
Microsoft Pix - plurby
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/product/microsoftpix/
======
danso
There's an interesting example they use to show the ostensible improvement of
Pix over the Apple's Live Photo:

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-
content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-
content/uploads/2016/07/Live-Photo.mp4)

The Pix-enhanced version:

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-
content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-
content/uploads/2016/07/Live-Image.mp4)

Sure, the Live Photo version has distracting movement, but it also has much
more natural motion in terms of hair flow. And I feel that the camera
instability helps give context to the video, that it's some kind of impromptu
selfie on a windy day.

The Pix version offers a clearer image at what I feel is a large cost to the
image's integrity. It looks a bit creepy. That said, there are probably lots
of good situations for Pix's stabilization tech, but that example didn't seem
optimal as a landing page demo.

~~~
untog
I am imagining a developer at Microsoft somewhere holding their head in their
hands when they saw the Live Photo comparison made by the marketing team. To
me, they don't really seem to be aiming for the same thing at all - the Pix
version is a highly stylised animation whereas the Live Photo is simply a very
short, silent video.

~~~
aaronharnly
I know the Live Photo example on this Pix page is silent, but it's important
for people to realize that Apple Live Photos are not -- they capture several
seconds of sound.

I "know" this but often forget. When I look through iMessage history at
pictures I've sent and received, there are often stray bits of overheard
conversation that the sender wouldn't necessarily want or intend to include.

~~~
denzil_correa
> I "know" this but often forget. When I look through iMessage history at
> pictures I've sent and received, there are often stray bits of overheard
> conversation that the sender wouldn't necessarily want or intend to include.

I was surprised with this too. This should be really made more clear.

------
Analemma_
This feels sort of redundant... that feature list (multiple face detection
with auto exposure/white balance, burst mode with an algorithm to guess which
one is "best") is all stuff the built-in camera app on iOS does already.

Okay, the color and white balance look a little better for Pix in the example
shots, but everyone's RAW processing is better in some situations and worse in
others. I'm sure Apple could come back with just as many example shots where
their own settings were better than Pix's, and we could go round and round
like that forever.

There's nothing wrong with this app, but I'm having trouble understanding why
it exists. What does this do for users or Microsoft?

~~~
kemiller2002
I could be totally wrong, but if I had to guess, they are using it to show off
/ validate their work on Microsoft Cognitive Services (Project Oxford). It has
facial recognition, along with a number of other things, and so this would be
an easy way of getting data on possible problems they have and how well their
algorithms work. Just a guess though.

~~~
rodgerd
Facial recognition is pretty much solid for most cameras now, though. Face
registration, which Sony have been rolling into some E-mount cameras, would be
more impressive.

~~~
awesomerobot
It's a bit different if you're prioritizing exposure of different faces based
on their attributes though right? If you're taking a photo of a black person
and a white person together you're often underexposing someone or overexposing
someone.

------
ksml
Ooh, they mention it includes Hyperlapse! I haven't looked into Pix too much
so I don't know if this is a full implementation (someone commented on an
unnatural-looking stabilization demo, but I think it was just a poor choice of
an example), but Hyperlapse is one of the coolest research projects I've come
across:

[http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/redmond/projects/hype...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/redmond/projects/hyperlapse/)

The video demo there is worth checking out.

~~~
mspix
Pix includes the full implementation of Hyperlapse Mobile, which shipped on
Windows Phone and Android last year.

~~~
piyush_soni
Incidentally, Google has very recently come up with something very similar to
Hyperlapse :
[https://plus.google.com/u/0/+GooglePhotos/posts/ajfo6Nwyn5n](https://plus.google.com/u/0/+GooglePhotos/posts/ajfo6Nwyn5n)

------
mattnewton
My untrained eye can't really notice a difference except that the pix version
looks brighter (even washed out), the live photo version looks really uncanny
valley (where the faces don't move but the world does around them is an
unsettling effect).

~~~
sp332
My first thought when playing with the slider was that the Apple version was
much better. But, if you focus on the faces (which was probably the intent of
the person taking the photo) they do come out better in the Pix version. I
think all the examples had the faces underexposed, so the "fix" for each of
them was to brighten the photo.

