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Apple patent aims to make blurry images history

Lauren Crabbe | Published: Feb 14, 2013 at 19:01:01 UTC

This image from Apple's patent displays how a user takes a photo with an iPhone.

Apple is aware that iPhone photography is often laggy and blurry. In a patent uncovered today by Apple Insider, Apple writes that:

These image capturing devices typically use a preview resolution for capturing a preview image of a scene. Subsequently, a user provides an input to take a photograph. The device switches from preview resolution to full resolution prior to capturing an image. Switching from preview to full resolution causes a time lag, which may lead to user frustration. Also, camera shake during the time when a user presses a button or touches a touchscreen can degrade image quality.

The patent then goes on to offer a solution. Instead of waiting until the user presses the capture button, the iPhone’s native camera app will continuously take photos and once the image is “captured” by the user, it will present the photographer with the best photo, based on a series of steps that determine whether the photo is clear.

This flow chart displays Apple's logic for what decides the best image.

We've seen similar tech at work in Samsung's Best Shot feature and BlackBerry's Time Shift feature -- perhaps this latest patent is a sign that Apple is paying close attention to its competition, as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has warned it needs to do.

Comments

Total comments: 15

Sounds like Nikon 1 J1 best photo selection

0 upvotes

APPLE ARE RIP-OFF ARTISTS!
1. there are already cameras like this on the market, not just on the drawing board
2. I remember that over a decade ago, there was already an eyeglasses camera that did exactly this: continually shoot pictures, and when you press the shutter it selects the already recorded image. what's more, you could even go back a number of frames, in case you missed the moment (finger lag instead of shutter lag).

1 upvote

Hopefully they will make broken screens and dropped calls 'history' also.

0 upvotes

What...!?...Samsung and Blackberrys already feature this...?....Lawsuit on Apple, quickly!

Hmmm...Wait...Apple is the only natural-born, official innovator...what was I thinking...

(Another great demo from "Connect" on how to be biased while reporting...The title "iForms" us that blurred photos is supposed to be "history" by Apple intervention and, yet, the last paragraph has no problem stating that others have already done precisly that.

This continuous recurrences are becoming almost hypnotically fun to follow)

0 upvotes

I wonder if Apple will ever come up with similar ground-breaking technology to prevent iPhone call drops...

0 upvotes

...just like the touch pad design already shown in the film "2001: A Space Odyssey" from 1968!

Or something trivial, like rounded edges,
which can be found on devices since thousand of years, like plate...

...for several reasons:

To avoid damage of the device, or by the device...

...even pillars have rounded edges, for some reasons,
...it is said, that even humans have those rounded edges...

...even apples were invented earlier by nature -
who is holding the according patents?

...probably the snake - or Eve, or Apple???

Smart-bones for dogs...

...errr wait, in Stanley Kubrick's "2001" the smart-bone for apes was already shown!

And don't steal my "smartbone" invention!

P.S.:
It can be written and used in several ways...
...just exemplary a few examples:

Smart-bone, Smart - Bone, smartbone etc.
and can be used as description of devices or just for fun...
...to enhance living, or make a living...
...but only with a valid licence and / or direct permission from me.

Funny?

0 upvotes

it's called prerecord.

2 upvotes

The title says "Apple patent aims to make blurry images history", implying that they have some new way to make pictures less blurry. When I started reading the description and they were talking about taking multiple shots I was thinking, "Wow! They've come up with some fancy way to combine information from multiple images to produce 1 sharp image!"

But no, they just pick the least blurry shot of the set, And what if they're all blurry? I think the title is misleading.

2 upvotes

Of course the title is misleading. I was thinking the same thing and now I feel cheated out of the time it took me to read the "article". The things people will write in order to pay the rent is sad.

0 upvotes

I sure miss the days when Lawyers filed provisional patent applications from patent disclosures written by Engineers themselves, who were busy bringing the innovations to the marketplace.

These kinds of patent applications are more the product of Lawyers who pursue the patents (if ever issued) as commodities to be sold, traded, or (more commonly) used for patent trolling and trouble making.

1 upvote

sadly, this approach, of preloading the buffers with images, will in itself cause latency.

0 upvotes

It is called BSS, Best Shot Selector and was introduced years ago in the CoolPIX line by Nikon. This one is a variant of the same concept and is adopted in a good number of digicams, pro and consumer alike. Glad to see it in a smartdevice too...

Comment edited 32 seconds after posting

1 upvote

Casio did this many years ago. The camera took "photos" before and after the shutter is pressed.

2 upvotes

The Oly E-100 did something like that many years ago as well. But, I forget what that feature was called.

0 upvotes

This sound similar to what Nikon is already doing with the 1 series camera in taking 5 photos and then comparing them and choosing the best one for sharpness, color, contrast, etc. It then allows you to override the camera choice and choose one of your own.

2 upvotes

Total comments: 15

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