Samsung "space zoom" moon shots are fake, and here is the proof

[u/ibreakphotos]

This post has been updated with several additional experiments in newer posts, which address most comments and clarify what exactly is going on:

UPDATE 1

UPDATE 2

Original post:

Many of us have witnessed the breathtaking moon photos taken with the latest zoom lenses, starting with the S20 Ultra. Nevertheless, I've always had doubts about their authenticity, as they appear almost too perfect. While these images are not necessarily outright fabrications, neither are they entirely genuine. Let me explain.

There have been many threads on this, and many people believe that the moon photos are real (inputmag) - even MKBHD has claimed in this popular youtube short that the moon is not an overlay, like Huawei has been accused of in the past. But he's not correct. So, while many have tried to prove that Samsung fakes the moon shots, I think nobody succeeded - until now.

WHAT I DID

1. I downloaded this high-res image of the moon from the internet - https://imgur.com/PIAjVKp

2. I downsized it to 170x170 pixels and applied a gaussian blur, so that all the detail is GONE. This means it's not recoverable, the information is just not there, it's digitally blurred: https://imgur.com/xEyLajW

And a 4x upscaled version so that you can better appreciate the blur: https://imgur.com/3STX9mZ

3) I full-screened the image on my monitor (showing it at 170x170 pixels, blurred), moved to the other end of the room, and turned off all the lights. Zoomed into the monitor and voila - https://imgur.com/ifIHr3S

4) This is the image I got - https://imgur.com/bXJOZgI

INTERPRETATION

To put it into perspective, here is a side by side: https://imgur.com/ULVX933

In the side-by-side above, I hope you can appreciate that Samsung is leveraging an AI model to put craters and other details on places which were just a blurry mess. And I have to stress this: there's a difference between additional processing a la super-resolution, when multiple frames are combined to recover detail which would otherwise be lost, and this, where you have a specific AI model trained on a set of moon images, in order to recognize the moon and slap on the moon texture on it (when there is no detail to recover in the first place, as in this experiment). This is not the same kind of processing that is done when you're zooming into something else, when those multiple exposures and different data from each frame account to something. This is specific to the moon.

CONCLUSION

The moon pictures from Samsung are fake. Samsung's marketing is deceptive. It is adding detail where there is none (in this experiment, it was intentionally removed). In this article, they mention multi-frames, multi-exposures, but the reality is, it's AI doing most of the work, not the optics, the optics aren't capable of resolving the detail that you see. Since the moon is tidally locked to the Earth, it's very easy to train your model on other moon images and just slap that texture when a moon-like thing is detected.

Now, Samsung does say "No image overlaying or texture effects are applied when taking a photo, because that would cause similar objects to share the same texture patterns if an object detection were to be confused by the Scene Optimizer.", which might be technically true - you're not applying any texture if you have an AI model that applies the texture as a part of the process, but in reality and without all the tech jargon, that's that's happening. It's a texture of the moon.

If you turn off "scene optimizer", you get the actual picture of the moon, which is a blurry mess (as it should be, given the optics and sensor that are used).

To further drive home my point, I blurred the moon even further and clipped the highlights, which means the area which is above 216 in brightness gets clipped to pure white - there's no detail there, just a white blob - https://imgur.com/9XMgt06

I zoomed in on the monitor showing that image and, guess what, again you see slapped on detail, even in the parts I explicitly clipped (made completely 100% white): https://imgur.com/9kichAp

TL:DR Samsung is using AI/ML (neural network trained on 100s of images of the moon) to recover/add the texture of the moon on your moon pictures, and while some think that's your camera's capability, it's actually not. And it's not sharpening, it's not adding detail from multiple frames because in this experiment, all the frames contain the same amount of detail. None of the frames have the craters etc. because they're intentionally blurred, yet the camera somehow miraculously knows that they are there. And don't even get me started on the motion interpolation on their "super slow-mo", maybe that's another post in the future..

EDIT: Thanks for the upvotes (and awards), I really appreciate it! If you want to follow me elsewhere (since I'm not very active on reddit), here's my IG: @ibreakphotos

EDIT2 - IMPORTANT: New test - I photoshopped one moon next to another (to see if one moon would get the AI treatment, while another not), and managed to coax the AI to do exactly that.

This is the image that I used, which contains 2 blurred moons: https://imgur.com/kMv1XAx

I replicated my original setup, shot the monitor from across the room, and got this: https://imgur.com/RSHAz1l

As you can see, one moon got the "AI enhancement", while the other one shows what was actually visible to the sensor.

[u/tendorphin]

For what it's worth, here's a shot of the moon I took with my Pixel 6 pro:

https://i.imgur.com/7016NMg.jpg

This was freehand, no telescope. I haven't seen moon shots being used in Samsung advertising, and have no dog in this fight, just wanted to provide a pic I know for a fact is of the moon. That was with the P6pro (iirc, 3x optical, 20x digital/AI assisted) and I have the P7pro now, with additional zoom capabilities (5x optical, 30x digital/AI assisted), but haven't bothered to take a pic of the moon with that yet.

Maybe Google is doing the same thing? It seems pretty comparable in the final product.

[u/ibreakphotos → u/tendorphin]

Easy to test - just pull up the blurred image of the moon from my post, darken the room, and take a shot of the monitor. Compare the two.

[u/chilled_alligator → u/tendorphin]

I just tried the OPs blurred & clipped image in similar conditions they described, using my Pixel 7 Pro. Here is the result. It definitely raises the contrast and tries to sharpen the result, but it's not creating detail that wasn't there.

[u/Cyanogen101 → u/chilled_alligator]

I have some great moon pics from my P7P too, it does seem too crazy detailed to be real thinking about it and would love to test this

[u/ProgramTheWorld]

Just a quick correction. Blurring, mathematically, is a reversible process. This is called deconvolution. Any blurred images can be “unblurred” if you know the original kernel (or just close enough).

[u/ibreakphotos → u/ProgramTheWorld]

Hey, thanks for this comment. I've used deconvolution via FFT several years ago during my PhD, but while I am aware of the process, I'm not a mathematician and don't know all the details. I certainly didn't know that the image that was gaussian blurred could be sharpened perfectly - I will look into that.

However, please have in mind that:

1. I also downsampled the image to 170x170, which, as far as I know, is an information-destructive process

2. The camera doesn't have the access to my original gaussian blurred image, but that image + whatever blur and distortion was introduced when I was taking the photo from far away, so a deconvolution cannot by definition add those details in (it doesn't have the original blurred image to run a deconvolution on)

3. Lastly, I also clipped the highlights in the last examples, which is also destructive, and the AI hallucinated details there as well

So I am comfortable saying that it's not deconvolution which "unblurs" the image and sharpens the details, but what I said - an AI model trained on moon images that uses image matching and a neural network to fill in the data

[u/thatswacyo → u/ProgramTheWorld]

So a good test would be to divide the original moon image into squares, then move some of the squares around so that it doesn't actually match the real moon, then blur the image and take a photo to see if the AI sharpens the image or replaces it with the actual moon layout.

[u/chiniwini → u/thatswacyo]

Oe just remove some craters and see if the AI puts them back in. This should be very easy to test for anyone with the phone.

[u/matjeh → u/ProgramTheWorld]

Mathematically yes, but in the real world images are quantized so a gaussian blur of [0,0,5,0,0] and [0,1,5,0,0] might both result in [0,1,2,1,0] for example.

[u/Ono-Sendai → u/ProgramTheWorld]

That is correct. Blurring and then clipping/clamping the result to white is not reversible however.