~~~
mattnewton
Gotcha. It's a shame it seems to overexpose the background as a result though;
that's something I could quickly reproduce in the photos app. Though if it's
doing it automatically for each shot based on the faces in the photo I suppose
it's novel and more convenient.

~~~
acdha
That's what I was thinking as well: it'd be really cool if they did some sort
of automatic exposure bracketing and combined the best areas of each version
since every one of their sample photos generally looks overexposed, especially
compared to what Apple's built-in HDR mode would do.

------
mspix
We're from the Microsoft Pix team, and we are interested in your feedback.
Happy to answer questions.

~~~
vatotemking
I can see that its only available for apple devices, is there a technical
hurdle in doing this for android?

~~~
nandhp
I'm surprised it's iOS exclusive, but only because it means it's not available
for Windows Phone.

~~~
pawadu
Please get your facts straight before your distort them :)

Windows phone (now w10 mobile) camera has supported these stuff for some years
now (either natively or via extensions). Don't forget that "Live Photo" is
Apples implementation of an old Nokia technology.

------
drinchev
I'm amazed how low-quality this MS landing page is.

\- The "How it works" tab is just a huge image.

\- The search box ( top right ) has some problems with the border. Both in
Chrome & Safari.

\- It uses `font-family: 'Segoe UI';`, which makes all elements with that font
on my Mac "serif"

~~~
addedlovely
Also running on WordPress and exposing version number - which is out of date:
[https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/research/readme.html](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/readme.html)

~~~
bmaupin
The version number's in every Wordpress page source:

    
    
      <meta name="generator" content="WordPress 4.5.4" />

~~~
trebor
It can be deactivated.

    
    
        remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wp_generator' );
    

We include it in our themes as a best practice.

------
tga
I'd like one point clarified: is this app entirely local or does it make use
of any kind of cloud backend?

I've already seen apps that upload photos away for processing without making
it obvious (for example [http://prisma-ai.com](http://prisma-ai.com), if I'm
not mistaken). I really shouldn't have to ask if only iOS had a permission for
network access.

~~~
mspix
Pix runs all the image processing on your phone - we do not use the cloud for
any of this.

~~~
tga
Thank you for the clarification, that's awesome!

A small note to that effect on the website would be great, I can't be the only
one wondering.

------
trzeci
I thought that they released new version of DirectX SDK and PIX for debugging
:(
[https://tomtech999.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/pix_intro.png](https://tomtech999.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/pix_intro.png)

~~~
banachtarski
I'm not the only one! :(

------
notyourwork
Does anyone else think of Harry Potter when looking at the last section, Live
Image/Live Photo?

~~~
ino
It reminded me of the Google Motion Stills app.

I had it for a few weeks but uninstalled it as I didn't use it much.

~~~
tomtheengineer
The latest version of Google Photos (2.0) builds in the Motion Stills
functionality:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-photos-free-photo-
vid...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-photos-free-photo-
video/id962194608?mt=8)

------
mtgx
> Better mobile photos are just a tap away. Enter your mobile phone number and
> we'll text you a link to download Microsoft Pix.

Stop teaching people to click on links from SMS texts damn it!

~~~
tdkl
Nice way to gather mobile numbers, not even needed to build a social network
first.

~~~
mspix
We wanted to provide an easy option for users not currently on an iOS device,
but only use the number for a 1-time SMS with a link to the Pix listing in the
App Store. We do not collect or store the phone numbers, out of respect for
user privacy.

~~~
asuxx
I'm in the U.K and I never receive the text, despite saying it has been sent,
is it available here?

------
therealmarv
The results remind me of older special effects or manual brushing in
Photoshop... they are not very natural and not very good. Beeing myself also a
photographer: Don't do this to your photos. The best A.I. and filters cannot
compensate a well lighted photo. I'm happy that Apple does not include such
destructive filtering. IMHO even a flash from your phone is better than this
filters.

------
donatj
I wonder if there is a plan for an Android version. I'd love to play with
this.

