How the Galaxy S24’s improved ISP (Image Signal Processing) aids those with shaky hands

Mobile photography has come a long way, but every once in a while you get a shot that’s simply not great – you’ve zoomed too much, or it’s dark, or you have shaky hands – the result is a blurry mess.

“Shaky hands, poor seating, darkness — if you’re not up close and personal with the subject of your photo, a lot can come between you and the perfect shot. With Galaxy S24, that’s a thing of the past” – that’s what the latest Samsung article about the hot flagship reads.

The Galaxy S24’s ProVisual Engine uses upgraded hardware and new AI capabilities for consistent zoom shots; also, there’s something called ISP (Image Signal Processing) – and we’ll see how it’s updated.

But first, the ProVisual Engine – the Galaxy S24’s “imaging powerhouse”. Newly introduced on the Galaxy S24 series, the ProVisual Engine is a pack of AI tools (both for capture and image editing) dedicated to enhancing a photo. The ProVisual Engine consists of tools like Nightography, AI Zoom, Instant Slow-mo, Edit Suggestion, Generative Edits and Super High Dynamic Range (HDR).

While AI is front and center on the Galaxy S24, it has been playing a role in enhancing content creation since the Galaxy S10 series, which applied AI models, Neural Processing Units (NPUs) and large-scale datasets.

The S10 can’t hold a candle to the S24, though: the Galaxy S24’s ProVisual Engine sports 112 AI models – that’s 28 times more than the Galaxy S10 – and 13 times the NPU performance for intelligent Galaxy photography.

How the Quad Tele System Works

The Galaxy S24 Ultra utilizes the Quad Tele system which gets you optical quality zoom at any magnification up to 10x worry-free.

• 2x & 10x – Pixel binning, specifically tetra binning, works by combining four smaller pixels into one larger pixel. This technique allows the ProVisual Engine to convert a huge 200MP image into a refined 50MP image. It intelligently crops out a 12MP section, resulting in a detailed 2x zoom photo derived from a high-resolution 1x image. Likewise, for a 10x magnification optical quality, a 50MP image at 5x zoom is reduced to 12MP, producing a 10x zoom shot with rich, clear detail. Here, AI-powered super resolution enhances clarity while creating the 10x image. At every step of the imaging process, across all ranges, AI-powered multi-frame processing (MFP) is applied to ensure crisp, accurate shots.
• 3x & 5x – At 3x and 5x, the Galaxy S24 Ultra uses dedicated optical lenses. At 5x, thanks to a new 50MP sensor twice the size of previous models, much more detail is possible. It can also take clearer and less noisy shots in the dark thanks to 60% larger pixels.
• Enhanced ISP – Great zoom isn’t just about magnification. It’s also about clarity, and that’s where the Galaxy S24’s improved Image Signal Processing (ISP) comes in. Applied to both front and rear cameras, this improved ISP analyzes segments of an image to understand what’s going on in the scene so it can apply sophisticated editing and fine-tune specific aspects of the image such as sharpness, skin tone and noise reduction while also enhancing details. Hardware-based ISP is used for optical quality images at 2x, 3x and 5x zoom. Previously, AI ISP was only applied to 30x zoom and higher; however, now AI ISP also enhances the clarity of digital zoom at levels in between 1x, 2x, 3x, 5x and all other levels.