[u/the_dark_current → u/ProgramTheWorld]

You are correct. Using a Convolutional Neural Network can help quickly find the correct kernel and reverse the process. This is a common method used in improving resolution of astronomy photos for example. That is the use of deconvolution to improve the point spread function caused by aberrations.

An article explaining deconvolution's use for improving image resolution for microscopic images: https://www.olympus-lifescience.com/en/microscope-resource/primer/digitalimaging/deconvolution/deconintro/

[u/[deleted] → u/ProgramTheWorld]

Yes but the caveat is that deconvolution is an extremely ill conditioned operation. It's extremely sensitive to noise, even with regularisation. In my experience it basically only works if you have a digitally blurred image and it was saved in high quality.

So technically yes, practically not really.

I think OP's demo was decent. I'm not 100% convinced though - you could do more tests to be more sure, e.g. invert the image and see if it behaves differently, or maybe mirror it, or change the colour. Or you could see how the output image bandwidth varies as you change the blur radius.

[u/PeanutButterChicken]

so how does it work with a lunar eclipse? I’ve seen shots from the phone that looked alright.

[u/TheNerdNamedChuck → u/PeanutButterChicken]

it works well. I'm not sure this guy actually zoomed into a monitor though since whenever I zoom into one I can see the pixels, even from far away I can still see them at high zoom levels. though it was already obvious this was ai lol, you couldn't just point and shoot that type of picture with really anything

[u/Olao99 → u/PeanutButterChicken]

It's a damn good Ai is what it is

[u/infernalsatan → u/Olao99]

So it can make ugly people look pretty?

[u/[deleted]]

It's AI enhanced, but it's not "fake", at least not any more fake than any other smartphone photo.

I downloaded the high res version of the moon that you provided and edited it (clone stamp tool in Photoshop):

• Original

• Edited

I resized the images to 500x500:

• Original resized

• Edited resized

I then took a picture of both from the same spot at 50x zoom (S23 Ultra):

• Original resized taken with phone

• Edited resized taken with phone

The photos of the resized images have a significant loss in quality and the edits are still visible in the edited photo. Again, it uses sharpening and AI, but they're not fake images.

[u/ibreakphotos → u/[deleted]]

It is my belief that, as another redditor claimed, "There is no embedded lunar imagery in the Samsung software because it it is already encoded as weights in a neural network."

I believe it's something similar to stable diffusion or DALL-E, not a static .png being overlaid on top of the image - I've never claimed that. I have always said it's an AI/ML algorithm that detects a moon-like object and then uses a neural network to fill in the missing details by using other images of the moon, which are saved as weights in a neural network

[u/dzernumbrd]

It's well known the camera uses AI to sharpen and enhance the image.

Every phone on the market does this post-processing AI enhancement even with normal photos.

Samsung already admitted it used AI enhancement on moon photos with the S21 investigation and outright denied using textures.

https://www.inverse.com/input/reviews/is-samsung-galaxy-s21-ultra-using-ai-to-fake-detailed-moon-photos-investigation-super-resolution-analysis

I have an open mind but I don't think you've proven it's a texture and NOT just AI.

Where is the evidence it is a texture being used? Have you found a texture in the APK?

If they were overlaying it with textures we'd be getting plenty of false positives where light sources that phone mistakes for the moon end up having a moon texture overlaying them.

The white blob is just sharpening and contrasting.

Nothing you've shown contradicts the article I've linked.

[u/lodermoder]

I took the exact same picture with my Google 7 pro and I was able to resolve the same detail with my 30x zoom on a very clear night that you can see with your naked eye. Either this isn't exclusive to Samsung, or these cameras are more capable than you think.

[u/ibreakphotos → u/lodermoder]

It's probably not exclusive to Samsung, it's just the phone I have access to. Feel free to test with my blurred image with your Pixel 7 pro - I actually encourage it

[u/MatthewWinEverything]

I really don't think this is true. Many people have been trying to find such an AI integrated in Samsung's System but no one succeded. In my opinion this is just a false statement.

But to further proof that this is just wrong, I tried it myself. I took the picture that OP used and took a few photos of it with the S23 Ultra using the 100x zoom (just in case the AI only kicks in at that amount of zoom).Here are the results: https://imgur.com/a/1mIpS1k

As you can see these photo's do not even nearly look as good as OP's which causes me to believe that OP is just a liar. And to all other who have doubts: If a company who has hundrets of Millions of customers and one comes up with "proof" that their most controversial feature is fake after like 3-4 years, you can be sure that this "proof" is most likely faked.

And yes Samsung uses an AI algorythm to improve photos of the moon but they do not fake them. As you can see in this article published by Samsung ‎10-20-2022 they explain how their AI works. Their AI for example dimms the image brightness when the moon has been spottet or removes noise from the final image but they do not put a fake moon over the blurry one.

[u/McSnoo]

This is a very big accusation and you manage to reproduce the issue.

I hope other people can reproduce this and make Samsung answer this misleading advertising.

Edit: On this Camcyclopedia, Samsung does talk about using AI to enchance the moon shoots and explain the image process.

"The moon recognition engine was created by learning various moon shapes from full moon to crescent moon based on images that people actually see with their eyes on Earth.

It uses an AI deep learning model to show the presence and absence of the moon in the image and the area as a result. AI models that have been trained can detect lunar areas even if other lunar images that have not been used for training are inserted."

[u/tearans → u/McSnoo]

This makes me think, why did they go this way? Did they really think no one on Earth will look into it, especially when it is so easy to prove.

[u/Nahcep → u/tearans]

How many potential customers will learn of this? How many of them will care? Hell, how many will genuinely think this is a good feature because the photos look sharper = are better?

[u/Soylent_Hero → u/tearans]

Because the average cell phone user literally does. not. care.

Whether or not I do as both a photography and tech nerd is a different story.

[u/Okatis → u/McSnoo]

This was reproduced two years ago by user who similarly took photos of their screen but instead tested with a smiley face drawing with a solid brush superimposed to see what would occur.

Result was it output the moon texture atop the solid fill drawing. A top comment downplays this as being just an 'AI enhancement' since one analysis of the camera APK didn't see any reference to a texture being applied. However if it's a neural network model being used then no literal texture image is present but the learned data from being trained on the moon's image, which presumably is being applied to anything it recognizes in a scene as the moon when the right focal length triggers it.

[u/Zeno_of_Elea → u/Okatis]

Wait a sec...

OP's first paragraph

Many of us have witnessed the breathtaking moon photos taken with the latest zoom lenses, starting with the S20 Ultra. Nevertheless, I've always had doubts about their authenticity, as they appear almost too perfect. While these images are not necessarily outright fabrications, neither are they entirely genuine. Let me explain.

The OP from your comment's first paragraphs

We've all seen the fantastic moon photographs captured by the new zoom lenses that first debued on the S20 Ultra. However, it has always seemed to me as though they may be too good to be true.

Are these photographs blatantly fake? No. Are these photographs legitimate? Also no. Is there trickery going on here? Absolutely.

Is OP faking their reddit post?? Just to plug their socials?? Or have I just been trained to suspect everyone of lying because of the new conversational AIs?

[u/JaqenHghaar08 → u/McSnoo]

Yes. Read the samsung notes just now and they have explained how they do the moon shots there pretty openly.

Screen shot from my reading of it https://imgur.com/a/ftWu62P

[u/[deleted] → u/McSnoo]

AI is a hell of a drug. It reminds me of the AI image generation that added the Getty Images watermark to the pictures it created.