~~~
mspix
An Android version is development. We can't comment on release date, but we're
working on it.

~~~
pawadu
Not an Android user, but this is great to hear.

Will Pix replace hyperlapse on android?

------
IgorPartola
I have been using Pix for a few weeks now and am very happy with the quality.
Too bad you can't use it as the default camera app on iOS. Also it takes
significantly longer to start up. But if you are taking multiple shots of,
say, your kids, the quality is better.

~~~
mspix
Happy to hear you are enjoying it! We are working on a widget that will allow
you to quick launch Pix from the Lock or Today screens, which we hope will
help lessen the frustration of not being able to set it as default.

------
cmiller1
Only for iOS? Surprised they didn't make a version for windows phone... or is
this software already built into the camera functionality on WP?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Microsoft's not heavily devoting resources to Windows Phone at the moment.
They're phasing out Lumias, and focusing on getting the enterprise experience
right on their mobile devices with the HP Elite x3.

Windows Phone isn't really dead, but until Microsoft is ready, they're
focusing on winning over iOS and Android users with their apps.

~~~
aluhut
So why not stop it altogether? I'm forced to use one of those Windows Phones.
The App Store is terrible. Few apps for the simplest things and god are they
terrible...

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I honestly can't fathom being forced over to another platform right now. Years
of having to support them later, I still don't understand how anyone makes
sense of the UI of iOS (it seems intuitive to non-tech people?) and the
terrible colossal trainwreck that is where Google has brought Android in the
last few years rules out... almost every other phone out there. (I carried an
Android for seven years, I've finally had enough, I can't stand that trash
anymore.)

We need a third option. If it's not Microsoft, it's gotta come from somewhere
else.

------
nell
To anyone on the Pix team reading this:

In the section under "Hover Zoom Comparison", the Apple Camera photo is to the
left of the Pix photo. In every other comparison, the Pix photo comes first.
You should maintain that order because people don't read the title always and
could confuse them. Once you've established a pattern, such as Pix on the left
and Apple's on the right, don't change it. It's an inconvenience that the user
doesn't mention but feels. Also, a consistent pattern takes a less cognitive
load.

You can call it nitpick or details :)

------
ebbv
The Pix images just look mostly like the contrast was reduced and all the dark
pixels were made brighter. That's not improving the images in my mind, it's
just throwing away color depth and subtlety.

------
muzster
Sorry for my naivety and maybe a little off topic - but where are the raw
image files used in the comparison images ?

I'm sure someone is going to cry foul if the images have been passed through
Photoshop.

~~~
mspix
None of the comparison images have been altered via Photoshop. All comparisons
were shot simultaneously on a side-by-side rig, using a trigger that prompted
the shutter press for both apps (Apple Camera and Microsoft Pix) at the same
time, so conditions would be as equivalent as possible. See a photo of the rig
in action here: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/research/product/microsoftpi...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/research/product/microsoftpix/#about). We did crop the edges of some photos
to fit into the available space, but otherwise the images are the unaltered
files that were produced by each app.

~~~
muzster
A curious mind, like myself, found the "Photoshop 3.0" in the jpeg meta data
and came to the conclusion that the comparison images had been altered via
Photoshop (or similar tool)

To avoid doubt, I would advise that all image comparisons should have
references to the original source files.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

------
usaphp
I wonder who is responsible for their site design at Microsoft, their whole
website looks very unpolished and quickly made, especially typography.

~~~
bdcravens
It's Wordpress, whereas other parts of www.microsoft.com are not. I suspect
the Research group was responsible for their own site. Even though it has a
marketing feel, I suspect it should be held more to an engineering blog type
of standard.

