Wynn's Folly Minis

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/08/29/pictures-not-photos-whats-going-on-with-the-pixel-10-pro-pro-res-zoom/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57053

For the new release of the Pixel 10 Pro (and the 10 Pro XL, which is mostly the same phone, just larger), Google has introduced something called the “Pro-Res Zoom,” a process by which, once you zoom in with the camera over about 30x zoom, after you’ve snapped the photo, Google will run it through an “AI” processor, not to bring out the details that are actually there, but to make up details that seem reasonable to assume are there, based on whatever processing algorithm Google is currently using. It then outputs the result of this guessing into your phone, alongside the original photo. Sometimes it looks pretty good! Sometimes it does not! But in neither case is what’s being outputted a photo. Rather, you now have a picture, or an illustration, based on a photo. It’s no more a real photo than it would be if someone made a cartoon version of the photo. The verisimilitude at that point is the same.

Which is not to say that the Google Pixel 10 Pro can’t do a reasonably good job at approximation sometimes. Look at the before/after images of the strawberry above. The “before” version on the left is an unimproved photo, shot at about 50x zoom from across my backyard deck. The strawberry is blotchy and low-detail, which is perfectly reasonable, because the Google actual optical sensor only goes to 5X zoom and everything else is a digital zoom, i.e., it crops in and uses a much smaller number of pixels to resolve the image. The image on the right is the “AI” recreation of the fruit. It looks much better, because Google “knows” what a strawberry is supposed to look like and builds on that. It does a good enough job that you can believe it actually is a photo – a heavily processed one, but one bearing some relationship to reality. That’s because as blotchy as the initial image is, it has enough detail that Google can reasonably extrapolate. That’s a strawberry, all right!

But the extrapolation breaks down, and quickly, when the details aren’t there. You can’t just “enhance” your way to clarity. This image of the end of my road, shot at about 94x zoom, makes the point: Stop signs aren’t circular, and the “STOP” letters aren’t there at all, replaced by white splotches. Overhead wires hang weirdly and disappear randomly. It’s an illustration, and not a particularly good one.

The model’s inability to resolve letters gives a feel like when you’re dreaming and you’re trying to read signs and you can’t because the letters don’t resolve and they squirm around. This is an exactly apt metaphor, because these pictures aren’t reality, they’re a hallucination, only by a computer and not a human mind. I don’t hate it! I think the dream-like squiggles and weird simultaneously over-and-under-detailed images from the Pro Res Zoom can be aesthetically intriguing. But it’s not what I want a camera on my phone to do. I want it to take photos, not generate related-but-ultimately-fictional illustrations.

Below the point at which the Pro Res Zoom kicks in, the Pixel 10 Pro does take perfectly lovely photos – there is algorithmic processing there, too, but its dedicated to fixing light balances and choosing how to represent color and so on, which is to say, all the things that any digital camera does (see the photo above, of the actual strawberry from before, as an example). Google’s Pixel phones have consistently had some of the best cameras in the field, as much due to the software as the hardware, and that’s one of the reasons I’ve stuck with the brand when it comes time to upgrade.

To be fair to Google, it has built-in support for C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) Content Credentials, which means that when you use Pro Res Zoom, or any of the Pixel 10 Pro’s other “AI” editing tools, the fact that the image is “AI” generated/edited is embedded in the metadata. Google isn’t trying to fool anyone about what it’s doing. Of course, it’s not that difficult to strip metadata, and not everyone knows how to find that metadata anyway (do you?). I’m not going to fault Google for that. They are at least making the attempt to be clear what’s happening when you use their “AI” tools, and I can appreciate the effort.

With that said, for my own part I’m unlikely to use the “Pro Res Zoom” much; I do like my photos to be actual photos when they come out of the camera; if they’re going to be edited, I want to be the one to edit them, so I can be fundamentally responsible for the images I’m presenting to others. As for everyone else, well, look: There’s an upper physical limit for phones on lenses and sensors, and phone manufacturers have been filling in those gaps with software for years. Google is maybe the first to do that with one of their zooms, at least on this scale, but it’s very unlikely they are going to be the last. We’ll see more of this.

