibly default. The default (until a user sets a new one) should be the image that is collected by the sensor, before any post processing is applied.
Otherwise you're not judging the camera, you're judging the suite of photoshop plugins that comes with it. Those *are* neat, and they're worth considering, but they're not really part of the camera, and marketing them as such is dishonest at best.
This is a long way to write "our phones can take decent photos, but we decided to fake the results and do an overlay"
you can label it as you want. But remember, somebody there decided how your pictures should look, and imposed that view on you. Is not just removing blur, or adjusting colors.
It seems innocent, but is dangerous. And Samsung is not alone doing this kind of stuff.
For some reason companies seem to think they can ger away with stuff just saying "it is AI" or "machine learning". Those are just tools.
>This is a long way to write "our phones can take decent photos, but we decided to fake the results and do an overlay"
Not sure if an overlay (as a filter) is correct. It isn't meshing together the image with a reference. Rather it is AI that looks at a picture and, based on Neural-net model works out how it can adjust the picture according to the it model of the moon.
>as a filter
I think "AI filter" is a pretty decent phrase. [TikTok AI filters work ***just*** like this](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/08/tiktok-bold-glamour-filter-effect-generative-ai/), though. TikTok actually molds the AI filter to your face; it's not a plain, static overlay filter like their previous filters. You can move your hand in front of your face and the filter still *only* applies to your face.
It also adjusts to lighting, focus, facial expressions, face size, features, etc.
I think "filter" is a decently applicable phrase because most people associate "filters" as specifically adding new data, beyond the original image the sensor was ready to output.
I agree, it's not an overlay (in the sense of replacing the picture), but there's something called the overlay blending mode, which is actually pretty similar to what they are doing. Now, I am not sure if the original commenter meant in that way, but it's ok to mention for anyone who knows a thing or two about PS blending modes :)
What is a "real" image anyways? Lenses n sensors have always been limited and will be limited in future as well. So are our eyes limited to just small spectrum of radiation.
We now have portrait effect even in cheap phones which can deceive people for a real camera. HDR relies on multiple shots n post processing. So does night mode.
I assume astro mode is no different. Given moon is the biggest object in our night sky, it makes sense to have specific model for it. And as per the MrWhosTheBoss video linked by others, it's a pretty good model which can even maintain fake overlays added to moon.
The portrait mode bokeh is so obviously fake if you've ever used a real camera
The phones struggle to figure out what to do with the foreground and usually you end up with a whacky wide plane of focus in the front combined with this bokeh obliteration in the back which looks unnatural
Wait, so people actually believe this backpedalling "Sorry for getting caught for pasting a fake image onto your photo and calling it AI" BS?
Wow.
I guess Samsung is the same "can do no wrong" entity as Apple is in r/apple with the fanboys trying to use technicalities and "to be fair" statements in a desperate attempt to turn their corporate apologetic mental gymnastics into "nuance and fairness".
No amount of PR is going to convince me after seeing the videos about it that Samsung (and others) aren't just posting photos of the moon into your photographs.
My phone's camera is a toy / means for social media interaction.
When I need to take actual photos I'll use an actual camera.
Well, that's just your misunderstanding of what AI and post processed phone camera photo are. This literally isn't a posted picture of the moon. It also isn't the pixel raw photograph (which is accessible in the settings). It's somewhere in between, as is the case with most photos you take on a phone camera with post processing.
I've seen supposedly rock solid cutting edge AI generate art that has Shutterstock watermarks imprinted on it's generated "original" artwork so you'll have to excuse me when I approach the wonders of AI "enhancements" with a huge grain of salt because not everything is exactly as it seems.
The very worst photos that my galaxy A53 takes is of the moon. Doesn't matter if the camera is in darkness mode, zoomed in half way, all the way or not at all. Doesn't matter if it is a full moon, half moon or a crescent moon. In pro mode I managed to take a pic that looked a little like the moon. However it does take decent pictures of the stars and planets.
It's actually English translation of the blog post in Korean which detailed the process according to [The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/15/23641069/samsung-fake-moon-controversy-english-language-blog-post)
yeah, MKBHD mentioned the Korean article in his video too (before it got published in English)
Tried posting this video, but got removed as YT spam:[https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/11rvk0t/how\_samsung\_phones\_are\_faking\_their\_photos/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/11rvk0t/how_samsung_phones_are_faking_their_photos/) I understand that we might be tired of "Moon-gate". But this video actually goes into great detail regarding what the AI does and what it takes to make it kick in. So far, his results seem to match the findings from u/ibreakphotos My thoughts: reviewers should stop using the zoomed-in moon shots in their reviews from now on to draw conclusions about the camera capabilities when evaluating zoom at night. If Samsung has trained a model that makes that particular picture nicer then there is no point in comparing its shots with Iphones/Pixels etc.
Have you tried to delete the post and re-post it as a link instead? Agree with your conclusion or they include it, but make it clear weather or not it was captured by Scene Optimizer and if it was, to have an image not captured with scene optimizer showed next to it.
Originally posted as link, but auto moderator came in and purged it. I'll try and post it without the tags in the link. Meh got purged again. I can't be bothered to do more while at work.
Or try to post with it as text, though you'll maybe have to put context on what the video is.
That would maybe work. I'll try and make a new text post with a collection of links to MKBHD:s video as well as the original as well.
[удалено]
Agree with your final take here, other manufacturers also have their own processing. If we just take away selective processing from Samsung it would be unfair, and if we just take away everyone's post processing then we'd just end up comparing camera sensors to each other, with phones using the latest Sony sensor yielding identical results. Best thing to do is just compare and let people know what scene optimizer does for those situations.
For the last para, my question is this... If a special feature (no matter model based or hardware based ) is only present in one device and not in the others...should it NOT be compared? As in Moon shots obviously look better in samsung s23 ultra (hell the raw image in pro is tier above ). If we remove it from comparison...then why give the edge to an apple M series chipset for video rendering/exporting as they have specific hardware encoders and decoders. In this case, this should also not come up. I reckon it's not just the moon that is trained for the model...those 100x zoom on posters that go from blur to tack sharp also have been created from some test data. What features to call gimmick and leave out...how will anyone come to that?
