AI can significantly improve quality of low-light images (video)

Posted on Tuesday, May 15 2018 @ 11:23 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Lots of companies are hard at work to improve the camera quality of smartphones. These days, fewer and fewer humans walk around with digital cameras as smartphones are quickly replacing this product category. But the small sensors in smartphones have their limitations. Interestingly, one of the next big things for smartphone photography could be artificial intelligence.

ExtremeTech writes researchers from Intel and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign illustrated that machine learning can be of major aid to get better image quality under low-light conditions.
Don’t get me wrong, the low-light capabilities of modern smartphones are excellent compared with where we were just a few short years ago. But this is the sort of area where the difference between phones and a DSLR becomes apparent. The gap between the two types of devices when shooting static shots outside is much smaller than the difference you’ll see when shooting in low light. The team built a machine learning engine by creating a data set of short exposure and long exposure low-light images (these were used for reference).
You can view the full-resolution before/after shots over here, the results are pretty impressive.



About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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