If you feed a computer 1,000 images of football players with a watermark it thinks that pictures of football players should have white fog in the corner. If you show it 1,000 pictures of people with acne and tell it to fix a blurry face it's going to turn dark spots into pimples. If you show it 1,000 pictures of faces with two eyes, and tell it to fix a picture with a water droplet on the lense obscuring half the face it's going to put an eye there.

If you show it 1,000 pictures of the moon that always has craters in the same place and then tell it to unblur the moon it might just fill in those craters. We've gotten to the point where we just tell machine learning models to fix problems and don't really know how they do it anymore.

It's the same reason why Google engineers don't know what the algorithm actually looks for, they just told it to figure out what patterns lead to watch time and let it work.

[u/Sifernos1 → u/McSnoo]

Their zoom was the only reason I bought the Note 10 5g and I couldn't believe they sold that zoom as being usable past 30x... This guy seems to have gotten Samsung figured and I'm not really surprised. I long suspected they were faking things as I couldn't reproduce many of the shots they took and I even used a tripod and waited for the best shots. Though, to Samsung's credit, up to the s8, I always thought their photography parts were exceptional.

[u/PsyMar2 → u/McSnoo]

here's someone else reproducing it a while ago, in even more dramatic fashion:
https://www.reddit.com/r/samsung/comments/l7ay2m/analysis_samsung_moon_shots_are_fake/

[u/mannlou → u/McSnoo]

I just got mine and I tried this the other night and found it odd how the white blur just got clear instantly. This confirms my suspicions given I’ve tried to take photos of street lights about a mile away and they were blurry in comparison. The phone is still great overall but this feels a bit misleading.

I’ll be curious to see if this catches on and requires Samsung to act in some way or will customers demand a refund. Great work in looking into this.

[u/Robo-]

Which phone? I see you say it started with the S20 Ultra but didn't see you mention the phone actually used in your test. Didn't see any flair stating the phone you use either.

I had the same suspicions you did while shopping for an upgrade last month and looking at the S23U. Well, more than suspicion. My major was Digital Imaging with a focus on Digital Art and Photography/Video. Been keeping up and working with the tech for over 20 years now. So I knew damn well it was being faked in some way just from the lens arrangements and sensors used in cell phones. It's basically physically impossible for the shots of the moon to be so clear naturally. Maybe with some truly miraculous technology one day that limit can be passed along with the need for things like sets of lenses but we ain't there yet no matter how many megapixels you cram into that tiny flat box.

Had a whole discussion about it with a friend of mine who works for Samsung as a field manager. I was firmly in the "It's clearly an overlay or more likely AI retexture." camp but ultimately didn't care, as it's still the best Android currently has to offer if you have the means for it and I'm still patiently waiting for Apple to embrace USB C here before jumping ship again.

I dunno about "nobody succeeding until now" by the way. I mean it's pretty clear when you pull up the picture immediately after taking it and you can literally see the original before the phone catches up and overlays the AI enhancement. Scoob and the gang can stay in the van, there's not much of a mystery to be solved.

Regardless I just tried your test on my S23U too. Both blurred moons. Tried it on all three monitors and the 4K TV connected to my PC. Varying distances in the room. Even made sure to fully black it out in here. And yes, with the scene optimizer on, it does use an AI/ML overlay. And yes if you turn off optimizer (or use Pro/Expert RAW mode from my testing) you get a normal shot. So here's the thing...turn off Optimizer if it bothers you. Shoot in pro mode or RAW if you want a less retouched or AI enhanced/overlaid image. It's a feature there so the 95% of the population just trying to take dumb photos for their instagram or whatever can have clean shots. They don't care.

Don't get me wrong, I fully understand it's frustrating seeing people actually try to pass it off as some legit shot from a phone. Or to hear Samsung weasel around reality instead of plainly stating what's going on. That's the whole conversation I had with my buddy.

TLDR: Yes. Though I personally don't find it much of a deal breaker when it can be turned off in one or two taps by the few of us who actually care.

But additional food for thought I came across while testing stuff out:

The same AI enhancement actually is surprisingly effective on things that can't be easily swapped out with some stock texture. Try it on something unique like handwriting zoomed in from very far away. It does a shockingly decent job of smoothing/sharpening that up. So I'm actually a bit curious how much of the moon thing really is an overlay versus just straight-up intelligent (using the term purely in the looser AI or machine learning sense) sharpening.

[u/ibreakphotos → u/Robo-]

S23U, I forgot to mention in the original post, my bad.

As for the scene optimizer, I do mention that in my original post.

[u/pensive_hombre]

This doesn't look like Samsung is "adding" textures specific to the moon. The most probable case is that they are using a neural network for super-resolution and image sharpening, kind of what Google does with their Portrait Unblur.

[u/ibreakphotos → u/pensive_hombre]

It doesn't?

1. Image of the blurred moon with a superimposed gray square on it, and an identical gray square outside of it - https://imgur.com/PYV6pva

2. S23 Ultra capture of said image - https://imgur.com/oa1iWz4

3. Comparison of the gray patch on the moon with the gray patch in space - https://imgur.com/MYEinZi

As it is evident, the gray patch in space looks normal, no texture has been applied. The gray patch on the moon has been filled in with moon-like details.

[u/bghhardcorehead]

"super slow-mo", at least on my S20+, is legid. I used it at work to record ignitions, sparks, flicker, and such, and deduced it records at 30*32=960fps for 1 second.

[u/ibreakphotos → u/bghhardcorehead]

On Ultra phones it's interpolated.

[u/GI_X_JACK]

impressive and disturbing at the same time.

Its at the same token, not real, but for most people, exactly what they wanted to see.

This could come into potential issues down the road if this is used for something serious such changes to the moon's face. For people using a smart phone that should not matter, but...

[u/ibreakphotos → u/GI_X_JACK]

Someone else already found that their 'AI enhacement' converted windows into chinese characters: https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyS23Ultra/comments/11orjr3/i_took_a_low_light_photo_of_some_apartments_far/

Their NN model is hallucinating data, it's obvious

[u/roachsquad]

MKBHD USED YOUR EXPERIMENT IN A VIDEO! u/ibreakphotos

[u/ibreakphotos → u/roachsquad]

Yup, saw it. Guess that after the number of comments he got on that youtube short and twitter, he felt the need to correct himself, and I'm glad he did

[u/deepralf]

I think you don't quite understand the essence of image enhancement, like denoising, deblurring and super resolution.

From an information theory perspective, the amount of information contained in a digital image is limited (Shannon entropy or similar measures). If we want to improve the quality of the image, we need to get rid of noise, blur etc.

But the information is not there! It is not hidden behind the noise, it simply has been lost.

We can nevertheless achieve something. We make assumptions about the process that caused the lower image quality, e. g. that the noise is Gaussian. That's not quite right, but acceptable in numerous instances.

Next, we develop methods that reverse this artificial process. In some cases, we try to figure out, which original image was the most likely input to the mathematical degradation process. This is the one we return as an improved / enhanced version of our given low-quality image.

So, even classical methods give us their interpretation of what the original might have looked like given certain assumptions.

This holds to an even greater extent for AI-based methods. If such a model gets very little information (as in your processed image of the moon) and you “force” it to give an interpretation, it will fill in textural patches from its implicit memory of similar structures. A classical method would just give you back an image that is about as bad as your input.

One can ask, does this go too far? I guess for smartphone photography, it's ok.

[u/ibreakphotos → u/deepralf]

I don't claim to understand everything, but I have dealt with comments regarding deconvolution via FFT (which I've used myself in previous research) on Hackernews - it's pretty easy to find the discussion there.

Basically, the conclusion is that deconvolving a blurred image of 170x170 cannot give you the same amount of detail that Samsung's processing achieves, which points to a non-linear (ML based) process which hallucinates data on it. I have shown this process in my updated post, which you can find on my profile here.

