Category: Software & Technology

At Netflix, the Content Platform Engineering and Global Product Creative teams know that imagery plays an incredibly important role in how viewers find new shows and movies to watch. We take pride in surfacing the unique elements of a story that connect our audiences to diverse characters and story lines. As our Original content slate continues to expand, our technical experts are tasked with finding new ways to scale our resources and alleviate our creatives from the tedious and ever-increasing demands of digital merchandising. One of the ways in which we do this is by harvesting static image frames directly from our source videos to provide a more flexible source of raw artwork.

The Hungarian software company DIRE Studio has just launched Technical Camera, a new iOS camera app that’s designed for serious photographers who want a simple yet advanced tool for capturing still photos.

The 2018 edition of the LDV Vision Summit was, like its four predecessors, a refreshing display of creative ingenuity, stunning engineering and brilliant problem-solving. With successive keynotes never longer than 5 minutes each, subtlety interrupted by more extended fire chats or panels, there is no room for boredom. Even if a topic or speaker might not be in your field of interest, it is not long before another will keep you glued to your chair and wanting to know more. Which, thanks to the casual and friendly networking, is not hard to do. Speakers are all available to explain more if needed and do business, if appropriate. No superstars here leaving in limos the minute they step out the stage. Instead, a succession of people passionate about their work as much as the audience.

A group of scientists from Intel and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign have published a paper called Learning to See in the Dark detailing a powerful machine-learning based image processing technique that allows regular cameras to take super-sharp pictures in very low light, without long exposures or the kinds of graininess associated with low-light photography.

While companies and researchers around the world work to build the most advanced and powerful AI systems, Facebook has a special treasure trove that most don’t: billions of tagged photos thanks to Instagram. Facebook has now used those photos to create a leading image recognition AI.

And beyond that, why is it — after multiple national tragedies politicized by hoaxes and misinformation — that such a question even needs to be asked?

Whilst many photographers remain deep in conversation concerning the evolution from analog to digital photography—and the positives and negatives of both—the world of photographic technology has paid little heed to their protestations and continued on with its research and development. As a result, we find ourselves today — in fact we have been here for some time — in the age of computational photography.

A couple of research papers were recently published, both touching on advancement in computer vision and machine learning. While research papers are a common occurrence in this field, these two are worth reviewing a bit deeper, as their implication will have a wide impact once they mature.

Phase One has just announced Capture One 11. The latest version of the popular raw converter and image processing software brings a new processing engine along with a number of powerful new features.

California-based software developer Macphun (soon to be Skylum) has announced Luminar 2018, a digital photo editor and organizer that’s aiming to be a direct competitor to Adobe Lightroom.