Compared to DSLR cameras, smartphone cameras have smaller sensors, which limits their spatial resolution; smaller apertures, which limits their light gathering ability; and smaller pixels, which reduces their signal-to-noise ratio. The use of color filter arrays (CFAs) requires demosaicing, which further degrades resolution. In this paper, we supplant the use of traditional demosaicing in single-frame and burst photography pipelines with a multi-frame super-resolution algorithm that creates a complete RGB image directly from a burst of CFA raw images. We harness natural hand tremor, typical in handheld photography, to acquire a burst of raw frames with small offsets. These frames are then aligned and merged to form a single image with red, green, and blue values at every pixel site. This approach, which includes no explicit demosaicing step, serves to both increase image resolution and boost signal to noise ratio.

Further indications that mobile photography is disrupting the digital imaging industry thanks to a tighter integration of hardware and software.

I look at my Instagram feed and it’s a network; I’m seeing through the eyes of people around the world,” says the image-sharing app’s Teru Kuwayama. Following two decades as a noted photojournalist, covering war and humanitarian crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Kashmir, the TED Senior Fellow now works on the community team at Instagram, specifically with photojournalists and the wider photo community. “So many eyes and so many minds are coming online and being harnessed to this grid,” he says. For Kuwayama, this collective network and its unprecedented audience serves as the greatest draw for his involvement. “It’s unlocked a totally different spectrum of reporting,” he says.

So far, Instagram has succeeded where Twitter has failed. They say a picture is worth more than 140 characters, isn’t it?

Naming artworks has always been important, not only because it’s useful to have a way to refer to the piece, but also, and much more importantly, to present a window to the creator’s vision and ideas, to clarify his intentions when creating the piece and to provide additional content to the visual. In ‘artistic’ photography it seems that the situation is similar, and an image’s title sometimes holds much more than can be seen in the image itself, insinuate as to the photographer’s motives and feelings and hint at things which can be missed otherwise. Even ‘Untitled’ images are often left untitled for a good reason. The title, or lack thereof, is a critical part of the art.