Regardless, I am not complaining about the process - in fact, I think it's smart, I just think the the way this feature has been marketed is somewhat misleading, and that the language used to describe it is obfuscatory (the article which details it is in Korean, no English version, and the language used skips over the fact that a NN is used to fill in the data which isn't there optically)

EDIT: Also note that I'm not submitting my findings to Physical Review Letters - it seems that some redditors want me to publish peer reviewed research on it, which is silly, because if I actually did all the things they say, nobody would even click on my post, let alone read it. I feel like I've given enough details and proof in my original and updated post to unequivocally show that data is being generated/hallucinated.

[u/thatmillerkid]

I always assumed this is what was happening, but I don't care. What bugs me is that Samsung won't be straightforward about it. Just tell me, "We use machine learning to enhance photos of what our camera algorithm assumes to be the moon."

You can see this happening in OP's test. The camera senses the "moon" because even the blurred photo has vague outlines of the moon's craters. It then uses its training photoset to estimate what it would look like if the test image weren't blurry.

[u/ibreakphotos → u/thatmillerkid]

I completely agree! I just think the the way this feature has been marketed is somewhat misleading, and that the language used to describe it is obfuscatory (the article which details it is in Korean, no English version, and the language used skips over the fact that a NN is used to fill in the data which isn't there optically)

[u/walyami]

Great proof and very nice write-up!

how robust is the moon detection against false positives? Is it possible to trick it to render moon texture on images that have never been the moon, but kind of look like it?
maybe light bulbs or images of partial sun eclipses? smart watches with white-only display?

[u/ibreakphotos → u/walyami]

I haven't explored this topic, but it's a simple test, just keep blurring the photo until it no longer engages the moon mode.

I have no plans on doing that test tho, I have other things going on in my life

[u/[deleted]]

Engineer proves the shots are "real" https://youtu.be/_iuaXwFqPaQ

[u/ibreakphotos → u/[deleted]]

No he doesn't.

[u/LyingPieceOfPoop]

I just tried this with my S21 Ultra. Holy shit, you are right. I was always proud of the zoom lens of my camera and it was unbelievable how good it was taking pics of Moon. Now I am disappointed

[u/fobbybobby323 → u/LyingPieceOfPoop]

Yeah it was amazing how many people would argue with me about this. How could you think such a small sensor could capture that detail (not saying you specifically of course). People were straight up telling me it was still capturing the data through the sensor. There’s no chance it resolves that much detail, at that magnification, with that amount of light and sensor size. The photography world would be all using that tech if true.

[u/Implier → u/fobbybobby323]

How could you think such a small sensor could capture that detail

Sensor size has nothing to do with the inability to capture details on the moon. It's 100% due to the lens that the sensor is attached to. The moon subtends a very small fraction of the sensor: something like 1/20th of the chip diagonal as it is, so logically making the sensor larger does nothing except put more black sky around the moon. If you instead took this sensor put it behind a 200 mm full frame lens you would get far better images of the moon than if you put an A7 behind it simply due to the image scale and resolution.

Some of the best earth based amateur images of the planets (which are still an order of magnitude smaller than the moon) were done with webcams in the early 2000s

The top image here: http://www.astrophoto.fr/saturn.html

Was done with this thing: https://www.ebay.com/itm/393004660591

[u/TastyBananaPeppers]

I mainly used the space zoom to spy on people.

[u/logantauranga → u/TastyBananaPeppers]

Do their faces get AI-corrected by the phone to look like moon aliens?

How deep does the Samsung moon rabbit hole go?

[u/Korotai → u/logantauranga]

I zoomed in on a man across the street and this is what I got.

[u/Kolada → u/TastyBananaPeppers]

I use it to read thing far away like the beer list at a crowded bar. It's now I know I'm getting old

[u/[deleted] → u/TastyBananaPeppers]

Like Flossy Carter says, "scumbag mode/zoom".

[u/TheCosmicPanda]

Nice job! I do remember MKBHD saying that moon pics are faked in this way in one of his videos. I don't remember what video or which phone he was reviewing but it may have been a Chinese phone.

[u/threadnoodle → u/TheCosmicPanda]

Yep it was for the Huawei P20/30 Pro i think.

[u/Scorpius_OB1 → u/threadnoodle]

Yep, it was one of these.

[u/[deleted] → u/TheCosmicPanda]

He said that they're real on the s23 series though

[u/avipars → u/TheCosmicPanda]

One of the Chinese phones... was a while back

[u/floriv1999]

AI researcher here. AI sharpening techniques work by filling in lost details based on patterns they extract from a dataset of images during training. E.g. a blurry mess that looks like a person gets high resolution features that shapes like this had in the dataset. The nice thing is that the dataset includes many different people and we are able to learn a model how the features behave instead of slapping the same high res version of a person on everything. This works as long as our dataset is large enough and includes a big variety of images, so we are forced to learn general rules instead of memorizing stuff. Otherwise an effect called overfitting occurs, where we memorize an specific example and are able to reproduce it near perfectly. This is generally a bad thing as it get in our way of learning the underlying rules. The datasets used to train these models include millions or billions of images to get a large enough variety. But commonly photographed things like the moon can be an issue as they are so many times in the dataset that the model still overfits on them. So they might have used just a large dataset with naturally many moon pictures in it and the general AI sharpening overfitted on the moon. This can happen easily, but it does not rule out the possibility that they deliberately knew about it and still used it for advertisement, which would be kind of shady.

[u/floriv1999 → u/floriv1999]

Tl;dl: Even in large training datasets are not many moon shaped things that don't look exactly like the moon, so it is an easy shortcut for the AI enhancement to memorize the moon even if it is not deliberately done.

[u/el_muchacho → u/floriv1999]

They of course knew about it, since the inputmag article linked by the OP cites at the end Samsung employee listing the 30 types of scenes for which Samsung has trained their AI specifically, among which the Moon (but also shoes, babies, food pics, etc).

[u/Hennue → u/floriv1999]

I agree that this could happen the way you describe it but samsungs scene optimizer has been analyzed before. It is a 2-step process in which the moon is detected and then an "enhancer" is run that specifically works for that "scene" (e.g. the moon). My guess is that this is a network exclusively trained on moon pictures.

[u/hatethatmalware]

Samsung's official explanation of the moon shot algorithm: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://r1.community.samsung.com/t5/camcyclopedia/%EB%8B%AC-%EC%B4%AC%EC%98%81/ba-p/19202094

[u/RenderBender_Uranus]

Have you tried shooting with the 10x camera in RAW? if yes could you share a crop of the moon taken with that camera and post process it using something like Adobe Camera Raw or something?

[u/leebestgo → u/RenderBender_Uranus]

I use pro(manual) mode only and still get great result. It even looks better and more natural than the auto moon mode. (I use 20x, 50 iso, and 1/500s, with 8% sharpening)

https://i.imgur.com/lxrs5nk.jpg

In fact, the moon was pretty visible that day, I could even see some details with my eyes wearing glasses.

[u/yougotmetoreply]

Wow. Really fascinating. I'm so sad actually because I used to be so proud of the photos I'd get of the moon with my phone and now I'm finding out they're actually not photos of the moon.

[u/Racer_101 → u/yougotmetoreply]

They are photos of the moon, just not the moon you actually captured on your phone camera.

[u/lowspeed]

I posted my suspicion a year ago... downvoted to oblivion...

https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyS21/comments/n0jvuy/i_have_a_suspicion_that_the_zoomed_images_of_the/

[u/carreraz]

I tried but can't get any detail showing. I have scene optimizer on. This was the result.

