The new self-developed dual-camera ISP Mate 10 smart photo is even more eye-catching.

After the IT 168 evaluation Mate 10 series went on the market, both authoritative organizations and domestic and foreign media unanimously praised its photo-taking ability. Overtaking or even surpassing the big names that once looked up, Huawei won the key battle and won the corresponding respect. Huawei Mate 10 can achieve such good results, in addition to the fierce dual camera of12 million+20 million pixels and the large aperture of F 1.6, it also benefits from its self-developed dual ISP and AI blessing that can intelligently identify the photo scene. ?

First, self-developed and double-photographed ISP road blue wisp began to harvest.

ISP is image signal processing, which means image signal processing. In the mobile phone, it is mainly used to process the output signal of the front-end image sensor. In the past, both Qualcomm and MediaTek developed ISPs for their own processors to take photos of mobile phones with SOC. Huawei has been using its own ISP since Mate8, and has made PrimlSP 2.0 with dual cameras upgraded on Mate9, which can realize image enhancement, color correction, color enhancement, dynamic range compression, gamma correction, super resolution and video stabilization.

Unlike other domestic manufacturers who directly use Qualcomm or MediaTek ISP once and for all, Huawei's imaging department chose the most difficult way from the beginning. Through hard work, continuous debugging and experiments, Mate 10 can finally be equipped with a self-developed dual ISP. Thanks to the self-developed ISP, you can optimize your own lens. Huawei Mate 10 can "aggressively" install the lens with double F 1.6 aperture earlier than other companies, and make greater progress when taking pictures. Practice has also proved that Huawei's choice of independent research and development of ISP is correct, and it once insisted on walking on the most difficult road. Now, the dividend it brings to the promotion of mobile photography has just begun.

Second, AI scene recognition artificial intelligence finally exerted its strength

For 20 17, AI (artificial intelligence) is not a new word, and various Internet companies have already begun to speculate on this concept. Huawei only put it forward at the press conference of Mate 10, which shows its caution. So how does Huawei, which has always been pragmatic, realize AI photography on Mate 10?

▲ Kirin 970

First of all, let's start with the artificial intelligence chip Kirin 970. Kirin 970 is the world's first smartphone AI computing platform with an independent NPU (Neural Network Unit). In the past, mobile phone chips were generally traditional computing architectures with CPU (central processing unit) and GPU (graphics processor) as the core, while Kirin 970 set up an AI hardware processing unit, namely NPU, to reduce the burden of CPU and GPU and other architectures, which not only improved the application efficiency. Reduce energy consumption (compared with traditional computing architecture, it has about 50 times energy efficiency and 25 times performance advantage), and can also provide hardware foundation for Mate 10 artificial intelligence photography, AI scene recognition and other functions.

In recent years, the ability of mobile phone photography has improved a lot, but there are still some users who can't take good photos because many people don't want to use professional mode and don't understand photography. Therefore, the NPU of Kirin 970 helps users to identify the scene of mobile phone photography, which allows small white users to take professional good photos. The specific implementation method is that when users take photos with Mate 10, as long as the scene frame is aimed at the scene, they can automatically classify the scene into 13 preset scenes by using the map recognition function of Kirin 970, which currently include: blue sky, flowers, green plants, beach, sunrise/sunset, stage, food, people, night scene, snow scene.

When artificial intelligence recognizes and judges that scene, the LOGO of that scene will appear in the lower left corner of the camera interface, and it will automatically adjust to the preset suitable for this scene. Take the screenshot of the author's photo as an example: when the border is facing the flowers, AI recognizes that the current photo scene should match the preset for the flowers, while when the border is facing the sky, AI recognizes that the current photo scene should match the preset for the sunrise, thus automatically adjusting some preset parameters to avoid exposure and color cast, and restoring the real scene to obtain better results.

In addition to scene recognition, AI is also committed to the optimization of large aperture and the improvement of text resolution in Mate 10 series photos. As the earliest dual-camera manufacturer in China, Huawei is quite familiar with the adjustment of large aperture mode, and it is one of the few manufacturers that can adjust the large aperture level. The user can adjust the large aperture level between 0.95 and 16, and the default is 4. Any senior photographer can find his own satisfactory shallow depth of field effect and realize natural background blur.

With the help of AI, Huawei Mate 10 can undoubtedly blur the background more naturally under a large aperture, achieving the effect of "sharp as a knife, knife in focus, paste outside focus". And AI learning the processing scheme of text edge is also helpful to improve the resolution of text in photos, so that we can get similar clarity to scanned photos when shooting photos containing text.