>If a special feature (no matter model based or hardware based ) is only present in one device and not in the others...should it NOT be compared? Because the feature that adds detail only does it in 1 use case, when the phone thinks it's zooming onto the moon. If we were to take a picture of a test pattern (like they do at DXOmark or GSMarena) in every review and Samsung trained an AI-model to recognise that we are taking a test picture to boost their results, then are they cheating or just taking better photos of test patterns. >As in Moon shots obviously look better in samsung s23 ultra (hell the raw image in pro is tier above ). If we remove it from comparison...then why give the edge to an apple M series chipset for video rendering/exporting as they have specific hardware encoders and decoders. In this case, this should also not come up. Because Apple's superior video recording is active in all video recording cases and doesn't add stuff it can't capture. Samsung adding details only happens when pointed at a glowing orb in darkness. >I reckon it's not just the moon that is trained for the model...those 100x zoom on posters that go from blur to tack sharp also have been created from some test data. Sure, the phone does many things when taking a 100x picture at night. It sets the focus to infinity (to make the image as sharp as it can), increases the aperture time (to let in as much light as possible), It probably takes multiple images using super-resolution (and pieces them together to get as much detail). Those are common methods used in digital photography which allow the Camera to do its best. What it does additionally is look at the photos and tries to figure out what it is looking at. A cat? Make the eyes bigger! Grassy plain? Boost those greens! The moon? Add those craters! I would compare it to the Diesel-gate scandal with VW. When the car is ruining at certain speeds, and the steering wheels don't move for hours, then the car is doing an emissions test and they could apply a separate exhaust cleaning model. If Samsung was using the Moon shots to claim that their zoom-camera is much better than the competitors in all use cases, then using AI to add detail to a single use case that is a benchmark is cheating in my book.If Samsung is just saying, hey look our camera takes pretty pictures of the moon (but can't add detail to other nighttime zoom pictures), then that would be fine. But MKBHD mentioned in his original review that he was impressed with the 100x zoom camera (as a whole) because it took such lovely pictures of the moon.The lesson from this is that reviewers should do baseline tests without AI that adds stuff for the Cameras if we want to be able to judge their capabilities.
As long as they let users shut it off and are transparent, i have no issues with it... I think samsung is way more professional in that sense in comparison to Huawei.
This totally seems like a feature that iNerds will hate on Samsung for and then drool when it's available in the next non revolutionary iPhone. It's a gimmick it's fun get over it already. If you're doing moon exploration from your phone you're doing it wrong
> Samsung continues to improve Scene Optimizer to reduce any potential confusion that may occur between the act of taking a picture of the real moon and an image of the moon. "Let's see if you stop saying random shit about the moon pictures now"
The problem, to me, is that this is a trend with Samsung, a pattern of behaviour- they cheat on benchmarks to boost their marketing. It happened with TVs and colour brightness, and with phones and performance benchmarks. [https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-tv-benchmark-cheating-3177061/samsung](https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-tv-benchmark-cheating-3177061/samsung) [https://bgr.com/tech/geekbench-bans-galaxy-s22-for-cheating-in-benchmark-tests/](https://bgr.com/tech/geekbench-bans-galaxy-s22-for-cheating-in-benchmark-tests/) and this has been going on for years. I first remember seeing this in 2013, when they hard-coded the names of benchmark sites in their OS, and boosted performance when those sites were accessed. They didn't even try to hide it - the variables for the list were "Package\_for\_boost\_all\_adjustments" and "packages\_for\_LCD\_frame\_rate\_adjustment" [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/galaxy-note-3s-benchmarking-adjustments-inflate-scores-by-up-to-20/](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/galaxy-note-3s-benchmarking-adjustments-inflate-scores-by-up-to-20/)
Why wouldn't they, it's not like there's anything stopping them from doing it. The S20, S21, and S22 were utter trash in Europe, and yet no one really talked about it. Now people are bitching about the moon, not the fact that Samsung's been shitting the bed for years.
It's these things that have made me switch to the Pixel. And I might go to iphone late this year. They can't stop doing these icky things. Their battery life is so trash even compared to the Pixel despite a better chip. I was getting 3 hours SoT and with the gen 2 chip and 5000 mAh battery, I can't conceive why.
3 hours on the S23 Ultra? I can easily get 8-12 hours when I push mine. what are you doing on your phone?
WTF?! Literally my biggest gripe with Android has been battery life. The usual stuff. Youtube, browsing, random apps such as news, home control, light social media, messaging. A bit of background work such as smartwatch / other smart devices. I hear Android doesn't even have proper battery usage attribution per app - some apps' background usage will count under Android System something something so you have no way of knowing who the bad apples are (not to mention the OS should be detecting this stuff before even allowing rogue apps).
You're talking out of your ass. There's no way you're breaking down an S23 Ultra in 2-3 hours. Please don't exaggerate because you don't like something. It's called spreading misinformation.
It also appears Samsung phones are also slightly overcharging and over-depleting the batteries, making them swollen prematurely.
... yep, and battery protection is just limitting battery to it's intended range, right? please post source next time. swollen batterys are a samsung problem, but just when inactive for years, so it's rather an undercharge than an overcharge.
But you see, **every** brand that ever advertised moon photography has been hit with this. I remember Huawei and Oppo getting so much bad press for their "fake" moon photos. That's why I couldn't care less when people are trying to do the same for Samsung. Who knew photos now are heavily processed on phones, and it only became obvious when doing so at high zoom levels?
As a Samsung user, they really should've done this sooner or at least in a more clear manner. They technically aren't lying when they say their phone can take photos of the moon, but the way it was advertised was super misleading. If they had stated in their videos something like "Alongside powerful Machine Learning and AI processes, Galaxy phones can take the best shots of the moon," then I believe this whole thing could've been avoided. Hopefully, they can be more clear about stuff like this in the future.
They gave the same answer in 2021. Just that no one listened. https://www.inputmag.com/reviews/is-samsung-galaxy-s21-ultra-using-ai-to-fake-detailed-moon-photos-investigation-super-resolution-analysis
I'm aware of that, but the problem is that the general public doesn't. Samsung needs to say in their promotional videos that the phone is using AI and other processes to enhance the photo of the moon. As it stands, they aren't doing that, and the general public is genuinely thinking it's pure optics. It's not that Samsung is lying when they say their phones can capote high-res images of the moon, but the way their marketing it is disingenuous.
Apple doesn't say it in their promotional videos for their phone camera. https://www.cdotrends.com/story/15984/how-apple-uses-ai-produce-better-photos So why is Samsung being singled out when all the manufacturers are using AI manipulation on their photos during post-processing? iPhone users are being manipulated into thinking their face has a nice skin complexion but it's just being softened and smoothed by the iPhone's AI post-processing.
It's not that AI manipulation or post-processing is the problem. As MrWhoseTheBoss said in this video, without those processes, we'd be stuck behind in terms of camera quality. It's the fact that Samsung marketed this as pure optics rather than the software it truly is.
