Adobe Demonstrates Almost Scary Levels of Advancement in Mobile Portraiture

Lots and lots of people take selfies and portraits with their phones–I mean, look at what the iPhone 7 Plus’s portrait mode has done with phones these days. And today, Adobe is showing off some new technology powered by Sensei designed to make mobile portraits even better–if not possibly misleading. The new technology is basically letting your phone be nowhere as great as a dedicated lens and large camera sensor/film plane but still is good enough to fool most people.

The new technology video from Adobe showcases a lot of pretty cool technology advances like simulating what a lens can do based on various points in the image. So for example, the wide angle selfie camera on your phone will deliver a photo and using Adobe’s tech, it can be made to look like the photo was shot with a longer lens. Then you can do slight perspective correction, blur the background out and even apply the looks from other photos onto yours.

Insane, right?

Besides being catered to those sad folks who sit alone (like this guy does in the video) just to take a selfie and obsess over their self image, a great argument can be made that the fun is being taken out of photography and put more into the editing process. Plus, at least if you’re part of the online dating community, a lot can be done here to fool others into making people think you look one way vs another.

All of this in some way or another seems tied to Project Felix, which Adobe stated a while ago is giving designers the power to create photo realistic images without paying for expensive photo shoots. Personally, I’m just wondering what everyone is trying to do with the photo market right now considering that there seems to be so much disruption and consumers can’t even catch up.