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Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

I'm peripherally involved in this scene. The answer is that the journals don't want processed images, but of course the scientist doesn't always know what kind of processing happened to the image en route to their display and file system. The idea is that an image supposedly constitutes "data" and as such, should represent raw data.

Also, what constitutes "raw data" is itself a matter of debate. How raw is raw? Like any interesting pursuit, scientific publishing struggles to keep up with developments in technology.

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> How raw is raw?

Certainly no jpeg image produced by any digital camera is really “raw” as it will already have been through a debayering filter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter

And then on top of that is the JPEG compression artifacts.

But I do wonder how many raw files also contain data that has been debayered already. I have not looked into that.

I know that with third party firmware such as Magic Lantern it is possible to get the image data without debayering. https://magiclantern.fm/

Likewise I know that the Camera Module 3 for Raspberry Pi is possible to retrieve the image data from without debayering.

I feel like there's a meaningful difference between that stuff and the computational photography common on smartphones.

There may be a meaningful difference between demosaicing and generative AI - actually there isn't because demosaicing/upscaling/image generation are all the same problem, but there might be one since people like to think of them as different.

There isn't a difference between auto white balance and generative AI though. The colors in an auto mode digital camera picture are not real.

You can only get real colours in a raw format digital picture.

Not really. First of all the colours aren't "real" even in that raw, and second if you accept that as real, you can get per-pixel chroma information with Foveon sensors, pixel-shift systems, monochrome sensors with lens filters...

Well, a more fundamental issue is that the colors of an object in a scene aren't "real" if the lighting in the scene is not daylight white. And most of the time you're not there to appreciate the low-CRI yellow indoor lights.

The RAW data for the vast majority of MILCs and DSLRs is pre-debayering.

Even Android smartphones will give pre-debayering raw data from the sensor if you use the appropriate camera app. (There are quite a few cheap ones where the OEM debayering filter is just horrible, and the sensor is actually capable of much better quality.)

Astronomy is in for a hard time then, anything that uses false color is technically very much processed.

This is certainly not a "no processing" policy.

Where the line is drawn as to what's "generative" and what's "AI" may be blurry, but they haven't just banned traditional transform operations.

I think if it gets all the way to a computer model rendering, where the raw data input is in no way shaped like an image “yet”, the distinction between traditional and new-generative-model approaches sounds more like a difference in degree.

passing photons through a filter in front of the sensor is absolutely not even close to being the same as "AI" post processing of the data.

But the thing they pulled to give us the "photo" of that black hole absolutely is.

I like that > Like any interesting pursuit, scientific publishing struggles to keep up with developments in technology.

I'm going to keep that in mind, there does seem to be this interesting human nature presumption that everyone keeps in sync with the latest and greatest. But that's simply not the case.

I mean, in digital photography "raw" has a very well defined meaning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_image_format

Since enhancements (and “enhancements”) are going to get more pervasive, it feels like a good time for smartphones and cameras to add a “scientific” setting that only stores the unprocessed sensor data.

I’d say “raw” is light imprinted on film. I may be biased but wouldn’t mind seeing 35mm make a comeback.

that's not what "raw" means though, and this is a really weird interpretation

> I may be biased but wouldn’t mind seeing 35mm make a comeback.

It's on the rise for the past years

Yes, me too. I have a Minolta Rangefinder in a box that needs the crank spring fixed. I've kept it because it captures the lighting exactly like I see it with my eyes. I would get the best night/ twighlight/ evening pictures with it and I would specify no color correction at the developer. I don't think digital photographers understand what it is to capture the light'. I have a newer Minolta in working condition that also takes excellent quality pictures.

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