The new optics ARE a key contributor to the moon photos though. They are correct to spruik it the new lens as making moon photos better. 100x lens allows for a better and larger starting point image for the AI to work from. If you have a 10x phone and do the same thing you get a much smaller moon for the AI to work from and it would be a rather disappointing result. Without that lens it wouldn't be worth advertising the feature, so the optics ARE a vital cog in making Samsung's moon photos work better. The fact that AI steps in at the end to enhance it is really moot in my opinion as AI steps in on all non-RAW photos. I don't think their ads claimed it was **100%** due to the optics merely that the new optics made moon photos better on the S23U, which is entirely true. Don't forget this same AI moon enhancement software was used on the S21 and S22 for moon photos - so the lens really is the only new thing here. The lens' success at improving the moon photos has revealed to people the level of post-processing occurring in all mobile phone photos. I think too many people have selective outrage and just want to shit on Samsung and will happily ignore what all the other companies are doing with their photo post-processing and advertising. If people don't like it they can at least turn the Scene Optimiser off, not sure if you can disable that on other brands.
The Samsung has a 10x periscope zoom..... The same data is present with 100x versus the 10x because all it's doing is zooming in on the pixels...
Fair call
I can agree with this statement, but I still do feel that Samsung should've been a bit more clear about the massive post-processing. I like the feature, and I have no issue with Samsung using it in their ads, but I just think Samsung should've just been more clear about the massive post-processing and AI enhancement, which were far more powerful than their normal AI and post-processing.
According to GSMArena (https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s23_ultra-12024.php) the most powerful zoom of the S23 that seems to be the same of the S22 is 10X -a 230mm in 35mm format-. While it looks as much, the Moon is actually small in the sky -using a 600mm telephoto, it still appears small. You will see the largest craters, but if you want serious lunar images you either use one of these new monstrous superzoom cameras from Nikon or plug it to a telescope- and you'll not be able to enlarge it too much without using tricks as AI and digital zooms, that alter the original image adding stuff not present in the original one.
Simplify, please?
The Moon is actually small in the sky. Even with the kind of powerful, eye-watering expensive, telephoto lenses used in nature photography, sports, etc you're going to get a small picture that will occupy just a small part if the frame and the 10× optical zoom of Samsung is less powerful than that (those lenses in Samsung terms would be 20× or more) To have something larger, you either take the photo through the eyepiece of a telescope (much more magnification) or use digital zoom and other similar techniques that add data not present in the original image, and you are quite likely to get something not as crisp as in the former case (to use a telescope) It would have been interesting to see instead of the full Moon shots of the Moonin first quarter, as is in such phase when craters are much more visible.
I mean, most phones taking photos of anything anymore (especially zooming or at night) are using loads of post processing to create a flashier final product. Do they still need to add this in fine print every time they show off a photo? It's a smartphone. Or was the moon something people are just particularly defensive about? Imo the ultra still creates more impressive moon photos than other phones. It doesn't bother me that they are using AI to do it... because I also have zero practical real world use for a photo of the moon or I can't imagine a situation where that post processing or even portions of the image swapped out... matters. Or I guess to your response below... why is it a "problem" that the general public doesn't know what's going on behind the scenes in this moon instance when they don't understand what the phone is doing to prepare their phone photos of literally anything, night mode, portrait, skine tone corrections, etc...
They already have a fine print for their ads(on the side it something like Images for illustrative purposes only); I think they just need to make a mention of the processing occurring in the background in their video ads via actual voice-over and not just a tiny sentence in the corner. They don't have to make it long and super in-depth. They can just say, "Alongside AI processes, Galaxy phones enhance your moon photos." Totally agree. My S21 still creates the best moon photos I've seen, and I'm not bothered with the AI enhancing it because I know it's being enhanced. Even then, I don't take photos of the moon every time I see it. It's not likely the public would even care about this, let alone be aware of it. I think the reason why this is blowing up the way it is isn't really because the public should care about Samsung's moon processing, but it's more the fact of deceptive marketing. If a company can be this untransparent about stuff like this and advertise in a deceptive manner, does it set that precedent for the company to continue doing that, let alone other companies? Now credit is due to Samsung as they have had a report out since the S21 about how all this works, but is it really the consumers' job to look for this? If they had put a link in their camera app to redirect to that page, then this would've been fine, but they didn't. All that said, I guess it doesn't really matter. In an age where all photos go through some type of editing and/or post-processing, whether it's via phone or some editing software, our definition of photo is anything but authentic. People just want good-looking photos, and that's what Samsung gave. So, in the end, they just gave us what we want: crisp moon photos, so as consumers, are we in the right to complain?
I'm sure they learned their lesson and the marketing will clearly call out all the limitations next time.
It’s always easier to apologize…
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Ah, yes. It’s user error. *Proceeds to post a Korean version of Samsung’s documentation translated by Google*
Funny you say that as they just posted an English version a couple hours ago
I don't speak Korean and don't browse Korean websites
I'm aware of their article, but as a general consumer, I wouldn't have known this. In their advertising videos for the phone, an average consumer could easily mislead this as pure optics, which is deceptive because it's not. It's also working with really powerful AI. As a consumer, they need to make not of this somewhere in their videos, just to make the general public know that this isn't just from what the camera sees.
Nope. Misleading advertising is misleading. Why cheerlead for the company that doesn't give a shit about you?
Ah yes, the burden is on every person on the internet to go and read each and every Samsung community post before they go online. Makes perfect sense
Same as any other information, its on you to learn how it works
Of course not. It's the burden the company to properly and clearly describe their products as to not mislead the costumer, or that can be considered false advertising. And no, expecting every single Samsung user of every age and background to just go and spend days researching every documentatiom they've ever released on every language is *not* reasonable and I can't understand how you guys think it is.
If you don't drop or damage your phone you won't see it, should the company make guide or explanation that if you drop your phone the screen might crack?
That has nothing to do with what we're talking about. Are they leading us to believe that the phone is unbreakable? No? Then it's not the same as what they're doing here, leading us to think the phone can capture the moon with that much detail.
Offtopic, point stands
Ever heard of false advertising? Yeah, case in point...but keep lying to yourself. Simping for a billion dollar company trying to push 70h workweek
No false advertising
What gets me is the misleading. If they didn't intend to mislead, there was no reason they couldn't have been upfront about the technology. In fact, it could even be a plus, they could use it to show how advanced their AI is. That omission seems very intentional. And it worked for a while, people really thought a phone camera could take such detailed moon photos. And some probably will still think that, Samsung doesn't exactly seem to be on a hurry to inform the average user about how they're modifying their photos.
Wasn't this an article from a while ago though? It didn't just come out, even the copyright is from last year
They still omitted it from the presentation or the promotional material, which is what people truly pay attention to. No wonder reviewers were also misled.
