There are bad photographers who nevertheless make very good photos. The secret is in the software of your mobile phones. Yes, in recent years computational photography has advanced enormously and now, together with the use of new artificial intelligence, you practically only have to worry about holding the terminal tightly, the rest goes alone.
Predictive capture
Computer photography has been with us for a long time and continues to make important differences between devices. So many that, even with the same hardware, if the software is much more powerful and effective, the photos you can take with one or the other will be very different in terms of quality.
The maximum exponent of phone with very advanced camera software has been the Google Pixel, or the Googles Pixels to be more exact. Because both the high-end model with that cheaper version have shared something in common: its photographic quality.
In the latest versions of its software an interesting novelty was introduced called Predictive Capture or Top Shot in English. This technique is really very easy to explain and it is not magic at all. Well, it all depends on how you look at it, but the basis of this function is none other than multiple capture.
When using the Pixel’s camera app, it captures a variety of images that it then analyzes to select the one that offers the best quality at virtually every level. That is, not only aspects such as exposure, color or level of detail are taken into account. Google’s AI also analyzes aspects such as whether the people who have been photographed are focused or whether even one has closed their eyes at the least opportune moment.
With all this, the Pixel camera is capable of selecting those images that are really worth saving and discarding those that we will surely later be the ones to erase due to problems such as those mentioned above.
AI Shutter and the advance of Xiaomi
Now that you know what Google Pixel predictive capture is, let’s talk about AI Shutter. This is a new functionality that is already being tested in MIUI version 12, the customization layer of Xiaomi phones.
AI Shutter is Xiaomi’s version of predictive capture . When you activate it, because a priori it is something that you will have to do voluntarily, the terminal camera will take different shots and then be able to choose the best one among all of them.
In this selection process Xiaomi is introducing some additional improvements, being able to even detect a person’s smile . So you just have to imagine how many photos you could have saved yourself from having had this on your phone before.
Thanks to its use if it is finally implemented, something very likely to happen, the only thing you will have to worry about is holding the phone well and framing what interests you. Once you press the fire button, you can forget about it and let the software do its job to find the best possible photo.
Software, as important or more own camera
It sounds repetitive, but software remains key in every aspect of almost any technology product. If it is well optimized, the user experience improves at all levels. And in the case of smartphone cameras, if this software is capable of making a good processor, it can even fill deficiencies such as fewer lenses.
Xiaomi this seems to be quite clear and it seems that they are well focused on their care without forgetting the attractiveness of having a greater number of lenses. Although sometimes we do not share certain configurations that they do and that only serve to increase the number of sensors, but in daily use, those that are useful are reduced by almost half.
We will also see what happens with the recent move made by Adobe, who signed Marc Levoy, one of the heads of the Pixel camera . Together it looks like you intend to create a universal camera app that could bring many of these proposals and processing quality to any device that installs it.
So you have to be aware of everything. To the advances of MIUI and its camera options, to those of Google itself with its Pixels and now Adobe, which together with the rest of the manufacturers will look for those software improvements with which it manages to call the maximum number of users interested in photography.
Of course, do not forget the weight of the human factor later for everything related to composition and knowing how to detect snapshots that are worth capturing, for personal enjoyment or to share on social networks with other users.