Peak Google: Magical Zoom Enhance trick on Pixel 9 Pro makes leaked Pixel 9a photos sharper

Before trying out Zoom Enhance, I was curious to see how much of a difference it could actually make. But instead of taking new photos, I found two old pictures from my gallery and tried enhancing different portions of the images to see if I could restore some detail. I’d imagine many people would be looking to do the same with some of their old snaps.

And the results are a mixed bag. As you can tell by the enhanced crops from the first image, Google’s upscaling algorithm is pretty good at sharpening text, which includes large letters.

However, as seen in the “Canal house” crop, text that’s already too tiny, or too bright, might end up looking even less legible after applying Zoom Enhance, which gives off a painting-like effect to some images.

The Pixel’s Zoom Enhance works best with simple shapes and textures

Moving on to the second image, the hit-and-miss tendency with enhancing text continues. The blue plantholder and the plant look realistic but the text could be much better rendered.

The algorithm did a very good job with the “Lazy days” crop, which was totally pixelated before. However, the signs on the brickwall remained just as hard to read.

With the lamp crop, the lamp itself, the brick wall, and tree branches are nicely sharpened, and maybe even a tad oversharpened.

Don’t be fooled - Google’s “Zoom Enhance” and other “upscaling” AI don’t really make your photos “more detailed” - they add “fake” detail instead

Moving on to what Zoom Enhance is REALLY not meant to do, perhaps the most interesting example I’ve got here is the one with the three strangers walking by the cafe.

It perfectly illustrates what “Zoom Enhance” is meant to be used for, which is simple shapes and objects with distinct features, like (some) text or most architectural detail.

As you can see, it does a really good job at making the umbrella, bench, and plant in the image crop far clearer than before.

However, when it comes to human faces, the results are far less impressive. It pretty much butchers the ladies’ hair, and the gentleman’s… non-hair. They look like they belong in an oil painting.

Zoom Enhance is imperfect - it adds “fake” detail to your pixelated photos; it’s not great in low-light; doesn’t like people; and it’s not coming to the vanilla Pixel 8 or Pixel 9

On top of that, the feature seems to be specifically optimized for dealing with very pixelated image crops, which is why it does a much better job at upscaling tiny portions of a larger image - rather than a whole photo. In other words, it’s important to know what to use Zoom Enhance for, which you learn pretty quickly after giving it a spin.

Another limitation is how Zoom Enhance performs in low-light conditions. Night shots, which are typically grainier and have less detail to begin with, don’t benefit from Zoom Enhance nearly as much.

And I can’t skip mentioning the added inconvenience of having to apply Zoom Enhance manually after taking the picture. The process takes 5-10 seconds to work depending on the size of the image portion you’ve chosen to enhance.

The only reason I bring this up is because Chinese flagships like the Oppo Find X7 Ultra and Xiaomi 14 Ultra perform similar AI upscaling tricks in real-time, and manage to produce really convincing 30-60x zoom photos as you take them.

Zoom Enhance requires that extra step, which isn’t a huge deal, but it does make the process a bit less seamless.

“Zoom Enhance” is a nice trick for upscaling pixelated photos but Google, Samsung, and Apple need to do better if they want to compete with China’s best zoom-ers

In the end, the long-awaited “Zoom Enhance” trick is a nice addition to the already smart Pixel camera. So, I guess the wait was worth it.

That being said, as I’ve demonstrated, Zoom Enhance is far from “magical” when it comes to dealing with tiny text, images with less contrast, low-light snaps, and photos of people. So, Google has some more work to do there. Not to mention, Pixel 8 and Pixel 9 users don’t get this feature in the first place.

Speaking of doing more, I’d love to see Google, Samsung and (especially) Apple finally catch up to major Chinese phone-makers in terms of real-time AI zoom enhancements in the 20-60x zoom range.