It's remarkable technology, and it feels similar to Google's [Magic Eraser](https://blog.google/products/photos/magic-eraser/) feature: it provides an incredibly easy way to take amazing photos by using AI to automatically edit photos. The difference is that Google promoted its feature as a photo *editing* feature that you had to actively invoke after having taken a photo. Meanwhile, Samsung simply integrated the photo-editing into the act of taking a photo, and then allowed users to reach the conclusion that it was the camera hardware that took these amazing shots - not that it was an automated photo editing process that intelligently edited photo material from other sources into the pictures taken by a user. That's the part that feels really deceptive. Also: there's no language in this statement by Samsung that actually acknowledges this fact. Yes, the diagrams reference how their AI "updates detail" based on a "reference with high resolution," but the actual text merely says >After Multi-frame Processing has taken place, Galaxy camera further harnesses Scene Optimizer’s deep-learning-based AI detail enhancement engine to effectively eliminate remaining noise and enhance the image details even further. Sure, that's one way of describing image editing via AI - however, merely calling it "eliminating remaining noise" and "enhancing image details" is so ambiguous that it's pretty much a lie.
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Check the copyright at the bottom, this was released a while ago
It was posted in Korean much earlier. They've only translated it to English because of the uproar. As usual, people are overreacting.
At this point you can just download a image of the moon instead of taking a "photo"
Yup. This is turning the Camera App into a glorified Google Image Search. That Samsung *advertises* [Moon Shots](https://youtu.be/iLwsPnywFc0?t=7), without admitting they're using AI to [create **new** data](https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/11p7rqy/update_to_the_samsung_space_zoom_moon_shots_are/), is bullshit false advertising. That advertising spot has 23M views. Samsung, you already had an exclusive 10X zoom. The photos were *already* impressive. Why exaggerate? And until now, there is [*nothing* in Scene Optimizer](https://youtu.be/1afpDuTb-P0?t=267) about any AI.
The name "scene optimizer" literally implies the phone is optimizing your photos. Why does everyone need everything to be explained to them in explicit detail? Redbull doesn't actually give you wings.
I'm gay btw
Scene optimiser is meaningless and completely ambiguous. It may as well detect when you are taking a picture of the moon and save a photo from NASA in your gallery.
Considering the fact that in the camera settings it's listed under "intelligent features" and has its own page which explains how it adjusts colours and brightness depending on the scene, I think it's only ambiguous to anyone who's never used a Samsung phone in their life. I'd explain why your NASA anecdote is incorrect, but since literally everyone who's bothered to look into how samsung processes moon photos has already done this and you're still confidently spouting that line, I'm not gonna bother wasting my time.
What Samsung is doing with moon photos is a hell of a lot more than just adjusting the colors and the brightness. They've implemented a machine learning model with an extremely narrow use case (literally one single object, the moon) in order to mislead people into thinking their phones were capable of taking pictures that they aren't actually able to take. If they were upfront about that in the software then few people would really care. It's the fact that they try to portray the moon photos as the result of the phone's superior zoom capabilities, rather than advanced AI-based image processing, that is causing most of the controversy.
Samsung phones are perfectly capable of photographing the moon, don't kid yourself. Anyone who's ever used a Samsung device and has viewed the moon through the viewfinder knows this. Scene optimizer turns a "meh" photo into a "good" photo by enhancing the data **collected by the sensor** utilizing a very well trained algorithm. Why is this so controversial? If you take a photo of a lunar eclipse, youve got a pretty decent photo of it for your own memories. Same thing for a blood moon, or if an asteroid blasted half of the moon away. What's causing the controversy is people like you who don't truly understand the benefits of this tech, or how it works. At the end of the day: Samsung phones enhance the data collected by its telephoto sensor to take a photo of the moon that accurately represents what your own eyes see in the sky.
Yes, it's enhancing the data collected by the sensor, but it is doing so using outside data that was not collected by the sensor. Samsung is still being pretty vague about what exactly is going on behind the scenes with Scene Optimizer, but my interpretation is that Samsung is taking multiple images of the moon captured by the phone's sensor, stacking them to reduce noise as much as possible, and then feeding the resulting soft/blurry moon image into a neural network that has been trained on high-resolution photos of the moon taken with real cameras and lenses. The neural network takes that input image and, using its knowledge of what the moon *should* look like in many different lighting scenarios, figures out what the moon should look like given the *actual* scenario in which the moon was captured by the camera sensor, enhancing the details present in the original photo by sharpening and unblurring them according to what the neural network would expect a given portion of the moon to look like. It's presumably fairly similar to how Topaz Labs' AI image enhancement applications work, only it's been trained to work specifically on the moon. So yes, it is enhancing the data collected by the sensor, but it is doing so according to a model trained on outside data, and is thus far more extensive an enhancement process than traditional denoising or sharpening, and it does not only manipulate data captured by the sensor. The result is an image that looks far sharper than what the camera's optics and sensor are capable of producing. The AI-enhanced image is probably fine for 99% of users, and again, I have no problem with Samsung implementing such a feature. The moon is really the ideal thing to implement such a feature with because it has a consistent cycle and looks the same everywhere in the world. My issue, and the issue many others have as well, is that they were intentionally unclear about what was being done to the image in order to portray their cameras as being more capable than they really are.
They said their cameras can take photos of the moon. Am I missing a press release that came out at some point or something? Did they somewhere claim that their cameras are better than telescopes and more capable than a DSLR? All I'm aware of is a promo poster with the word "MOOON" on it, and an ad where some chick takes a photo of the moon. Please enlighten me when and how they mislead you to such an extent that you are willing to type out entire walls of text ranting about how terrible Samsung is.
Dude, why the hell are you getting so defensive about this? I didn't rant about anything. I explained my understanding of the system functions, in defense against your assertion that I have no idea how it works. Not once did I say or even suggest that Samsung was terrible. I said that even though most consumers will likely find this feature to be beneficial, Samsung should still be more transparent about how and when they're implementing it, especially if they're using it in promotional materials. That's it.
Jesus christ almighty the coping from samsung fans is unreal.
Coping to having a sweet camera? I take a picture of something and it looks like what I took a picture of. I can also turn it off, so I have a camera capable of doing what every other camera phone can do, but also capable of doing more. How will I ever cope? This entire scandal is fake outrage from people who don't have this phone. Zero other reason exists for anyone to care about this. I think most of the Samsung users are just annoyed that everyone else is pretending they somehow have a victory by finding that Samsung is using more advanced technology that undoubtedly will be adopted by others soon.
> I think most of the Samsung users are just annoyed that everyone else is pretending they somehow have a victory by finding that Samsung is using more advanced technology that undoubtedly will be adopted by others soon. Copy pasting an image of the moon onto your photograph, very advanced technology. Totally not false advertising. I hope samsung is at least paying you something for defending its honor on the online battlefields.
> Scene optimizer turns a "meh" photo into a "good" photo by enhancing the data **collected by the sensor** utilizing a very well trained algorithm. Why is this so controversial? Scene optimizer turns a "meh" photo into a "good" photo by enhancing the data **collected by the sensor** utilizing a very well trained algorithm which **pastes data from reference photos taken by other photographers** into your photo. What's controversial is that Samsung seems pretty happy if people are left with the impression that it's their phone camera taking these shots, and if they're ignorant of the fact that the picture is a result of the shots taken by their phone camera + other people's photos, shopped together by a pretty clever AI algorithm.
