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Wednesday, December 03, 2014

Almalence Announces SuperSensor

Today at the Embedded Vision Alliance meeting, Almalence announces SuperSensor, a technology for mobile camera quality improvement without hardware modifications. “Mobile handset makers always come to a point where camera quality improvement is impossible due to size restrictions or the cost, usually both”, says Eugene Panich, CEO of Almalence. “Using a computational component such as SuperSensor is a way to improve mobile camera features without adding a micron to its size and at just a small fraction of the cost of typical hardware improvement. While hardware improvements can take years to utilize, the time to market for a computational component could be as short as days, and you can even put it into the devices that are already sold via a system upgrade.

Unlike other imaging solutions, each of which improves some specific property such as dynamic range or noise level only, SuperSensor is said to provide a complex improvement. Its effect is said to be similar to replacing a 1/4” sensor with a 1/3” sensor containing more pixels, which results in higher resolution, lower noise, higher speed, and wider dynamic range altogether:

Top: the font is too small, the illumination is too low and dynamic range is too high to capture the pictures.
Bottom: same scenes, same conditions, same camera, but with SuperSensor technology.

The full resolution comparison images, pdf presentation, and Android demo application can be downloaded here. The first devices which utilize the Almalence SuperSensor technology are expected to be available on the market in 2015.

6 comments:

  1. "Building a little company playing a big game" - LinkedIn profile of Eugene Panich, CEO/Owner

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  2. They take multiple shots and combine them to get super-resolution, HDR.

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  3. I guess these guys just use their own image pipeline to process camera raw?
    With new camera layer in Android 5.0 I think it will be a lot of such innovations in near future

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  4. I do not see the 'super resolution'. The dynamic range is fine, and so is the noise suppression.

    The resulting image is over-saturated and has some sharpening fringes.

    Compared to Google HDR+ the DR seems the same and the noise less for low light.

    Compared to Google camera non HDR it is much better.

    And it is fairly quick.

    Pity about the over-processed look.

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  5. My impressions:
    Better than HDR+ in dark low light.
    SuperResolution zoom is effective on high contrast details, but not useful if low contrast detail.

    In other situations, I prefer HDR+ or to capture/process DNG pics for better DR and detail.

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