------
suyash
Apple Camera picture and video quality looks more real than Microsoft's. It
seems like this app artificially list up the image.

------
xs
Does it automatically take horizontal video when you are holding your camera
vertically? When will we get that technology?

~~~
danielbarla
I think the limiting factor for this is that the sensor itself is rectangular,
pretty much in line with what you're expecting (aspect ratio of image
produced, etc).

You could always have a square sensor, but then when shooting landscape
pictures, you'd be throwing away a lot of the sensor data. In short, people
generally want rectangular photos, and coupled with economics this means that
sensors are that shape.

On the extreme end, I guess you could have some kind of rotating lens /
sensor, which would automatically keep level.

------
daveblt
@mspix Looking forward to using it (Samsung S5). I hit the Send button and
noticed some questionable grammar. It reads "Message has been send
successfully on your mobile number." I guess it should be "A message has been
sent successfully to your mobile number." or something similar.

------
xd1936
Does this have Photosynth built-in? :P

~~~
djsumdog
When I first saw this, I wondered if it came out of the Photosynth project.

~~~
sp332
It's probably related to their hyperlapse tech, which shared a few people - at
least Johannes Kopf and Richard Szeliski.
[https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2014/08/11/hyperlapse-
siggr...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2014/08/11/hyperlapse-
siggraph-2014/)

~~~
Viper007Bond
Hyperlapse is included in this app!

------
pjdorrell
This is a bit like the beat "quantization" options in music apps, where you
tidy up the raw user input. The best result comes when you choose not 100%
quantized.

The Pix app needs a slider so you can choose how much stabilisation you want
on the target part of the image.

------
DominikR
To be honest the only difference that I see is that the Microsoft Pix images
seem to be brighter and with less contrast.

Maybe this is an amazing app full of amazing technology but the sample images
that should advertise this were picked badly.

------
kevinliang
am i the only one who thinks the iphone 6s images look better?

~~~
dx034
No, I think the same. The Pix photos look a bit washed out. Faces are
brighter, but it doesn't look natural to me anymore. I'd rather use a flash
for the pictures where faces were really dark, would probably deliver better
results.

------
deviate_X
The still picture faces look better with Pix ...

They are using face-tracking and stabilisation around the faces in the videos
which look's odd to most people because we definitely are not used to seeing
this and probably disturbs our brain neurons which have not evolved in any way
to compute this..

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3KvI4yDAwM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3KvI4yDAwM)

------
kriro
I know very little about photography. Why do I want such an app. I point and
shoot with my S7 Edge and get decent enough pictures. Am I simply not the
target audience? I'm also naively assuming that if I don't particularly like
the photo I could do some post processing on it and would rather have the
"raw" version.

[also there is pretty much no left margin on the website, Firefox latest on
OSX latest]

------
angersock
So, anybody else notice the somewhat limited skin palette they seem to be
working on?

I'd be very curious what it does with really dark skin.

------
btym
Neat, I was just thinking to myself how much I wanted an app that would
automatically wash out all my photos for me.

------
rplnt
Slightly off-topic, but this reminds me of Google Camera with the Lens Blur
(IIRC) feature. I can't find it on the play store now, was it discontinued? I
wouldn't be surprised given it's Google, but why don't just leave the old
version there with some sort of warning?

~~~
soylentcola
As far as I can tell, the Google Camera app still has this option. Not sure
about an iOS version but if they made one I wasn't aware of it. It was
actually what I thought of when they mentioned similar functionality in the
new iOS camera app.

~~~
rplnt
It might have that option, but it is not available anymore (or I can't find
it). This was different from the stock Camera app. If it replaced the stock
app, then it's not available for devices that use different Camera app (namely
Samsung).

~~~
soylentcola
Yeah, sorry. I was referring to the stock, standard "Camera" app I've always
used. I even used it when I had a MotoX which included the "Moto Camera" app.
I always preferred the plain Google one so that's the one I've used for the
past several years.