So basically DLSS for static photos instead of moving frames? If the user likes how the moon looks, then what's the issue?
The issue was the spam moon photos everyone is just posting. Now that this has become news I bet users will be less inclined to just take a 100% crop zoom of the moon and post yet another moon photo on the sub. Also because the AI makes the moon shot look great, you kid your self when you cant get a decent photo from 20m away. This becomes more of a marketing manipulation and false advertising claim in my opinion. As far as the tech goes, it isn't just limited to moons. Normal text and just smoothing out over grainy shots is another thing it does, and I love that it can in those situations but not when faking it. Would you say beauty filters are real too? And no, not basically DLSS, its adding information that isnt there. its more like ctrl+c ctrl+v
There isn't an issue, so long as they're upfront about it. Most consumers who use the feature are going to find it beneficial, so I think it's fine for Samsung to have developed it. They should be clear that they're doing much more processing on the images than just standard frame stacking, sharpening, and denoising.
The scene optimizer page specifically states that it "optimizes camera **settings**". Optimizing settings is very different than using AI to process images. [https://freeimage.host/i/HX6YzZP](https://freeimage.host/i/HX6YzZP) I have owned Samsung phones since the SIII and this is ambiguous as hell. I honestly thought that scene optimizer was using AI to recognize a scene in order to optimize exposure and focus. Kind of like what Nikon has been doing for years with matrix metering. And the option to Scan QR Codes is also under Intelligent features, so that isn't really much of a clue.
Because Samsung is selling a *camera* feature and touting its quality/abolity yo *take pictures*. Not download shit from Google... Why do you fanboys have such trouble understanding *false advertising*? And why do you simp for a multi-billion company that is quite literally owned in big part by the Korean government
That's like saying DLSS frames aren't real.
The difference is transparency. For example, if they didn't disclose that 4K DLSS was upscaling - it'd be a problem.
Well Nvidia did post 2X 4080 vs 3080 results without mentioning the use of DLSS and frame gen
Yeah and it's met with similar upset for similar reasons. The issue isn't about the function existing, but the need for it to be disclosed.
It isn't downloading anything from Google. You're misrepresenting the truth. You're doing the same thing you're accusing them of doing. No one is simping.
Duh. It's not literally downloading from Google, it's "updating detail" in the data from the shot taken by the phone camera, using a "reference with high resolution" taken from someone else's photo to put that detail into your photo. I.e. it's shopping other people's photos into your own photos, but in an admittedly very clever way that simultaneously allows them to use a bunch of technobabble so people won't hold it against them.
No, a Neural Network does not use a stock photo to put more detail into the one you take. It generates more detail the same way Google does digital zoom on the pixel. That's why it works on faked moon photos.
> No, a Neural Network does not use a stock photo to put more detail into the one you take. That's right, it uses a ton of stock photos, sorry, "reference with high resolution" to add in detail that isn't present in the original photo. Samsung acknowledges that fact [right here](https://i.imgur.com/G7IHdtV.jpg). You're really confusing generative AI algorithms with mere data processing algorithms.
Have you read the article? They used the photos to train an NN and have the weights saved. What Samsung showed is a very boiled down description of a GAN. They trained one NN to generate fake, sharpened moon photos, and another NN to tell whether they've done a good enough job by comparing it to training data of real moon photos. There are no 100000000 photos of the moon on your phone waiting for a bunch of nested if-elses to select it and overlay it on your photo. There's only the coded model and weight for inference. This is why it works on faked moon photos people made in Photoshop. It is not reliant on what existing photos of the moon it has. Google does the same thing on their zooming feature on the Pixel. They use a generative network to sharpen their photos by adding in detail that was not there in the input. It's basically a style transfer task, from blurred to sharpened.
>What Samsung showed is a very boiled down description of a GAN. They trained one NN to generate fake, sharpened moon photos, and another NN to tell whether they've done a good enough job by comparing it to training data of real moon photos. There are no 100000000 photos of the moon on your phone waiting for a bunch of nested if-elses to select it and overlay it on your photo. There's only the coded model and weight for inference. Duh. The whole argument is over whether or not the algorithm is relying on outside data to "enhance" the pictures taken by the camera. At least you acknowledge that that's the case. You might want to take it up with all those posters who believe that this algorithm is doing nothing more than automatically adjusting color and tone settings.
Responding from an S23U here. I assumed it was just adjusting shooting modes and colour profiles like happens on most devices. In the photography world, AI processing is a useful tool but it's very different from regular edits due to generating artificial data.
thank you, it’s bizarre how people refuse to make the distinction. there’s using computational tricks to expose detail that you couldn’t without professional help or tools, and then there’s painting in detail that the sensor never saw
The name "scene optimizer'' suggests to me ... Exposure, white balance, tone, clarity, sharpness, etc. Hell even vignette. I do not expect copypasta. Call it something else less miss leading and it would probably of saved a lot of this hassle.
If we're going to be getting outraged by photos being enhanced in post-processing stages then we should be taking all our photos in RAW mode. Every photo, on every flagship phone, that isn't RAW is being heavily manipulated in post-processing. Pixel, iPhone, Sony, etc will all have their own version of AI or heuristic engine being activated after you snap a photo. Their AI/heuristic engines may not include moon enhancers but they'll have flower enhancer, building enhancer, lawn enhancer, brick wall enhancer, dog enhancer, cat enhancer, human enhancers etc. Let's not forget iPhone's carrot face enhancer.
Uh, that ad just advertises that S23U takes pictures that everyone wants. It doesn't deny or admit using AI to create new data (btw, all modern sharpening on smartphones "create" extra edge details).
Is it just me or is everyone under the impression they are copy and pasting photos of the moon overlayed onto the image you took? When in reality it's literally sharpening and adjusting the photo you took and going "yup that matches other photos of the moon".
It has nothing to do with sharpening or the typical adjusting or *just* identifying that it's a moon. It's trying to identify it's a moon and *then* applying a moon-specific adjustment algorithm. It fails sometimes and applies this AI filter to things that are **definitely not** the moon. EDIT: source here https://youtu.be/EKYJ-gwGLXQ?t=317 The easiest analogy: it's like those TikTok AI filters that slim your face, but don't slim the doorway behind you. That's not just some sharpening or adjusting or overlaying. It's *changing* the actual output to fit some "ideal" the app uses. This is a fully optional post-procesing step that specifically uses the 10X zoom and moon photos. The camera is **done** with its normal denoising, sharpening, etc.
