Users accuse Samsung of fake photos of the Moon with Space Zoom mode

Beginning with Galaxy S20 Ultra Samsung has started promoting the Space Zoom feature in its cameras. This is a 100x digital zoom that can be used for both normal zoom and space photography. It is especially good to shoot the Moon with it: you can get high-quality images without additional optics. It turns out that Galaxy smartphones are good - and Reddit decided that it was even too good.

User named ibreakphotos spent an experiment to see if there is a trick function in operation. He took a high-quality photo of the Moon from the Internet, reduced it to 170 × 170 pixels, and added a blur to remove all the details from the image. It is impossible to restore the original from such a picture even by sharpening, the detailing is gone forever.

Then he brought the picture to the computer screen, turned off the light and went to the other end of the room. He pointed the camera, zoomed in - and the details magically appeared.

Video: ibreakphotos / Reddit

For comparison, here is the source and photo:

This shows that there is no question of an algorithm that improves image quality. Instead, a neural network trained on hundreds and thousands of photographs of the moon is used, which adds a suitable texture to the blurry image.

The author also repeated the experiment using two images of the Moon at once. To confuse the neural network, he cropped the second photo. It worked: the smartphone improved the full moon, and left the half as the camera "sees" it in reality.

In fact, this is not a new topic for discussion. Two years ago, on the Samsung subreddit, a user under the nickname moonfruitroar showedthat the Space Zoom algorithm is not playing a fair game.

The author took a photo of the Moon from the Web, drew a gray smiley face on top in Photoshop and displayed the image on the monitor. The result is this picture:

Then he took the Galaxy S21 Ultra, moved 5 meters away from the computer and photographed the Moon on the monitor. The result was this:

In the finished photo, the algorithm clearly tried to make the smiley face part of the image, turning it into a crater using texture and shadows. If a smartphone showed what its camera "sees" in reality, one would expect a result close to the original: it would be a textured moon with a flat emoticon on it. But in fact, the camera gives a fuzzy image of a white pancake with dark spots, on which the algorithm textures to make a believable image.

It is worth noting that Samsung itself does not deny the use of artificial intelligence to shoot the moon. About the operation of this mode in detail tells in the CamCyclopedia section of the Korean version of the manufacturer's website.

These experiments also have a funny side. How noted in the comments to the new publication, the structure of both posts is identical, there are similarities in almost every phrase. And although the experiments themselves differ, it seems that the author of the fresh post either rewrote the old message, or used a neural network to do it for him.