Last week, Google launched Zoom Enhance, but only on the Pixel 8 Pro — sorry, Pixel 8 users. The new Pixel 9 series will have it out of the box, of course, even the standard model. However, there are still a few days left before it ships. Here’s an early look at what the feature does, courtesy of Peyman Milanfar, who works at Google on computational imaging, machine learning, and vision-related tasks.
First, what is Zoom Enhance? Unlike Super Res Zoom, this feature works even after you take the photo. If you own a Pixel 8 Pro (or are reading this after getting your Pixel 9), you’ll find Zoom Enhance in Google Photos under Tools.
Milanfar posted a thread on X to give details on how the feature will work. The most interesting part is that this is Google's first picture-to-picture streaming model designed to work on-device (so the Pixel 8 with its 8GB of RAM can't handle it).
As we mentioned above, this works on photos you've already taken, any photos including old ones, even ones you took with a non-Pixel camera. Apparently, it even works for images that aren't real photos, you can upscale images that you get from text-to-image AI models.
Here are some examples of photos shared by Milanfar. They are organized in groups of three: first, the original photo, then a simple crop and scale, and finally, a scale processed by Zoom Enhance.
Example of zoom enhancement
Exceed the Pixel 8 Pro's maximum zoom
More images with improved zoom
Improving the Mona Lisa
Try Zoom Enhance on text
Improve the framing of a photo by cropping
This car seems very far away
Another example of improved framing
This is a 20 year old photo
Another example of zoom improvement
Google had originally announced Zoom Enhance in October 2023, a week before the Pixel 8 series went on sale. It’s safe to say that it took the Google team a while to finish working on this feature. At least Google has always been clear that this would only be for the Pixel 8 Pro and not the standard model.
Source