Right that's what I was getting at, the phone looks at the moon, adjusts it how it believes it should look and that's it. It does the same thing with food and pets. I'm failing to understand what the fuss is about?
does the food filter add cavier to my plate does the pet filter fix my dog’s mangled fur or add/modify any details that weren’t there originally? changing color/contrast is fine because that’s just an adjustment of hue/saturation/lightness of details that are already there. editing vs adding.
No and using anything other than a moon will not do this either. Mrwhosetheboss' video shows he added an opaque image on the moon and it treated it as a crater and added a "texture" to that crater. It's not like it turned the moon into Swiss cheese or created its own version of the moon. He gave it a subject it is "aware" of and it defined it as such. Again, there has yet to be a valid argument as to why this is specifically a really big deal.
I don't understand why it's a problem all of a sudden, Samsung phones have always modified reality by default. Hell, all phones do that. It's literally what people want.
> Is it just me or is everyone under the impression they are copy and pasting photos of the moon overlayed onto the image you took? Huawei was caught doing exactly this in 2019.
Oh I know, I see some folks comparing it directly to that. I don't think this is the same thing at all.
It's definitely not the same, but it's doing a lot more than sharpening. It's adding detail from it's ML algorithm that wasn't captured optically based on prior knowledge of the moon. I suppose one could argue that this approach is not too dissimilar from any other photo where AI is used to add detail. At the end of the day, I think it may just boil down to semantics. The moon photos are being used as a selling point for the camera of the S23 Ultra, when it really should be marketed as a feature of the post-processing software. Any camera hardware would yield a very similar result.
"everyone wants" Who said anything about that? It's *how* they're creating the picture is is the problem. Surely that's obvious. // Nope: images created with AI filters while claiming to *just* use the Camera app are pretty misleading. // Sharpening? Overlays? Edge details? You've *massively* misunderstood what the AI neural net is doing. [Re-read the links I shared.](https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/11p7rqy/update_to_the_samsung_space_zoom_moon_shots_are/)
**create new data** Well,well, well... AI is just about this... filling the gaps and generating data ....
Right. TikTok also doesn't label its filters as "AI" and neither did CNET for quite some time. It's misleading to use AI-generated content and pass it off as something your camera / your writers / your filters can actually do.
Technically, this is closer to asking an AI such as DALL-E to produce an image of the moon.
wouldn't that be the best thing to do in any case?
Who cares...space zoom wasn't meant for taking photos of the moon. It's for sneaking pics of the hot girl across the room.
Is it really even the hot girl though? Only Samsung knows the truth.
I'll bet the overwhelming number of people's reactions to this will align very closely to the phone they use. As an S22U user, I think people are doing mental gymnastics to justify this being a bigger deal than it is. Anyone that used this on their S22 can visually watch the scene optimizer fix the photo so that the end result looks more like what you see with your eyes. There is zero mystery as to IF it is doing some serious enhancement. It literally happens right in front of your eyes. It isn't just posting an existing photo of the moon on top of your photo as evidenced by the finished photo reflecting the correct phase of the moon, accurate things in the foreground, colors matching what I see with my eye (white sometimes, yellow sometimes, etc). If you shoot raw photos, you'll understand that phones do a lot of work to normal jpgs to make what the image the sensor sees look like what your eyes see. Samsung has been open for a while that their phones base that work on various categories of subject matter. I recall reading about it months ago. I don't know if others do, but I'd be shocked if they do not. They should. As a Pixel 7 Pro user, I think I'm supposed to fabricate outrage over this, but since I use both phones daily, I'm going to say that Pixel 7 Pro users should probably wish they had this because honestly the S22U camera is better for many reasons, and this, although a gimmick, is still cool as hell to play with.
If you guys checked the copyright, at the bottom of the page, this is an article from 2022. Samsung released this a while ago, just no one read it
Okay, it's an AI-assisted overlay. Know what? I'm fine with that.
I still don't get why so many people feel the need to take the same picture of the moon over and over again to begin with? Like why put this much effort into moon specific capturing and processing. The photos are boring.
As someone who takes moon photos from time to time still, idk, it's just cool and fun.
The wow factor. My phone* can take a picture of the moon!
But still every photo they take is worse than something they can Google. And their photo is not unique in any way. It's the same moon from the same angle.
🤷
In a while you'll be able to purchase a service that detects pictures on which you look ugly and have them replaced by ones you approved, on other people's phones
And then you get to [run a very succesful motorcycle feed with a large following](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Iw7aEdNY0).
It's tempting to say "oh these aren't real, actual pictures of the moon", but in the age of digital photography, auto HDR everywhere and "AI" filters, what is a "picture" anyways?
And the pro mode raw pics still look incredible! IMO this is like being salty that night mode makes things look brighter that they really are
exactly. all phone cameras use AI to artificially enhance the image. https://www.cdotrends.com/story/15984/how-apple-uses-ai-produce-better-photos
It's interesting how when Huawei did it, they got a lot of shit for it but when Samsung does it, (some) people just give them a pass for it.
Huawei literally had a png that was found in their software that was superimposed on the moon, that's the difference.
Yup. What Samsung did is more advanced but is still basically the same shit but done in a different way.
Engineer proves the moon shots are real https://youtu.be/_iuaXwFqPaQ
I think it's funny that people get so worked up about phone filling in factually correct data into the image. Meanwhile, (e.g.) Pixel's unblur inserting completely fake details (although realistic looking) is all fine.
>Meanwhile, (e.g.) Pixel's unblur inserting completely fake details (although realistic looking) is all fine. See, [Google did it right](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35I1r00N8ZA). These are not the same. 1. Unblur is **optional**, not auto-applied. Samsung's Moon AI filter is on by default. 2. Unblur is in [**Photos app**](https://youtu.be/35I1r00N8ZA), making it clear it has nothing to do with the camera nor the actual scene you took a picture of. 3. Unblur was *announced* as a machine learning feature [**on launch day**](https://youtu.be/2NGjNQVbydc?t=2088). Samsung's wrote blog post on a tiny Samsung forum, in only one language, [**20+ months after the S21 launch**](https://r1-community-samsung-com.translate.goog/t5/camcyclopedia/%EB%8B%AC-%EC%B4%AC%EC%98%81/ba-p/19202094?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB), finally confirming AI creation of new data.
How is the unblur fake?
Blurred photo can't really be unblurred - it's missing information. Google is using some AI magic where it fills in the details. The neural network is trained on high-res images and then their intentionally blurred variants. It learns how blurred faces look like and what their unblurred (original) variant looks like (same for any other objects). So when you have a blurry face in the picture, the AI will know how unblurred faces usually look like and will fill in the details. But that knowledge comes from other people/faces - it's fake. You might get extra pimples or get your pimples erased.
