Author Archives: Ofer Shacham

Use Pixel 2 for better photos in Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat

With Pixel 2, we wanted to build the best smartphone camera in the world. One of the ways we did that is with HDR+ technology, which helps you capture better photos in challenging lighting conditions, like scenes with both bright and shaded areas or those with dim light.  This technology has always been available when you take photos from Pixel’s main camera app. Now we’re bringing it to your favorite photography, social media, and camera apps.


Today we’re turning on Pixel Visual Core for Pixel 2 users—a custom designed co-processor for Pixel 2. Using computational photography and machine learning (which powers Pixel’s HDR+ technology), Pixel Visual Core improves image quality in apps that take photos. This means it’ll be easier to shoot and share amazing photos on Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat, along with many other apps which use the Pixel 2 camera. All you need to do is take the photo and Pixel 2 will do the rest. Your photos will be bright, detailed, and clear.
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    Same picture taken without (left) and with HDR+ on Pixel Visual Core (right).

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    Same picture taken without (left) and with HDR+ on Pixel Visual Core (right).

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    Same picture taken without (left) and with HDR+ on Pixel Visual Core (right).

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    Same picture taken without (left) and with HDR+ on Pixel Visual Core (right).

Pixel Visual Core is built to do heavy-lifting image processing while using less power, which saves battery. That means we're able to use that additional computing power to improve the quality of your pictures by running the HDR+ algorithm. Like the main Pixel camera, Pixel Visual Core also runs RAISR, which means zoomed-in shots look sharper and more detailed than ever before. Plus, it has Zero Shutter Lag to capture the frame right when you press the shutter, so you can time shots perfectly. What’s also exciting is these new features are available to any app—developers can find information on Google Open Source.


These updates are rolling out over the next few days, along with other Pixel software improvements, so download the February monthly update when you see the notification.


These aren’t the only updates coming to Pixel this month. As we announced last year, our goal is to build new features for Pixel over time so your phone keeps getting better. Later this week, we’re adding new Augmented Reality (AR) Stickers themed around winter sports, so you can dress up videos and photos with freestyle skiers, twirling ice skaters, hockey players, and more. Like all AR stickers, these characters interact with both the camera and each other, creating a fun-filled way to enhance the moments you capture and share.

If you post photos or videos to your favorite apps, tag your pictures with #teampixel so we can see all the great moments you’ve captured.

Pixel Visual Core: image processing and machine learning on Pixel 2

The camera on the new Pixel 2 is packed full of great hardware, software and machine learning (ML), so all you need to do is point and shoot to take amazing photos and videos. One of the technologies that helps you take great photos is HDR+, which makes it possible to get excellent photos of scenes with a large range of brightness levels, from dimly lit landscapes to a very sunny sky.

HDR+ produces beautiful images, and we’ve evolved the algorithm that powers it over the past year to use the Pixel 2’s application processor efficiently, and enable you to take multiple pictures in sequence by intelligently processing HDR+ in the background. In parallel, we’ve also been working on creating hardware capabilities that enable significantly greater computing power—beyond existing hardware—to bring HDR+ to third-party photography applications.

To expand the reach of HDR+, handle the most challenging imaging and ML applications, and deliver lower-latency and even more power-efficient HDR+ processing, we’ve created Pixel Visual Core.

Pixel Visual Core is Google’s first custom-designed co-processor for consumer products. It’s built into every Pixel 2, and in the coming months, we’ll turn it on through a software update to enable more applications to use Pixel 2’s camera for taking HDR+ quality pictures.

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Magnified image of Pixel Visual Core

Let's delve into the details for you technical folks out there: The centerpiece of Pixel Visual Core is the Google-designed Image Processing Unit (IPU)—a fully programmable, domain-specific processor designed from scratch to deliver maximum performance at low power. With eight Google-designed custom cores, each with 512 arithmetic logic units (ALUs), the IPU delivers raw performance of more than 3 trillion operations per second on a mobile power budget. Using Pixel Visual Core, HDR+ can run 5x faster and at less than one-tenth the energy than running on the application processor (AP). A key ingredient to the IPU’s efficiency is the tight coupling of hardware and software—our software controls many more details of the hardware than in a typical processor. Handing more control to the software makes the hardware simpler and more efficient, but it also makes the IPU challenging to program using traditional programming languages. To avoid this, the IPU leverages domain-specific languages that ease the burden on both developers and the compiler: Halide for image processing and TensorFlow for machine learning. A custom Google-made compiler optimizes the code for the underlying hardware.


In the coming weeks, we’ll enable Pixel Visual Core as a developer option in the developer preview of Android Oreo 8.1 (MR1). Later, we’ll enable it for all third-party apps using the Android Camera API, giving them access to the Pixel 2’s HDR+ technology. We can’t wait to see the beautiful HDR+ photography that you already get through your Pixel 2 camera become available in your favorite photography apps.

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    Pictures taken on Pixel 2 on a third-party app. Picture on the right is HDR+ on Pixel Visual Core
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    Pictures taken on Pixel 2 on a third-party app. Picture on the right is HDR+ on Pixel Visual Core
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    Pictures taken on Pixel 2 on a third-party app. Picture on the right is HDR+ on Pixel Visual Core
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    Pictures taken on Pixel 2 on a third-party app. Picture on the right is HDR+ on Pixel Visual Core

HDR+ will be the first application to run on Pixel Visual Core. Notably, because Pixel Visual Core is programmable, we’re already preparing the next set of applications. The great thing is that as we port more machine learning and imaging applications to use Pixel Visual Core, Pixel 2 will continuously improve. So keep an eye out!