As with everything else you see on the Internet and off of it, you are going to have to be the one who makes the call about whether you believe what you see with your own eyes, and whether what you’re seeing is a photo, or just a picture.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/08/29/pictures-not-photos-whats-going-on-with-the-pixel-10-pro-pro-res-zoom/

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Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/08/29/the-big-idea-julia-harrison/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57049

Highways to Hell, Stairways to Heaven: in From the Other Side, author Julia Harrison suggests a different way of locating these ineffable planes of the afterlife… which may or may not so ineffable after all.

JULIA HARRISON:

When it comes to dealing with anxiety that stems from the unknown I’m the kind of person who likes to play devil’s advocate, no pun intended. The two biggest of these subject matters for me are space, my brain is incapable of comprehended something without a known beginning or end, and death.

I’m a little strange I know.

I’m not particularly religious, but not really an atheist either. Let’s just say I keep an open mind. From the Other Side came from a “what if,” moment of ponder regarding death.        

Most people think of heaven and hell as being vertical in relation to earth, both literally and metaphorically, I’m not sure where this belief originated. Maybe from the teachings of old where figurative expressions were transcribed in literal terms. But it is widely accepted that above is light, which is the epitome of goodness and purity, below is dark, which is the embodiment of evil and malevolence. Therefore, in both a physical and astral sense heaven exists and is above us, whilst hell exists and is below us.

But what if this isn’t the case?

What if our planes of existence were much more aligned in relation to each other? That the inhabitants from each plane can and do travel between them?  That living beings are almost entirely oblivious to them, the good and the bad. How and why are they unaware of such happenings?

Of course each question I asked had to answered in some semi-logical fashion, and from that came the backbone of the book. It seems feasible to assume that humans could have spent a millennium conditioning themselves to unsee anything other than earth and it’s living inhabitants. A self-inflicted blindness that inhibits their ability to see the very linear existence between the planes. The teachings of religion, science, and the occult all serve as a method of both social control and psychological protection, as the saying goes, ignorance is bliss.

Imagine every living person possessed abilities far greater than they were able to acknowledge. That we could all see and interact with each plane of existence. Those who may be referred to as gifted, the ones who see and hear things beyond the realm of the living, those who experience a feeling of dread right before a disaster occurs, or who feel the presence of something when they are completely alone, it isn’t that they possess a supernatural power, simply that they are less able to inhibit their brains natural intrinsic abilities.

One of the most basic instincts possessed by the living is self-preservation. Maybe that is what prevents them from crossing over each plane. That dark alley that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, the hole in the crawl space that generates the fight or flight response, that part of the forest devoid of singing birds and chirping bugs, the secluded beach or sunny pasture that fills your heart with an inexplicable sense of contentment and peace, all glimpses of the interweaving of two planes.

Good versus evil is an age-old concept, one derived from a truth that has, over time, become a twisted and convoluted version of its former self.  I do think that good and evil absolutely exist, but human beings are not born with a predisposition for either. Rather, our souls consist of elements of both. Every being has a balance of both good and evil within. Laws, cultural norms, and social constructs manipulate us into a desire to attain a label of good. To be perceived as righteous, and of high moral standing, and why? Because we are always answerable to a higher power. Anything that deviates from this has dire consequences. If no legal or social ramifications materialize then the belief is that the cosmos, as a whole, will transpire against you, like there is a vengeful universe examining our every move in the hope of detecting any digressions to warrant inflicting some karmic damnation upon the perpetrator of such wrong doings.

Every now and again we catch sight of our darker instincts, some even embrace it. Not every crime is committed out of necessity, not every abuser was once abused, not every serial killer suffered a traumatic head injury. Nurturing our narcissistic impulses, inflicting mental or physical torture for pleasure, annihilating an entire race in the name of ideology, are all perfect examples.

Years ago I visited a psychic, a creepily good one. The rationale behind this meeting was to connect with lost loved ones, in particular a friend who had dies very young. She shared a lot of information but one piece in specifically stuck with me and not in a good way.

She stated that when we die, and pass into whatever afterlife there is, we cease to be who we were. That scared me. The only way my brain allowed me to accept the very natural act of dying was to focus on reuniting with lost loved ones. I found writing about this extremely therapeutic, I’m still not entirely at peace with what she said, but I’m definitely getting there.

From the Other Side: Amazon|Apple|Barnes & Noble|Kobo

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