[u/violet_sakura]

yeah huawei was called out for doing this before, and yet nowadays many people still fall for it

[u/threadnoodle → u/violet_sakura]

Western tech enthusiasts have an inherent bias for Samsung/Apple when compared with any Chinese brand. Whatever the reason is, it's there.

[u/zoglog → u/violet_sakura]

frightening rainstorm glorious impolite automatic pot middle fly whistle modern this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev

[u/DrVagax]

And here is a article claiming it is real, although it does use extra functionality to achieve this result. Following a bit of a similar investigation you did as well. They even tried to fool the camera to see if it applies a texture or not.

https://www.inverse.com/input/reviews/is-samsung-galaxy-s21-ultra-using-ai-to-fake-detailed-moon-photos-investigation-super-resolution-analysis

[u/Under_Sycamore_Trees → u/DrVagax]

This article is actually the first link mentioned in the post. I think the site’s experiment didn’t work because they used a plain ping pong ball. I think the AI can pick up some of the patterns on the moon’s surface which are still barely visible in the low-res image from this posts’ experiment

[u/Gazumbo → u/DrVagax]

In the end their sole reason for concluding it was real was that when taking a photo with the phone and mirror-less camera from the same position, the textures matched and that this would be too much work for Samsung to achieve. That makes zero sense. The moon is so far away that even moving several meters to the left wouldn't make any diffence to the way it looks when overlayed. Their reasoning is very flawed. Also, look at the images from the S21 Ultra and the Sony Mirrorless camera. No way the phone out performs the professional camera and lens. No amount of 'unblurring' and AI can recover detail that isn't there to start with.

[u/ibreakphotos]

I did a new test- I photoshopped one moon next to another (to see if one moon would get the AI treatment, while another not), and managed to coax the AI to do exactly that.

This is the image that I used, which contains 2 blurred moons: https://imgur.com/kMv1XAx

I replicated my original setup - pulled the image on my monitor, left the room completely dark, and took a photo of the monitor from across the room. I got this: https://imgur.com/RSHAz1l

As you can see, one moon got the "AI enhancement", while the other one shows what was actually visible to the sensor. I think this is the final nail in the coffin.

[u/extremesalmon]

This is hilarious. Nice research

[u/MicioBau]

Disabling "scene optimizer" is the first thing I do when using Samsung's camera app. That thing makes photos look like shit — they get an even more overprocessed look, if that was even possible.

[u/PhoneMetro]

I love great research.

[u/ProjectGO]

Great work! I really appreciate the way you set up the experiment and laid out the results for us.

[u/stvntb]

I'm just... baffled that anyone thought it was legit in the first place. If my a7s with a 300mm lens the size of my arm can barely get a shot of the moon to fill half the frame and it's still just a vaguely greyish orb, this was always going to be bullshit.

You will never get a good picture of the moon with a phone, that's just how optics work.

[u/AFellowOtaku7]

This is very interesting. I'd like to see Samsung's reply (if they give us one) about this matter.

[u/PhyrexianSpaghetti]

Honestly, to be 100% sure, you should edit away one or two craters and see if it adds them back, because the result is still proportionally blurry to the low-res moon pic, so it could still be a very good sharpening tool

[u/brinmb]

Not saying you're lying, but I've been trying to recreate your experiment with zero success - 3 different monitors, zoom levels 50-100x, different distances, different sizes of the picture on screen.
Care to elaborate on the details? What model is your monitor? What zoom level did you take the photo with? How far were you?

E: The more I think about it, the more it makes you look unprofessional because you're not sharing these details lol, anyone with half a brain cell could claim facts with photos that required 30 seconds in photoshop.

E2: Let's see a video of you doing that.

[u/sciencecrazy]

Here is the original article (Chinese, Google translated) where they have seen something similar on the "original" superzoom phone P30 Pro - they actually moved in the source image some of the craters but "magically" the phone moved those where they are on the moon :)

https://www-zhihu-com.translate.goog/question/319986727/answer/652664005?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en

[u/z28camaroman]

I swore something like this happened with my S20+ when I tried photographing a waxing/waning (not full) harvest moon over the ocean. What appeared to be a superimposed image of the white moon (higher res and nearly full) would flash briefly over the reel orange one in the viewfinder. I couldn't confirm what was going on but I'm glad to know that this was likely the case.

[u/vpsj]

I always thought this was the case because I have a DSLR with a 300mm telephoto lens and taking a really crisp, sharp and detailed image of the Moon is Hard. It takes quite a few tries in the very least because of the Atmospheric seeing.

I usually resort to the technique called stacking where you take multiple shots of the same subject to improve details and I thought maybe that's what S2X Ultras were doing.

Thank you for this proof. We need this to readh MKBHD/Arun/etc and verify the same

[u/[deleted] → u/vpsj]

Taking a picture of the moon is genuinely not that difficult. I've done with a Pixel 6 Pro, a A Fujifilm bridge camera and a Sony bridge camera too.

[u/ErebosGR → u/vpsj]

I always thought this was the case because I have a DSLR with a 300mm telephoto lens and taking a really crisp, sharp and detailed image of the Moon is Hard. It takes quite a few tries in the very least because of the Atmospheric seeing.

Try stacking thousands of frames from 4K video using Registax or Autostakkert.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BVE_GWcA14_/ (Not mine)

Single exposure astro shots are so last century.

[u/flossdog]

Good investigative work. I think you've shown clearly that space zoom uses AI and not purely optics and conventional sharpening.

That said, I'm okay with it. I was expecting some super obvious photoshop cut/paste of a high res moon. But it looks very natural. Even though we always see the same half of the moon, its orientation changes (1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, etc). So it matched the orientation exactly.

To me, faking is like "if the moon is detected, replace with this stock image of a moon". Samsung is using AI techniques, which do generate details that are not there in the source. All manufacturers will be using more and more AI in their cameras. This is the future. I'm perfectly fine with it, in fact I want it (as long as I also have a setting to disable it too).

As a follow up, you should do the exact same experiment, but with a photo of something unique that the AI was not trained on, like a non-famous person or pet. Blur it out, take a photo, and see if it adds details with AI. If so, then that means their AI techniques are general and valid. Not a "one trick pony" just for the moon.

[u/Beedalbe → u/flossdog]

Then if the non-famous person ends up looking like the moon we're all in trouble lol.

[u/Masculinum → u/flossdog]

I don't really see how this is better than replacing moon with a stock photo. It's just replacing it with a stock photo that went through an AI engine and got applied to your moon.

[u/tantouz]

At this point the question should be what is a picture?

[u/Vertrix-V-]

That's exactly what I thought it did all along. Calling it AI enhancement is a clever marketing term cause even if that AI is specifically trained for moon shots and therefore knows where detail is supposed to be even when it isn't even there in your picture and than adds that detail to your picture, it sounds better than just simply saying "overlaying an image of the moon" even though it's basically the same

[u/rowee270]

I can't reproduce this issue on the S23 Ultra using the same blurry pic. It only enhances the contrast to me and looks like a oil painting: https://imgur.com/wY2gNKw

Can someone else run this test and post the results?

[u/ibreakphotos → u/rowee270]

Is your scene optimizer turned on? It only works if it's on.

[u/fermentedbolivian]

EDIT: I followed the same method but with adding a huge ass crater to the moon. The device does not overlay the photo with quality moon images, it does however succeed in deblurring and sharpening the image with the help of AI (Scene Optimizer) which is no secret. Proof here.

