Regarding S23 Ultra Camera Assistant - Photo softening feature... (sorry I don't know how to rotate photos after upload!)

[nalfylatino]

I have been enjoying my S23 UItra though I do have somewhat of a criticism/suggestion toward Samsung themselves.

I owned the S22 Ultra last year, and as far as taking photos, that phone captured some amazing images. Not much tweaking was needed. The photos came out great. However, I have noticed somewhat of a change using the camera on the S23 Ultra. I have noticed that even compared to my wife's S23 Plus, photos are quite oversharpened on the S23 Ultra to the point where looking at the photos using my 4K monitor at home, it looks horrific. It's a similar effect to having your TV's sharpness up to a hundred percent. White ghosting/artifacting everywhere. 

This has led me to download the Camera Assistant feature and changing the photo softening setting to medium instead of off. Doing this photos resemble my older S22 Ultra device. It also seems the regular S23 range have less aggressive sharpening than the S23 Ultra. The result of using the medium softening setting is decent, there is definitely a loss of detail and a certain blur on photos as this softening seems to happen after a photo is taken. It doesn't change the sharpening algorithm (or does it? Can someone at Samsung let me know?).

Whatever the case, it would be great if this was addressed through one of your updates. It is affecting your review scores with a lot of people out there since a  lot of them are complaining that Samsung photos using the S23 Ultra are way too oversharpened. I hope you can correct this problem and give us some nice sharpening without sacrificing details when you zoom in. If people can do this using Gcam mods, I am sure you could.

I will leave you with an example of what I am talking about.

[keith30]

You can rotate your photos after uploading, you need to go into the edit settings, and find the circle with the arrow.

[Paul_alz]

Thanks for sharing,

Same issue here,  I was worried it was a failure in my phone.

***k it, I'm buying an Iphone next year.

[AviSidhu]

I was shocked to see the lack of replies to such an interesting post. I agree with you. S23 Ultra over sharpens images which you get to know especially when watching them on a big display. It messes up foliage and things with texture like old walls.

Viewing these pics on phone isn't much of an issue as they appear fine until zoomed in.

I also feel the photo softening feature in camera assistant works after the pic is taken and doesn't change the default sharpening algorithm as it softens the overall image uniformly.

I'm sure this will be addressed and fixed in the S24 Ultra, but doubt the S23 Ultra will also get the fix with an update. 

They would have done so by now if they had to. I feel bad because other than this it's really an unbeatable camera system.

[AviSidhu]

I just came across this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyS23/comments/1430g0i/picture_softening/

An image editing expert claims here that the photo softening feature doesn't really soften the pic in post but rather actually tames the sharpening algorithm itself.

He reasons that if images were being softened in post after over-sharpening them first, then sharpening artifacts and halo effects would still be there, which is a very reasonable argument I'd say.

[artezest]

So you are less worried about your flagship device performing below average phones and worried about him posting samples in incorrect orientation.

[artezest]

I am professional photographer and was very excited when got s23ultra. To my surprise the over-sharpened photos looked like clicked from 5MP TOY CAMERA. At first I thought that somehow I got a faluty unit. So I started digging information on internet and got shocked to know the facts about it.
# Firtly every S23Ultra (the flagship device of Samsung) was having the same issue.
# Secondly Internet had tons of review (specially YouTube) none mentioned this most important issue. Seems like Samsung sponsored everybody to speak all good about s23U or else the S23U users were (with exceptions)  people with poor eyesight.
# Thrirdly I started figuring out the resolution to the issue. Found that Samsung's Camera Assistant App is like trying to apply blurry cover on a torn photo(no good).
However FOUND AN ALTERNATIVE i.e. to shoot in 50mp mode which is free from this issue. This indicated that its an software issue and Samsung failed to fix it.

Cannot imaging world's second largest phone company selling A flagship device in name of camera and the only issue have is of camera and on top of it a whole iteration of phone is about to come and the issue is still not fixed