At present, the boot interface of the mobile phone equipped with the new EMUI system has changed from "Huawei" to AI+HW+EU, which shows that AI has become a key point of Huawei's key layout. In addition to supporting AI on Mate 10 hardware, some basic AI algorithms will be implemented through GPU in the future, so some AI functions will also be installed on low-end mobile phones.

Third, keep making progress, slowly and steadily, and then start again.

At present, relying on the long-term deep cultivation in the field of dual-camera, Huawei has enough right to speak in taking photos on mobile phones, and the gameplay of taking photos on mobile phones is also rich enough. For example, left-click on the camera interface to enter the mode selection menu, which integrates some Huawei features such as black and white camera, HDR, panorama and super night scene, while right-click on the camera main interface to enter the setting interface, including generating professional photos in RAW format and setting resolution. , are generally very playable.

By the way, Huawei's dual camera is different from other wide-angle+telephoto dual cameras. It uses color+black and white dual cameras. This is because although it is convenient to take photos with mobile phones, it is quite different from SLR in basic hardware, such as the amount of light entering and the photosensitive area. Therefore, when choosing the dual camera scheme, Huawei gives priority to the experience of improving the basic camera ability, such as improving the resolution, without the assistance of differential algorithm, and the sensitivity of black and white can also give the final image. Mate 10 can achieve the same zoom effect as Apple through the hardware upgrade of 2000M pixels on the main camera, and it will not narrow the viewing angle when the background is blurred. At the same time, the black-and-white+color dual camera also allows Mate 10 to simply take quite artistic photos with black-and-white lenses, and the look and feel of black-and-white photos is purer than that of color photos.

The small yellow car in black and white mode loses its bright colors, but retains more details with the scenery, giving the impression of being very pure literature and art.

Whether it is the excellent reputation of users or the high scores endorsed by well-known evaluation agencies, it can be said that Huawei's photography is already the absolute first echelon, but Huawei will continue to work hard to improve the convenience of taking photos on mobile phones-every shot is a blockbuster and professional-to improve the quality of photos and the rate of film production. Huawei engineers said that Huawei's goal is the benchmark SLR. Compared with SLR, it has high zoom, shooting in extreme dark conditions and blurring problems. These problems can't be solved by mobile phones at present, so mobile phones have great room for development in both hardware and algorithms. I believe Huawei will surely make a steady and steady progress and make a greater breakthrough in mobile photography.

Fourth, sample appreciation.

In the sun, the flowers and red fruits in these two pictures are bright and transparent, with high saturation and accurate blurring. The edge between the flower as the main body of the image and the surrounding blurred background is accurately separated, and the area as the background is naturally blurred.

These two photos are real photos of trees under the sky. Before taking pictures, the author is most worried that the color of Jiao Wai will be distorted or darkened after focusing, but in fact, thanks to the large aperture of f/ 1.6 and the recognition and preset of the scene by ai, both photos, whether in focus or Jiao Wai, have enough real and bright effects and high color saturation.

These two photos were taken by the iron net beside the playground. In the figure 1, the scenes such as the internal playground are focused through the iron net, so the bright and vivid inside contrasts with the single black outside, which is also very pleasing to the eye. As can be seen from Figure 2, both the left half and the right half have sufficient resolution to satisfy the author.

This set of photos is a blind test of backlight photography, and there is no manual click on the screen to focus. The color on the left is well preserved. The sky is blue, the backboard is green, and the ground is multicolored, which is very harmonious from top to bottom. Fig. 2 is a detailed picture taken automatically before the extreme backlight scene of the sun, without touching it with your fingers.

The theme color of the last group of pictures is bright yellow. In the picture of the leaves on the left, the yellow and green of the leaves are in artistic contrast with the surrounding gray grid, and the edges of the leaves are quite distinct from the blurred boundaries on Friday. The picture of the small yellow car on the right, because the trees and fallen leaves in the background are also yellow, so the author almost sweated when shooting, fearing that Mate 10 could not be distinguished. It has caused some blurring errors that have occurred in dual-camera mobile phones, but to the author's surprise, the blurring division between the handlebars and seat edges of Huangxiao car and the outside world is quite accurate, which well reflects the shallow depth of field effect of large aperture.

Summary:

Therefore, Mate 10 lived up to expectations through actual shooting. No matter what kind of scene, before pressing the shutter, it is intelligently recognized by AI and switched to the preset suitable for this scene. Self-developed dual-camera ISP and double f/ 1.6 large aperture Lycra lens can preserve the color and details of the scene to the maximum extent, no matter in the scene with sufficient light or extreme backlight. Surprisingly, we have reason to believe that with the continuous efforts of Huawei engineers and the continuous learning of artificial intelligence chips, Mate 10' s intelligent photography will definitely be more "eye-catching".