Characters in movies shouting, “Enhance!” at a photograph is nothing new. It’s one of those quirks of storytelling that is needed for various reasons but can’t really be replicated in real life. That is, until now.
The Verge reports on Adobe’s newest update to their suite of photo editing software called Enhance Details. As the name implies, it works to make pictures a bit more clear.
Soon to be featured in Adobe Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic CC, and Lightroom CC, Enhance Details will use an AI-powered algorithmic process to “demosaic” digital images. Essentially, this uses an algorithm to predict what an image is trying to portray and fills in certain parts of it with new pixels that roughly complete the image, making for a clearer and more detailed photograph.
According to the company, this process can increase the resolution of images by as much as 30%, though there’s still quite a bit of distance between what it’s capable of and the “zoom and enhance” of television. Even so, it does present a unique look into the future of image recognition.
Adobe was able to train their AI through analyzing over a billion different images, learning how to color aspects of them to improve the fine details. While this process isn’t unique to Adobe, its AI does seem to be at least a slight improvement over many others, clarifying smaller aspects of pictures that other demosaicing programs often miss.
As of right now, the only computers that will be able to handle this program will have to meet or exceed macOS 10.13 or Windows 10 version 1809. Additionally, only the RAW image format is usable with the program right now. This may change as the program is tested and improved upon.
The update for the affected programs went live on February 12. You can read more about Enhance Details as well as additional updates to Adobe’s editing programs released at the same time from their official blog on the subject.