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Google Pixel 9 augments the camera experience with a big helping of AI
Summary
Generative AI powers many new features on the Google Pixel 9 series – from Magic Editor and Add Me to Zoom Enhance – all of which work with varying degrees of success
Right from the get-go in 2016, Google's approach to the camera experience on Pixel smartphones piggybacks on its machine learning smarts and computational photography, instead of packing in top-of-the-line camera unit hardware.
But since last year, there’s also generative AI that underlines, and powers, a bunch of new features that range from being mind-bending innovation to address real-world scenarios to fun gimmicks that can pass off as occasional party tricks.
Here’s a look at what the new Google Pixel lineup – the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, and Pixel 9 Pro XL – offer in terms of its photography capabilities.
Optical setup
The Pixel 9 series packs in identical primary and telephoto to the last couple of generations, which isn’t a bad thing, really. The 50MP main camera sensor isn’t a top-tier choice in 2024, but Google is known to extract significant value from the components it packs.
Also read: Finding the right click: Should you buy a camera in 2024?
That said, Google claims that the company has refreshed its HDR (high-dynamic range) pipeline from start to finish for a more accurate tone mapping and optimized exposure. In some shots, the difference in details is noticeable – especially when the telephoto lens is employed. The Pixel 9 series offers sharp and crisp shots with its signature contrast-heavy look, even if they aren’t a marked improvement over what Pixel 8 could manage.
The ultrawide camera though is new with a wider aperture, and the beautiful shots captured in macro mode make it quite evident. And on the front, there’s huge leap to a 42MP camera, up from 10.5 megapixels last year, along with a wider 103-degree angle of view.
Wide Camera: 50 MP Octa PD | ƒ/1.68 aperture | 82° field of view | 1/1.31" image sensor size
Ultrawide Camera: 48 MP Quad PD | ƒ/1.7 aperture | 123° field of view | 1/2.55" image sensor size
[Only on Pro variants] Telephoto Camera: 48 MP Quad PD | ƒ/2.8 aperture | 22° field of view | 5x optical zoom | Super Res Zoom up to 30x | 1/2.55" image sensor size
The software magic
When it comes to the camera experience on a Pixel smartphone, the focus isn’t much on the hardware but on a flock of AI features and how Google continues to push the boundaries of computational photography.
The Pixel 9 series brings along signature Pixel imaging tools like Night Sight, Astrophotography, Face Unblur, Action Pan, Top Shot, et al, from the previous generations but also introduces a slew of new features, which work with varying degrees of success.
Magic Editor
The AI-powered editing tool baked in Google Photos gets a major update this year with new features like Reimagine and Autoframe. While the results on the Pixel 8 series showed potential, they were mostly hit and miss. The Pixel 9 series has upped the ante with broad content-aware fill features.
Reimagine allows you to modify photos by using text prompts to describe the changes you want. Whether it’s turning the grass outdoors into a lava floor or adding hot air balloons to the sky. Reimagine generates several options for you to choose from and puts Google’s generative AI skills to good use to achieve creative visual manipulations.
The prompts can be quite fun to use and are also an intuitive way for basic tasks like erasing objects in the background or moving subjects across the frame (instead of using one’s fingers with precision). Keep it generic, and you can create dreamy images, but the results can be less than impressive if you get too specific with the prompts.
There’s also Autoframe that analyses your photo’s composition and suggests the best crop. It can also expand the photo, by cropping outward, using generative AI to seamlessly add elements that blend with the original scene. It’s a handy feature, especially if you aren’t a photography nerd and often struggle with framing a scene or a subject.
Add Me
A lot of AI-powered features are gimmicky and Add Me appears to be the one. Until one tries it.
If you’re the designated photographer in your group, often, there aren’t many photos of you. And to accommodate everyone in a group shot, you end up raising and stretching your arm to click that awkward selfie.
With Add Me, one of you can click the first photo (leaving a bit of space in the shot for themselves), and the other person can then use the overlay of the original photo to position the first person in the frame. Add Me then stiches the two images together into a single picture.
Add Me combines Google’s computational photography capabilities with augmented reality to offer a simplified clone tool you’d find, say, on Photoshop.
Sure, it composes a photo that never happened, but little like the Best Take feature introduced with the Pixel 8 series last year – where you could swap faces to ensure everyone’s got their best shot – it’s a good showcase of how AI can help in practical ways.
Zoom Enhance
Zoom Enhance was announced with the Pixel 8 Pro but is finally rolling out now with the launch of the Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL. Zoom Enhance is a neat way to fill in missing details when you zoom in on the photos. The phone will employ machine learning to predict and add more details to create sharper images.
One could argue if this capability could be integrated within the camera, but Google has done well to offer generative AI features as add-ons instead of ‘creating’ photos without consent. You could then choose to use these features to improve the captured shots.
Panorama
There are no new AI shenanigans with panorama, but the camera app on the new Pixel devices come with a completely redesigned panorama mode.
Also read: AI Tracker: Pixel 9 series shows Google means serious business
It’s a welcome improvement – both in terms of the user experience as well as image quality that benefits from HDR+ processing – and the incorporation of Night Sight enables much better low-light panoramas.
Video Boost
Shooting videos on the Pixel smartphones has improved quite a lot but often doesn’t match up to what the Apple iPhone gets done. Video Boost, launched last year, aims to fix that with an ingenious approach. Like both Night Sight Video and Super Res Zoom Video features that we’ve seen on older Pixels, Video Boost is only available on the Pro variants of the Pixel 9.
Using cloud-based processing for AI manipulation, Video Boost enhances the quality of videos by improving details, colours, and lighting. Google has improved Video Boost substantially this year – there’s less jarring and the colour imbalance is minimal in the videos it outputs. The transitions in switching between different camera sensors are also much smoother.
Additionally, when boosted, videos captured in low light come out with improved colours and details. The difference is quite evident and remarkable.
Video Boost is also a resolution booster allowing you to up the video from 4K to 8K. It’s really an edge use case but can come handy if you want to pull larger and detailed still images from the rendered video.
Summary
What’s a photo? Did that really happen? Was that the scene at any point of time?
A lot of photography purists are conflicted about the role of AI in photography, creating imaginary images along the way. But what is a photo if not something that makes some memories last longer? And if a bit of manipulation could make that memory sweeter or appeal to one’s social media audience, most people won’t complain.
The Pixel 9 series makes it quite clear that it backs this trend, and while the camera chops of latest Pixels could be rivalled by flagship smartphones from Apple and Samsung or even Vivo, the photography experience on them isn’t as AI-fied as yet.
Abhishek Baxi is a technology journalist and digital consultant. He posts @baxiabhishek
