Very fun.

There are also open-source versions of the concept, like TIC-80.

The only thing missing is upgradability.

I can only assume the quiz itself was vibe-coded and not tested. What an incredible time we live in.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47508028

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

The AR viewer runs with a much higher frame rate and you can get closer to the model. However the lighting is significantly worse, which ruins the appeal. The in-browser viewer is choppy and I can feel my phone getting a little warm, but it looks a lot more like viewing the real artifacts.

Plus, having full control over the way photos look, I've customized the output to match my taste; I don't think there's any other camera apps that produce photos quite like mine.

I just updated the RAW pipeline and I'm really happy with how the resulting photos look, plus there's this cool "RAW+ProRAW" capture mode I introduced recently.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/unpro-camera/id6535677796

I initially released it early last year and have been using it as my main camera app since, but I haven't mentioned it in one of these threads before. Unfortunately this post has come just a bit early for my most recent update to be approved; there's some nice improvements coming.

https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-photo-processing-tutorial/

Which is a pleasant read, and I like the pictures. Has the Librem 5's automatic JPEG output improved since you wrote the post about photography in Croatia (https://dosowisko.net/l5/photos/)?

I looked at your apps, and it turns out I'm already familiar with some, like 65x24. I had to laugh -- internally, anyway -- at the unfortunate one-star review you received on Matte Viewer from a user that didn't appear to understand the purpose of the app.

One that really surprised me was Trichromy, because I independently came up with and prototyped the same concept! And, even more surprisingly, there's at least one other such app on the App Store. And I thought I was so creative coming up with the idea. I tried Trichromy; it's quite elegant, and fast.

Actually, I feel we have a similar spirit in terms of our approach to creative photography, though your development skills apparently surpass mine. I'm impressed by the polish on your websites, too. Cheers.

1. The original method uses two cameras on the back, taking a picture from both simultaneously and using parallax to construct a depth map, similar to human vision. This was introduced on the iPhone 7 Plus, the first iPhone with two rear cameras (a 1x main camera and 2x telephoto camera.) Since the depth map depends on comparing the two images, it will naturally be limited to the field of view of the narrower lens.

2. A second method was later used on iPhone XR, which has only a single rear camera, using focus pixels on the sensor to roughly gauge depth. The raw result is low-res and imprecise, so it's refined using machine learning. See: https://www.lux.camera/iphone-xr-a-deep-dive-into-depth/

3. An extension of this method was used on an iPhone SE that didn't even have focus pixels, producing depth maps purely based on machine learning. As you would expect, such depth maps have the least correlation to reality, and the system could be fooled by taking a picture of a picture. See: https://www.lux.camera/iphone-se-the-one-eyed-king/

4. The fourth method is used for selfies on iPhones with FaceID; it uses the TrueDepth camera's 3D scanning to produce a depth map. You can see this with the selfie in the article; it has a noticeably fuzzier and low-res look.

You can also see some other auxiliary images in the article, which use white to indicate the human subject, glasses, hair, and skin. Apple calls these portrait effects mattes and they are produced using machine learning.

I made an app that used the depth maps and portrait effects mattes from Portraits for some creative filters. It was pretty fun, but it's no longer available. There are a lot of novel artistic possibilities for depth maps.

Not having before-and-after comparisons is mostly down to my being concerned about whether that would pass App Review; the guidelines indicate that the App Store images are supposed to be screenshots of the app, and I'm already pushing that rule with the example images for filters. I'm not sure a hubristic "here's how much better my photos are than Apple's" image would go over well. Maybe in my next update? I should at least have some comparisons on my website, but I've been bad at keeping that updated.

There's no Live Photo support, though I've been thinking about it. The reason is that my current iPhone 14 Pro Max does not support Live Photos while shooting in 48-megapixel mode; the capture process takes too long. I'd have to come up with a compromise such as only having video up to the moment of capture. That doesn't prevent me from implementing it for other iPhones/cameras/resolutions, but I don't like having features unevenly available.

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2023/10/10/hdr-explained

Greg Benz Photography maintains a list of software here:

https://gregbenzphotography.com/hdr-display-photo-software/

I'm not sure what FOSS options there are; it's difficult to search for given that "HDR" can mean three or four different things in common usage.

Hopefully HN allows me to share an App Store link... this app works best on Pro iPhones, which support ProRAW, although I do some clever stuff on non-Pro iPhones to get a more natural look.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/unpro-camera/id6535677796

I gave up at 35 souls.

There are probably a good number of camera apps that support this mode; two I know of are ProCam 8 and Camera M.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PJkA3o_Im0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42081787

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

This one has a section on animation and cinemagraphs, saying that video formats like AV1 and HEVC are better suited, which makes sense. Here's my somewhat off-topic question: is there a video format that requires support for looping, like GIFs? GIF is a pretty shoddy format for video compared to a modern video codec, but if a GIF loops, you can expect it to loop seamlessly in any decent viewer.

With videos it seems you have to hope that the video player has an option to loop, and oftentimes there's a brief delay at the end of the video before playback resumes at the beginning. It would be nice if there were a video format that included seamless looping as part of the spec -- but as far as I can tell, there isn't one. Why not? Is it just assumed that anyone who wants looping video will configure their player to do it?