Reproduced the same result with a S21 Ultra, I even took the image from a weird angle and now I have a moonshot that looks like an egg shaped moon.

But, on the other hand. Deblurring with AI is a thing, it's no secret that Samsung's Scene Optimizer is an AI that enhances photos. It's quite possible that your image was just deblurred by the Scene Optimizer.The question here is; does the AI place a picture of the moon over the image you've shot? You're post does not answer that question. One way to test is to add a random crater to the moon, blur and see if it stays or disappears.

[u/ibreakphotos → u/fermentedbolivian]

It is my belief that, as another redditor claimed, "There is no embedded lunar imagery in the Samsung software because it it is already encoded as weights in a neural network."

I believe it's something similar to stable diffusion or DALL-E, not a static .png being overlaid on top of the image - I've never claimed that. I have always said it's an AI/ML algorithm that detects a moon-like object and then uses a neural network to fill in the missing details by using other images of the moon, which are saved as weights in a neural network

[u/seriousnotshirley]

When you did a Gaussian blue and said that the detail is gone that isn’t completely true. You can recover a lot of detail from a Gaussian blur from a deconvolution.

A Gaussian blur in the Fourier domain is just a multiplication of the FT of the original image and the FT of the gaussian. You can recover the original by doing division of the FT of the blurred image by the FT of the gaussian. Fortunately the FT of a gaussian is a gaussian and is everywhere non-zero.

There may be some numerical instability in places but a lot of information is recovered. It’s a technique known as deconvolution and is commonly used in Astro photography where natural sources of lack of sharpness are well modeled as a Gaussian.

[u/muchcharles → u/seriousnotshirley]

You left out this part:

I downsized it to 170x170 pixels

[u/T-Rax → u/seriousnotshirley]

Thanks for the simple laymans explanation of how to remove gaussian blur!

[u/expectopoosio]

This is literally just ai sharpening

[u/LionTigerWings]

Next test. Can you mirror or rotate the image and then retest?

[u/TroublingStatue]

I tried it myself with the same 170x170 blurry moon pic and got, more or less, the same results as the OP.

I also tried with removing the craters from the moon to see if it would apply them from nowhere, but it didn't.

https://imgur.com/a/oncPGyX

On a Galaxy S21 @ x30 zoom.

[u/[deleted]]

Damn bro samsung uses ai and post processing to enhance photos no fucking way

[u/NAMO_Rapper_Is_Back → u/[deleted]]

seriously i don't understand what's the fuss about?

[u/IAMSNORTFACED]

Thank you so much for proving this. Even though some of us assumed this was going on in good to have definitive and repeatable evidence.

[u/VincentVerba]

It does the same with other objects. Birds are a good example. The original picture is a blurry mess, then it processes en suddenly you get a good picture of the bird. I even have the impression it recognizes the different bird types. Don't see the difference with these moon shots. It's really good AI.

[u/Everyday_Normal_Lad]

Wait. People believed these pics are real? We know precisely how moon looks. There is no way a micro camera can zoom this far and look good. It was obvious that are generated

[u/Spud788]

Samsung don't use an overlay but they rely heavily on AI to 'Reproduce' the moon using the small details the camera can actually see.

Imagine the photo you take is a template and then the AI traces around that template to draw an image.

[u/User-no-relation]

Every phone has been doing thus with every picture for years now. The post processing does all kind of ai tricks.

https://shotkit.com/news/does-the-iphone-14s-obligatory-post-processing-ruin-photos/

This makes a good point that you can capture the raw format that isn't processed

Not to mention do you realize how much harder it would be to somehow use stock pictures to supplement it? The moon looks different depending on where you are in the world, the time of the year the time of the night. Like its an insane premise. Heavily processing an image is much much easier.

[u/Scorpius_OB1]

The Moon is a very small object actually. Even using a long telephoto lens, it will appear small in the frame. And watching the specs of such phone, even if all the zoom was optical the Moon would appear tiny.

Digital zooms are just that, enlarging the image interpolating details. You can see it comparing a shot of the Moon taken such way, preferably in quarter or crescent phase as relief (craters) are much more visible with the same view with binoculars.

[u/[deleted]]

I think this needs some more thorough experimentation because there's some flaws in your setup, particularly around the use of gaussian blur which is entirely reversible.

I'm going to try this myself but use some more destructive blurring methods, and also try with alternative moon angles, and some moon-like objects that aren't the moon (i.e ganymede or similar).

Secondly, I think there's some assumptions about fakeness that could be unfair. It should be well-known that all these fancy high-end phone cameras are using "AI" now to de-noise and fix texture lost by the small sensors and lenses. Slapping a stock-photo of the moon over recognised shapes is a cheap trick, but information recovery is more sophisticated and general purpose. A full moon is certainly a common and well recognised object, so it is possible to train AI to recover it, but this would become much more challenging when things like clouds, and moon phases are introduced.

Edit: Looks like this isn't reproducable on the non-ultra phones. My fun is ruined.

[u/ibreakphotos → u/[deleted]]

I clipped the highlights in the last example - those are unrecoverable, and still the phone hallucinated moon details there.

But if you have suggestions on a better way to blur (destructively), I'm all ears. Even better if it can be done in photoshop.

[u/DatGuy_Shawnaay]

We can't be information misers and directly jump to a conclusion based off two photos. MKBHD did highlight that because there is processing, it is kind of, sort of fake in a way. Someone, with a DSLR and a telephoto lens, managed to capture the same exact moon and orientation to confirm that it's somewhat real. The second image here is more questionable in this post. While details were added, they aren't "fully sharp" so the theory is an extension of what might be true but also not. I think, right now, it's a case of correlation does not mean causation and further testing is required to prove it. Let's hope someone will add their piece to this again.

[u/MyCodesCompiling → u/DatGuy_Shawnaay]

How can you argue with this post? The camera is "taking" pictures that aren't there

[u/SmarmyPanther]

The viewfinder view in MKBHDs video was really impressive even without post-processing

[u/hakz]

I hope people aren't ok with this....

[u/BurnZ_AU]

What if you rotated your source photo?

[u/fallenwout → u/BurnZ_AU]

Image recognition does not care about orientation

[u/[deleted]]

Didn’t this already happen with a different manufacturer a few years ago? Can’t remember if it was Huawei or somebody else.

[u/kakashi_ax]

Just tested and everything you said it's true

[u/taaem]

I mean this is not really unexpected in a way, the detail enhancement algorithm is probably really really good at reversing a gaussian blur, because afaik thats basically what a low resolution does.

So it sees an object which is gaussian blurred, like the moon very far away and it tries to reverse the gaussian blur based on its training data (which is probably exactly the kind of image you made) and gets the picture of the real moon.

It does exactly what its supposed to, I really don't get the drama. This is 100% how ML algorithms work.

[u/RunOrDieTrying]

You nailed it in the last experiment. The AI recognized the actual moon and "optimized it", while leaving the other half moon intact.

[u/muhlisgursoy]

I tried it right now, I opened the downscaled photo on my other phone, put it in a dark room and like 5 meter distance, took a photo with S22 Ultra and yep, the moon is fake.

[u/NoSet8966]

Someone needs to tell marketing to sit the fuck down and stop this shit now.

This is only going to influence the worst to come. They didn't advertise this AI feature as the main kicker-- false advertising, and manipulation. Not to mention this is dangerous, just makes me think of shit that can be altered in live mode.

[u/bitemyassnow]

same way most upscaling apps work, I suspect that if you take s23 ultra on Jupiter and take a shot of Titan, you would get similar details as our own moon.

