Samsung Galaxy moon photos aren’t real after all!
See what a Reddit user proved
One of the most hyped features of Samsung ‘s recent flagships is the so-called ‘Space Zoom’ . In particular, starting with the Galaxy S20 Ultra, the company’s devices offered an option for an extreme 100X zoom, which could be used to take extremely impressive photos of the moon. But now a post on Reddit has gone viral , with over 10k upvotes, where one user has proven that the photos in question aren’t exactly real after all!
In particular, the result seen by the owner of the device is not only due to the capabilities of the camera, but also to an artificial intelligence technology that behind the scenes undertakes to add a “texture” over the moon, to show details that the smartphone is not able to to immortalize! In practice, this means that another, more detailed image of the moon is added on top of the user’s photo, with the technology working much like the filters we’ve seen on social networking apps.
Speaking about it, Redditor with the nickname u/ibreakphotos pointed out:
Many of us have witnessed the amazing photos of the moon taken with the latest zoom lenses, starting with the S20 Ultra. However, I have always had my doubts about their authenticity as they look almost too perfect. Although these images are not necessarily completely fake, they are not ultimately and completely genuine.
Continuing, in his extensive and technical analysis, the user points out:
Samsung uses AI and Machine Learning (a neural network trained on hundreds of moon images) to add texture to your moon photos. While some people think that the images are a result of the smartphone’s camera capabilities, this is actually not the case. And it’s not about sharpening, it’s about adding detail from merging multiple frames, because in this experiment, all frames contain the same amount of detail.
None of the frames have the craters etc. because they’re deliberately blurred, but the camera somehow miraculously knows they’re there. And don’t even get me started on Samsung’s “super slow-mo” motion blur, maybe that’s a topic for another post in the future.
How the user proved that the photos are not real:
The redditor showed in a very clever way how easy it is to create “fake” moon shots. First, he downloaded a near-perfect image of the moon from the internet, scaled it down to 170 x 170 resolution, and applied a gaussian blur filter, removing all detail.
He then upscaled the blurred image to 4x and had it appear on his computer screen. Then, he turned off all the lights in his house for complete darkness and went several meters away from the screen, which he photographed with his mobile phone.
The image saved on the mobile had details that simply weren’t there! The user was photographing a blurry photo on his computer and not the moon itself. In this way, however, he tricked Samsung’s AI algorithm, which added the necessary texture, making the photo have details that cannot be brought out with sharpening or other techniques.
The image displayed on the user’s screen, side-by-side with the photo the smartphone finally took:
For the record, there have been many critics of Samsung’s technology in the past, questioning the validity of the photos, but this is the first time that someone has actually managed to reproduce the results and fool the algorithm.