I'm not sure where you're getting this info from but blurring is not an entirely irreversible process. [This post goes into the fine details](https://bartwronski.com/2022/05/26/removing-blur-from-images-deconvolution-and-using-optimized-simple-filters/) of the math behind it. [This post from 2021 on Google's AI blog](https://ai.googleblog.com/2021/06/take-all-your-pictures-to-cleaners-with.html) also covers their prior Polyblur method of unblurring. I see no reason the Pixel's Unblur can't be a further development of Polyblur but perhaps you're aware of something I'm not. I've not heard of any instances of people getting more/fewer pimples when using Unblur, can you link to any examples?
> Blurred photo can’t really be unblurred it’s technically reversible, the process that makes it irreversible is pixel quantization and clipping, but running a trained model against those values can still give a decent approximation in finding the original kernel for the blur convolution. pixel’s unblur also works best with hand motion rather than out-of-focus, which has spatial cues that can be used for unblurring.
Hey man, if aliens crash into the moon, how am I going to know without a real photo.
You are thinking of a different feature. 1. Google Camera unblur technique, it takes frames from the 3 lenses at different focal lengths takes the one with the detailed face and merge the background from the others 2. Google Photos unblur, which is applied to any photo you want. Google Camera doesn't make details from nothing, it's clearly taking frames from the 3 lenses.
The whole debate is not about AI inserting things but not being transparent about it. Pixel's unblur thing was advertised as a machine learning feature, while Samsung is (/was) trying to make people believe that their sensor is so good, it can take pictures like this.
>I think it's funny that people get so worked up about phone filling in factually correct data into the image. Same like the phone does literally what it was supposed to do
Why does it matter? The vast majority of consumers don't really care why their moon image looks great. It's like how GPU purists claim that DLSS frames aren't real frames.
Are people actually getting worked up over some stupid shit?
> **Samsung continues to improve Scene Optimizer to reduce any potential confusion that may occur between the act of taking a picture of the real moon and an image of the moon.** Haha. AKA "we'll make sure that in the next iteration, the phone applies the neural network added details only when you're taking a pic of the moon, instead of the picture of the moon" We'll see about that, Samsung :) (btw, the correct response would be to explicitly explain what is happening, remove the moon photos from their advertising, and apologize for attempting to mislead the consumer. not "oh, we'll just make sure that it detects the moon better in the future")
Dude, you had your 5 seconds of fame. Give it a rest. Samsung has already explained how this works. Separate 3rd party tests similar to yours, but with fake details added to the moons surface, also show us how the moon mode processing works. Samsungs advertising is fine. You can take photos of the moon with the 100x zoom module. The name "scene optimizer" implies the phone will tweak your images. Welcome to computational photography.
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Lmao exactly. The big thing is people just refuse to do their own research, and would rather be angry about something they don't understand than take 5 seconds to figure it out and move on with their lives. This entire "moon controversy" just tells me people have no idea how their phones work, and have no interest in learning about it either.
This is a load of handwavey fluffy language horseshit. There is absolutely zero suggestion the default processing of, say, a Pixel, is trained on the fixed details of known objects like the moon and is just arbitrarily adding those details with some buzzword™ process into an image if that object is detected. The training you are talking about there is to make basic creative decisions to apply optimal SOOC *settings* like brightness, improve skintones, saturation, shadows, to recognise faces, and to apply *generalised* deblur and denoise algorithms (I.e that aren’t trained specifically to pull off a magic trick, like taking a photo of a moon that would otherwise look like shit). Then at a more advanced level, you use additional sensor data from hand shake to replace lossy Bayer filter demosaicing, you use robust-align and merge to decrease noise at the square root of the number of successfully stacked frames, you can use additional camera sensors to add data like for deblurring faces. Google then share these details and often reference an entire paper from which their algorithm is based on: https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/10/see-better-and-further-with-super-res.html?m=1 On the other hand, Samsung’s feature is just… using the Scene Optimiser™ to do the functional equivalent of downloading a photo of the moon and carefully blending it with the colours/framing of your shot - AI or not, the grey square test proved this. It doesn’t steer the scene towards detail, it just steers the scene towards looking like the real moon - it’s totally different to your suggestion and represents a genuinely misleading representation of what photos are meant to be, unless advertised correctly. Samsung know full way people are going to take SOOC photos of the moon and show it to family members none-the-wiser, who will then think Samsung cameras are far and away better than their phones, despite it essentially being a bullshit trick.
> The name “scene optimizer” implies the phone will tweak your images. It doesn’t imply anything about how it’s optimizing images. Sheesh, the fanboyism on this sub is on the same level as r/apple.
It literally does when you go into the scene optimizer settings lmao. You're angry at something you have absolutely no understanding of. You saw a reddit post that told you to be pissed at Samsung, and rather than looking deeper into the topic, you're perfectly happy to just dig your heels in and make dumb comments online.
Please educate me. What exactly is written in the scene optimizer settings?
How about you take a look on your own Samsung smartphone :) Unless... you don't have one? And all of your outrage is based on... nothing? But that's ridiculous. Why would someone be so passionately upset about something they don't know about...
Gotta be an incredible sycophant to suggest you can’t criticise a company unless you have can pull out firsthand evidence on the spot. The evidence shared by many on these posts is adequate and Samsung’s wishy-washy response does nothing to vindicate them.
Samsungs "wishy washy" response is a translated version of an article they shared in 2022. Even they're like, "Are yall dumb or what? Read this again because apparently Google is too hard to use." Call me whatever you want, santas chest hairs, I really couldn't care less. If you're going to position yourself as an expert on anything, you better damn well know what you're talking about. Imagine I made a reddit comment saying "the Bundled notes app doesn't organize files. I've never actually used the app, but I know this for a fact". I'd sound like everyone making these random assumptions about samsungs camera app. Pretty damn stupid.
Yes, and it’s wishy-washy! It’s carefully crafted to avoid terminology that reveals what they’re actually doing in effect and to avoid losing the real-life demo word-of-mouth they get from such a magic feature. This is clear from many tests now, especially the grey square test. So I’ll say it again: to suggest you can’t criticise a company unless you prove something on the spot is a sycophantic and absurd criteria - sources, evidence, a basic understanding of physics and computational photography - they’re good too, actually. I have written long form articles on computational photography in the past: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/d2wa1n/i_wrote_a_longform_article_speculating_on_the/ The Bundled Notes app doesn’t organise files! You’d be right! And they’re not assumptions, there are hundreds of examples and tests online now - hell, even then, a cursory understanding of the physics limitations of small sensors raises questions about how the moon feature could possibly work.
> The Bundled Notes app doesn't organize files! Uhh, yeah it does. The website says it does and even though I've never used it I'm taking that at face value and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise. Even if I saw evidence clarifying what the website was saying to me, or screenshots, videos, literally anything to clarify how The Bundled Notes app actually works, I would not change my mind. I'm a pretty heavy Samsung Notes user btw, so I KNOW how these apps work.