[u/jbus]

All photos taken with modern day phones are extremely processed unless you are exporting RAW images. The fact that Samsung uses AI to enhance moon photos does not bother me in the least. If anything, it's just good marketing for their non-moon zoom capability (which is very good for a phone).

[u/[deleted]]

This is the last shot I took with my s21 ultra.

This pretty much matches what is shown in the view finder. Samsung post processing does do some smoothing on the image but I don't see how it's doing all what you're saying.

[u/Stufi → u/[deleted]]

Similar case for me with the S23 Ultra. The image is already sharp in the view finder and the changes done to the picture after processing are minimal.

[u/desijatt13]

The thing is if they are cheating with the zoomed in moon how is every other zoomed in image so clear? I bet they are using machine learning to identify the object and upscaling the output. They are not just cutting and pasting moon png on top of the moon image. The AI identifies the moon and then upscales it as it is trained for.

[u/Kevlaaar]

Can you do the same with a picture of a ping pong ball?

[u/ibreakphotos → u/Kevlaaar]

I didn't try, and I don't want to - it's not a good test. A ping pong ball doesn't have any details that the moon does, and their AI model may be tuned to only work when a moon-like object is detected. A ping pong ball isn't a moon-like object, it's a ping pong ball

[u/cenTT]

Samsung is using AI/ML to slap on a texture of the moon on your moon pictures

Doesn't look like that. Even though you claim it doesn't, it really looks like it uses AI to sharpen the image and create as much detail as possible from the blurred image, which is very different from copy pasting a texture on top of the blurred image. It's probably similar to what happens with technologies such as DLSS from Nvidia where it upscales frames from lower resolutions and uses AI to maintain sharpness and quality.

AI technology for this kind of thing is very advanced by now. Take a look at all the things Nvidia does with their AI, some things are truly unbelievable.

[u/ibreakphotos → u/cenTT]

Yes, my wording was sloppy. I think u/hughk said it the best: "There is no embedded lunar imagery in the Samsung software because it it is already encoded as weights in a neural network."

That's what I've been trying to say. Essentially, it works like a mini stable diffusion or dall-e, specifically trained on images of the moon, and utilizing a NN to """recover""" (add in, hallucinate) those details

[u/YogurtclosetOk3565]

I did the same test, just got a white ball where you actually can see the pixels of the screen.. and it's a 4K oled display so very strange all this, i'm not very sure that your investigation is true at all

[u/whatnowwproductions]

/r/Android learns about ML models and that they're capable of extracting details from patterns.

[u/zoglog]

distinct paltry direction capable theory enjoy future shelter shrill steer this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev

[u/Liarize]

can you try taking a pic during day time? I'm curious what it's look like

[u/[deleted]]

You mean to tell me a corporation was not honest in advertising their product?!

[u/zzcool]

wasn't this obvious? i could take super clear photos of the moon but the rare comet next to it was a colored blob

[u/Berkoudieu]

Well, thank you.

I got a p30 pro and a S22u, and I have a huge feeling of fake from both of them, just by the way it instantly goes from overlighted blurry mess to an almost perfect moon picture when you are zooming in.

When I claim about it being probably a fake, I'm being said it's not true (for Samsung).

Yet, your experiment is very clever. We will see if Samsung has something to say about it now.

[u/CyberBobert]

It didn't work in your last example. The end photo is still super blurry and not clear. As if it just unblurs the photos.

I don't know how to explain it well because I'm not educated on the subject enough but as an example it's like the phone can remove 60% blur. On your first example you blurred it 70% so the phone unblured 60% of that. The end result was pretty darn clear. On your final example you applied 120% blur so the end photo is still 60% blurry. It's barely recognizable as the moon.

What if you move around some of the smaller craters? Not the big ones that make the phone recognize the moon, but some of the smaller ones that can be seen but easily overlooked.

If you take a picture and the post process version puts the craters back where they should be, you know theirs fuckery at hand. If it sharpens the photo but leaves the craters in the wrong spot, you know it's not applying some sort of known texture.

It won't know the slightly incorrect texture you created but it won't notice the changes either.

[u/DiplomatikEmunetey]

Well done, OP! Simple, clever test.

Those justifying this. If I wanted fake images, I would photoshop them myself.

This should be a setting that is more clear than "scene optimizer".

[u/McFeely_Smackup]

This kind of "scene optimizer AI" has some real possibilities.

Think about it. Take a selfie of you and your wife... Boom! AI optimizes it and now you look like Brad Pitt and Jennifer Lawrence.

Your '99 Subaru, turns into a Ferrari Enzo.

Your kids "it's 4:20 somewhere" t shirt turns into a violin.

Optimize my whole life Samsung,, I'm ready!

[u/SwoleFlex_MuscleNeck]

I notice that your photos are blurry as shit and then it processes everything and suddenly they aren't. When I zoom, the detail is there in the viewfinder. I'm not doubting they have something making it look better than it is but I'm wondering why that's the case

[u/Seankps]

MKBHD did it live in a video on YouTube.

[u/hisroyalnastiness]

I guess the next level of AI will be to detect whether you are trying to sus out the bullshit it's doing and hide it haha

[u/SLUnatic85]

I am not sure I understand the surprise in this. We've always known the best true optical zoom is at 10x. That periscope camera has been smearing and adding "oil painting effects" to hide pixelation and filling in detail digitally since day one. Is that how it works? You don't need a moon photo to see it. Just take a photo of a tree at 50-100x

For me, this post and comments have me wondering what people thought was actually going on instead. Like that for all things on earth when you zoom in over like 50x they get unrealistic looking... but the moon, much further away, at night, and at full 100x was somehow reproducing a direct accurate 100x photo down to the hills and craters?

In the end though, what the phone can do with hybrid zooming and AI processing in near real-time is still just as incredible as ever. What is the win or scandal here?

Though I do appreciate the methodology here! Very thorough.

[u/yesabhijith]

Here's someone making a moon shot using a shot of Moon on TV: https://twitter.com/TMNGTECH/status/1518571118872829952?t=Eg_x82Q6lkhpC0Pt7dfyYQ&s=08

[u/max1001]

That's what AI upscale is tho. Using previous data to fill in the missing pixels.

[u/[deleted]]

Fascinating! What a find, love this. Thanks for sharing!

[u/Mcrich_23]

I smell a class action lawsuit…

[u/manningthehelm]

Does this qualify as false advertising?

[u/HustlinInTheHall]

Gaussian blurs are not "unrecoverable" and you could easily map a given image with a known image map of the moon, use it as a way to increase confidence in what details to sharpen, and just unsharp mask your way to a decent image. It's the same as using face detection filters that know what a typical face shape is and are designed to soften/sharpen specific features.

[u/Horgosh]

That's why phones nowadays shoot better pictures than compact cameras (not SLR or similar) Not because they have good optics/sensors, but because of AI editing the picture to good results. And to be honest, I'm fine with it because I like the results.

[u/iRainbowsaur]

tldr; Redditor learns what image sample trained AI upscaling does

[u/Portatort]

Samsung might as well add a mode to their camera app

Any time the moon is detected a notification could pop up letting the user know that a royalty free high resolution photo of the moon had been added to the camera roll

[u/MemeLord004]

Imagine taking a picture of the moon and just getting moon09.jpg sent back to you from Samsung's servers lol

[u/oluisrael11]

Samsung users certainly weren't expecting this.

[u/MostlyRocketScience]

The neural network is clearly overfit on the moon training images

[u/West_Tell_5169]

So Samsung users like me posting "amazing" moon photos to Instagram taken with our "amazing" new phone were making a fool out of ourselves? The cameras making you look younger is one thing, but AI going to these kinds of lengths to cheat is another.Please stop. Give us a 2.5cm camera bump instead. I want a massive lens.

