This seems to replicate the post-processing we do in our brain (which is also a giant neural network). I wonder if the process is similar?
That’s not to say that the same “thing” is happening at the granular level at all.
But this is distinctly different from standard filtering functions, which can only work with entropy already present in the source image. So there’s a neat distinction.
The output from the CNN is essentially an “artist interpretation” of the source image. As such there could be “clarifying details” in the output that were in fact totally invented and not actually present in the source.
”The human eye can detect a luminance range of 10¹⁴, or one hundred trillion (100,000,000,000,000) (about 46.5 f-stops), from 10−6 cd/m2, or one millionth (0.000001) of a candela per square meter to 10⁸ cd/m2 or one hundred million (100,000,000) candelas per square meter. This range does not include looking at the midday sun (10⁹ cd/m2)[21] or lightning discharge.”