Google Developing “Zoom and Enhance” Machine Learning Technique

You’ve seen it before on TV and in the movies where they have a digital image and they “zoom and enhance” to take a pixellated image and turn it into something with detail and clarity. We all know that this is not possible and honestly it makes us cringe every time we see it as many people think technology like this exists.

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Well Google is trying to make this technology a reality, they have come up with a machine-learning technique that attempts to reconstruct details in low-resolution images. Google calls this RAISR (rapid and accurate image super-resolution). The way it works is the software learning “edges” of a picture (portions of the image with drastic changes in color and brightness gradients), and attempts to reconstruct them. The thing that makes this different from typical super-sampling methods is the machine-learning component. A low-resolution image is studied by the machine to invent an upscaling method most effective for the image.

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This technology could have commercial applications in up-scaling low-resolution movies to new formats such as 4K Ultra HD, and perhaps even 8K.

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