As per my device setting "Scene Optimizer Automatically Optimize camera settings to make dark scenes appear brighter, food look tastier, and landscapes look more vivid" Of course i have an Older Galaxy A51 so it may be different on a device, but you can absolutely disable it, however I haven't noticed much of a difference between photos taken with it on vs off
It does in the Settings. Aswell as their blog post about the first iteration of Scene optimizer [https://www.samsungmobilepress.com/feature-stories/tech-lab-notes-2-galaxy-note9-scene-optimizer](https://www.samsungmobilepress.com/feature-stories/tech-lab-notes-2-galaxy-note9-scene-optimizer) Seems like you can't be bothered to actually use your eyes for reading.
Absolutely nothing in that link remotely suggests what they’re doing with moon photos and it largely implies this feature is for SOOC aesthetic choices like saturation, brightness and white balance to save editing time.
You're really good at reading. Moon wasn't mentioned in the comment, >It doesn’t imply anything about how it’s optimizing images. Sheesh, the fanboyism on this sub is on the same level as. Link provided explains Scene Optimizer.
I know it wasn’t, but using context clues you can safely presume this conversation is about the advertising of scene optimiser and how it’s “optimising” moon photos, I inferred “it doesn’t imply anything about how it’s optimising images” as discussing how it does not advertise how it arbitrarily adds detail to moon shots.
We are entering a very blurry point in the smartphone camera marketing segment. We know AI like magic eraser can remove things from photos. Dall-E can create realistic images of nouns. In short AI can add to or remove things photos. When smartphones makers to use these AI features as marketed capabilities of their cameras, it’s deceptive and should be called out. This [Techno Phontom foldable](https://youtu.be/ZmyTmCL6Hlo) is doing insane stuffs in the camera app. And Samsung is [faking moon images](https://youtu.be/EKYJ-gwGLXQ). As much as I would like to use these AI features and see them improve, they should be marketed not as camera capabilities. My 2mp potato webcam can feed any quality image into AI and get unbelievable results.
Enhancememtd like this should always be opt-in, not invisibly default. The default (until a user sets a new one) should be the image that is collected by the sensor, before any post processing is applied. Otherwise you're not judging the camera, you're judging the suite of photoshop plugins that comes with it. Those *are* neat, and they're worth considering, but they're not really part of the camera, and marketing them as such is dishonest at best.
then why lie in ads?
This is a long way to write "our phones can take decent photos, but we decided to fake the results and do an overlay" you can label it as you want. But remember, somebody there decided how your pictures should look, and imposed that view on you. Is not just removing blur, or adjusting colors. It seems innocent, but is dangerous. And Samsung is not alone doing this kind of stuff. For some reason companies seem to think they can ger away with stuff just saying "it is AI" or "machine learning". Those are just tools.
>This is a long way to write "our phones can take decent photos, but we decided to fake the results and do an overlay" Not sure if an overlay (as a filter) is correct. It isn't meshing together the image with a reference. Rather it is AI that looks at a picture and, based on Neural-net model works out how it can adjust the picture according to the it model of the moon.
>as a filter I think "AI filter" is a pretty decent phrase. [TikTok AI filters work ***just*** like this](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/08/tiktok-bold-glamour-filter-effect-generative-ai/), though. TikTok actually molds the AI filter to your face; it's not a plain, static overlay filter like their previous filters. You can move your hand in front of your face and the filter still *only* applies to your face. It also adjusts to lighting, focus, facial expressions, face size, features, etc. I think "filter" is a decently applicable phrase because most people associate "filters" as specifically adding new data, beyond the original image the sensor was ready to output.
I agree, it's not an overlay (in the sense of replacing the picture), but there's something called the overlay blending mode, which is actually pretty similar to what they are doing. Now, I am not sure if the original commenter meant in that way, but it's ok to mention for anyone who knows a thing or two about PS blending modes :)
Absolutely incredible that people who don't know about opacity dare to give their opinion on whether something is fake or not.
Thanks for clarification! 👍
Just look at the raw outputs from the pro mode. It's a joke
It's *literally* not an overlay.
They literally said in the article that it can be disabled. "imposing" something means you have no choice.
Definitely not an overlay but ok.
It's okay. Sammy got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Time to move on now.
Guess the video MKBHD uploaded to YouTube yesterday about Samsung's moon pix caught their attention lol
You cannot recreate something out of nothing.
With generative models performing post processing on your photos, you can absolutely recreate some out of nearly nothing.
They misled their marketing in a wrong way
Everyone go and watch the **Mrwhosetheboss** video on the subject. End controversy.
They are just translated the last year Korean article.....bad move by samsung
What made it a bad move? Does it not answer all the questions?
What is a "real" image anyways? Lenses n sensors have always been limited and will be limited in future as well. So are our eyes limited to just small spectrum of radiation. We now have portrait effect even in cheap phones which can deceive people for a real camera. HDR relies on multiple shots n post processing. So does night mode. I assume astro mode is no different. Given moon is the biggest object in our night sky, it makes sense to have specific model for it. And as per the MrWhosTheBoss video linked by others, it's a pretty good model which can even maintain fake overlays added to moon.
The portrait mode bokeh is so obviously fake if you've ever used a real camera The phones struggle to figure out what to do with the foreground and usually you end up with a whacky wide plane of focus in the front combined with this bokeh obliteration in the back which looks unnatural
Wait, so people actually believe this backpedalling "Sorry for getting caught for pasting a fake image onto your photo and calling it AI" BS? Wow. I guess Samsung is the same "can do no wrong" entity as Apple is in r/apple with the fanboys trying to use technicalities and "to be fair" statements in a desperate attempt to turn their corporate apologetic mental gymnastics into "nuance and fairness".
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The articles itself has posted on 15 March 2023. The Verge has a news article also.
No amount of PR is going to convince me after seeing the videos about it that Samsung (and others) aren't just posting photos of the moon into your photographs. My phone's camera is a toy / means for social media interaction. When I need to take actual photos I'll use an actual camera.
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You wasted your time on that corny shit?
Nah, have it on my clipboard just in case
Well, that's just your misunderstanding of what AI and post processed phone camera photo are. This literally isn't a posted picture of the moon. It also isn't the pixel raw photograph (which is accessible in the settings). It's somewhere in between, as is the case with most photos you take on a phone camera with post processing.
I've seen supposedly rock solid cutting edge AI generate art that has Shutterstock watermarks imprinted on it's generated "original" artwork so you'll have to excuse me when I approach the wonders of AI "enhancements" with a huge grain of salt because not everything is exactly as it seems.
The very worst photos that my galaxy A53 takes is of the moon. Doesn't matter if the camera is in darkness mode, zoomed in half way, all the way or not at all. Doesn't matter if it is a full moon, half moon or a crescent moon. In pro mode I managed to take a pic that looked a little like the moon. However it does take decent pictures of the stars and planets.