Looking at the Play store on my old Nexus 5 I don't see it so maybe Moto just
included both for some reason or maybe I installed it when it was still in the
Play store but has since been discontinued in that incarnation.

This is the version that I have (newer one may need 7.0 according to the
comments)

[https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-
inc/camera/camera-3-2-0...](https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-
inc/camera/camera-3-2-045-release/)

Feel free to disregard if you don't trust apkmirror but they pull directly
from Google's servers and validate signatures.

------
iraldir
Very cool. Just did a few shots to try it out and the results are definetely
nice. Love the smart live picture, and I don't know if it's in my head are
real but it feels like it is doing a field of depth if the situation call for
one, which is really nice

------
metaphorical
Everything looks perfect. Every face looks plastic.

I think I prefer the imperfect photos. But that's just me.

------
grumblestumble
Ah, Microsoft. Will they ever figure out that the Microsoft name is a
liability for consumer app adoption? There's a reason it's not called
"Facebook Instagram", and Facebook, deservedly or not, still has a much less
tarnished image than MS.

~~~
Viper007Bond
Quite the opposite for me. I'm much more likely to try a cool new app from
Microsoft than I am from some random startup I've never heard of. Lots of cool
technology innovation going on at Microsoft (yes, really).

One of many examples: [http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/redmond/projects/hype...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/redmond/projects/hyperlapse/) (according to another comment here, this
is also included in the app)

------
gambiting
Uhmmmm, is Microsoft unaware, that they already have a product call PIX? It's
profiler used for DX programming and for X1. So now when you look for some PIX
debugging tips on google, you will get results about the photo app.

------
frik
The camera features are based on technology developed for MS Photosynth (also
from Research department, former Live Labs), and originated from research
projects from University of Washington.

------
thatgerhard
I understand the branding department wanted to have their say, but I think it
will be better as just "Pix" and nor "Microsoft Pix" (meh)

------
MaulingMonkey
And here I assumed this was about PIX (the DirectX SDK tool.)

------
Osiris
Only for iOS?

------
andyfleming
The comparisons up top basically look like HDR for faces™.

------
senthil_rajasek
Great demo page.

I really love the "People-Centric" feature, especially how the demo shows
after shot enhancements for a variety of skin tones.

Thank you Microsoft.

~~~
vernie
I had the opposite reaction. I found it humorous that the face detection
didn't seem to work reliably (e.g. never detecting the guy in the lower right
of the indoor restaurant scene), even in their own demo video.

------
vadym909
I wish they would create a simple and fast basic photo editor for the PC
first. Their current Photo takes 5-7 secs to open a photo.

------
vba
Looks like they were testing it when they got burgers at Feed Co in Redmond. I
would of got the halloumi cheese grits

------
milesf
Did they buy this from some other company and then rebrand it?

------
gisenberg
Insane. That page loads in 111 network requests totaling about 40MB.

~~~
jandrese
This is what happens when you make everything an API and try to hide all of
the details. People program as the docs tell them to, not realizing that what
they're doing requires a hideous amount of complexity under the hood. It is
sadly rare for an API to actually mention that a particular method is
expensive.

~~~
addedlovely
Huh, this is a badly coded WordPress site with HTML and CSS?

------
tomc1985
Another photography app?

 _le sigh_

------
fane
Will there be an app for windows phone or does microsoft support only iOS?

------
fane89
Will there be an app for windows phone or does microsoft support only iOS?

~~~
fane89
that was a joke...

------
ecabuk
Why microsoft developing an Iphone app?

------
usaphp
What do they mean by "Apple camera"? Is that camera in macbook, iphone 3g,
iphone 7?

~~~
mspix
We were referring to the default Camera app that ships with iOS devices. All
side-by-sides were shot on the same model of iPhone with the most recent
version of iOS at the time of the shoot, as well as the latest version of the
Apple Camera app and the latest version of Microsoft Pix app, respectively.

