The latest Samsung Galaxy models, such as the recently introduced Galaxy S23 Ultra, boast of having a zoom up to 100x with which they can make pretty awesome moon photos. However, they just discovered that these photos are completely fake and that Samsung uses a trick to make them look good.
He reddit user ibreakphotos He decided to investigate how a Samsung Galaxy could take those extremely good photos of the Moon, and figure out the trick. Images of the Moon taken with a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, and earlier models, are faked by applying a “Moon texture” that completely modifies the image taken by the device.
Samsung deceives us, the photos of the Moon of its Galaxy are false
To prove that Samsung was cheating with the photos taken of the Moon, this user did a fairly simple experiment. He opened on his monitor an image of the moon to which he lowered the resolution to the minimum so that the details would be removed and it would look completely blurry.
He picked up his Samsung Galaxy S23 and he took a picture of the blurred moon on his monitor from across the room. You should see a completely blurry moon, however his Galaxy applied a special filter that showed all the details of the Moon. Details that are impossible to appear in the real photo.
From a completely blurred photo Samsung shows a Moon full of details
That is, when the Samsung Galaxy S23 detects that it is taking a photo of the Moon, it applies a special filter that shows details that are not in the original photo. In other words, Samsung makes up the moon to make its camera appear more powerful than it actually is.
Samsung is using AI/ML (neural network trained on hundreds of Moon images) to retrieve/add the Moon texture to your Moon images, and while some think that’s the capability of the camera, it’s not really. it is.
Basically, Samsung replaces user-taken Moon photos with other photos of the Moon with the best resolution, as indicated by Halide, one of the best camera apps on the market.
It’s not about computational photography: it’s about inserting images that simply don’t exist.
Reddit user ibreakphotos discovers that Samsung’s ‘Space Zoom’ simply replaces user’s moon photos with higher-res images of the moon through a clever testing process. https://t.co/5cLybMld5s
This isn’t computational photography — it’s inserting imagery that simply isn’t there. pic.twitter.com/67UyyUa7cX
— Halide (@halidecamera) March 11, 2023
Samsung says that this is Artificial Intelligence, however the experiment shows that it is not about that. They are not improving the details that appear in a blurry photoThey are directly making them up. We have already compared the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra vs the iPhone 14 Pro Max and one of the advantages was the zoom, which is now in question.