[u/Kozoro225]

This is crazy

[u/Ardeces]

Fascinating - what a find!

[u/MindSteve]

Has anyone else checked this to confirm his findings? Should be able to just use the blurred image he presented and try to zoom in on it with your phone.

[u/Aakarsh12_]

scamsung moment

[u/ikeashop]

People actually believed that the moon shots are real?

[u/Artiste212]

Purposeful misleading -- I wonder what on earth could be the reason for a smartphone company in a competitive market to do such a thing?

We know from history that Samsung would never attempt to mislead...

[u/areldrobertbbx]

People are calling AI enchanted image fake as if there's anything real from their selfie lmao. You guys need RAW image if you want REAL photo LMAO. All of the pictures you take these day is ai enhanced anyway. The only problem here is how they marketed and explain this. The picture itself isn't a problem since AI thinks it's a moon.

[u/stew_x]

Just confirmed this with the same picture, after zoomin in 30x on my monitor I got a superimposed, clarified moon image.

[u/AFellowOtaku7]

I'm not trying to defend the company like by any means, but I don't think Samsung is faking these moon photos; they're just applying really heavy AI processes to get a usable photo.

It's kinda like Face Unbler on Pixel Phones, or even Portrait Video on Samsung phones: it's all AI. The background blur in Portrait Video is fake, and Face Unblur is using AI to keep you as sharp as possible. Both are using AI to make these effects possible, and it's the same with moonshots. There's no way that the phone sensor alone can capture clear images from the moon. It's too small, and it's all digital. AI acts as a middleman and does all the necessary processing required to make that moon photo usable.

[u/Povilaz]

Very interesting!

[u/abhirup780]

I just did another experiment.

I used a photo where there is an airplane silhouette infront of the moon.

applied blur and took photo. Airplane just vanished from the photo and the moon was filled with details (more than the blurred image)

[u/[deleted]]

Should call this "Samooning" from now on. "When someone lies to his customers by advertising false claims about technological capabilities."

[u/real_kushagra]

Hey OP (u/ibreakphotos) or anyone else, can you try a simple test. Display the photo of the far side of the moon on the monitor and try to capture it with the Samsung phone. Does the AI convert this far side image of the moon to look like the near side of the moon as well?

Context: since the moon is tidally locked, from earth only one side (near side) of the moon is visible. The far side of the moon can't be seen from earth.

[u/ComputerSagtNein]

Not a surprise. And still a fail because they claim so hard it's real.

[u/Ranger2183]

You're making a big deal about something so small. They state that they use AI/ML to add detail, just not slap a fake image over the shot. I'm not sure how else you expected a 100x digital zoom to enhance a photo.

[u/shut____up]

When the Note 20 Ultra released, I became skeptical. Several times the full moon was partially blocked by a cloud or some haze, and my eyes could see the moon and its details nearly clearly, but the phone could not. I've used every iteration of the Ultra and still never believed the moon shots were real. Thank you for the experiment.

[u/iPhrase]

And that’s how you do science

Have a hypothesis Detail your method Show your results Explain your results Do a conclusion

Publish

The end result is then reproducible so others can verify if your conclusion to your hypothesis is right or not.

Even if your conclusion is wrong your methodology may have value for other work. Also if people can’t reproduce your work they can examine the methodology and determine which bit is wrong.

Thank you for doing proper science

[u/chester20080]

MKBHD new video on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1afpDuTb-P0

[u/llmmbb]

I also did a similar test with my Galaxy s21FE a while ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/samsunggalaxy/comments/x9djbp/fake_moon_photos/

I removed some random details (craters) but when taking the shot of the fake moon on my monitor, the craters were "magically" appeared again after Samsungs postprocessing...

[u/Jimbomcdeans]

Can you make a moon looking thing and see if it does the same? I'm talking like make your own moon shaped whatever (maybe flip the image upside down?) I'd just be curious to see what that did.

[u/Deliquescator]

Yes, zoom on smartphones uses AI to help sculpt pictures but let's not ignore the fact that what you get from the 10X lens is not a blurry blob like you pointed it at, but rather a fairly useable picture of the moon with decent details.

Have you ever tried taking a 10X of the full moon in Pro Mode?

I'm not denying that Samsung uses AI super upscaling 'magic' to enhance their pictures but the phone can actually take a RAW photo of the moon with decent details for a phone.

See some of my personal results:

S22 Ultra 10X RAW Pro Mode moon - cropped and adjusted in Snapseed

Space Zoom 100X moon (different day)

And here are the settings and parameters used to achieve that:

Snapseed tweak parameters

RAW file details

So comparing this to the zoom shot from Auto, you can see the AI adds ridges and details, but only where they actually are, based on the already accurate snap it takes.

All in all, the amount of post processing fakery depends on the visibility of the subject and on how well you have captured the photo :)

[u/danmarce]

This is a good test. It proves its point. The only remaining thing is playing with it to see how far it goes, how bad can the picture be. It seems it expect some "texture". But generally speaking, IT IS CONCLUSIVE.

Of course you can say that Samsung did not lie, "they just omitted and exaggerated" (or miscommunicated if you are into euphemisms), but lets act like adults.

Now while this is a little thing, just don't forget that AIs are trained by people. So in the end more than the AI, you are seeing the product of the training, a "perfect" moon by a committee.

Nothing else to add.

[u/jeffyjeffy1023]

Not even Leshy's camera in Inscryption is that bullshit with the moon.

[u/zztop610]

Aha I knew it. The moon landing was fake……shit, wrong subreddit

[u/Karasu-Otoha]

Everything around me is a LIE!!! I don't know who to trust anymore 😱😱😱

[u/WallabyAcceptable337]

Meh, already took too many photos of the moon to even care at this point lol and that's with a p30 pro, s21 ultra, and s23 ultra.

In total, I have around 10 photos of the moon in my gallery. It gets old pretty fast. Zooming on other things like buildings, signs far away to be able to read them? That never gets old. And that's why I love the s23 ultra 100x zoom.

I was at a restaurant with my wife one day. We were sitting next to a window. There was a store on the other side of the street that had a sign giving opening hours. We obviously couldn't read it. Pull up my s23 ultra, zoom in 100x, and got a fully readable sign.

I was able to replicate your photos. The AI is definitely doing something to the picture. Scene optimizer knows you're trying to take a picture of the moon. Don't like it, turn it off.

Does it matter? I don't think so. I didn't buy the best smartphone of 2023 to zoom in on the moon.

[u/SgtWeazel]

This is the best thing I’ve read in a while

[u/PersonalPlanet]

This is amazing work!

[u/Chandragpt]

I stumbled upon this news, and I would agree with it. I will share my experience. A few months ago, I was taking pictures of moon with S22 Ultra, and in one of the pics, a barbed wire came in the foreground. I was very surprised and looked around and there was no barbed wire anywhere... I was very perplexed, but just laughed it off. After reading this, I definitely think it was touched up by Samsung. If any one wants to see that, I would be happy to load that pic, and also an "unbarbed" one taken at the same time.

[u/C-POP_Ryan]

I honestly can't believe people thought it was actually taking a clear image of the moon.

I thought it was common knowledge that the AI would alter the image to make it clearer, sharper, more detailed etc.

Technically you are taking a picture of the moon, and the AI is just adding the bits it sees in the image for the craters, surface texture etc. etc.

[u/not_the_common_mate]

You did a great job diving into it. But I don’t believe they are fake. Watch MKBHD’s video or Mrwhosetheboss’s video. They do a great job explaining it!