A few weeks ago we saw a clever developer hack into the Google Camera apk and enable Night Sight mode for Pixel Cameras (and for others not long after). Today Google have announced that they are officially rolling it out to Pixel phones beginning today.

Night Sight is a mode in the Google Camera app which uses AI (and a fair bit of Google wizardry) that allows more light to be captured in the image. Obviously the image takes a bit longer to capture than usual and a requires a steady hand. The camera app will even suggest when you should give Night Sight a shot – you can find it under “More” and then choosing “Night”.

Google have also provided some tips and tricks for how to get the most out of Night Sight:

  • Night sight cannot operate in total darkness so choose a setting with some light falling on it.
  • Soft, uniform lighting works better than harsh lighting, which creates dark shadows.
  • To avoid lens flare artifacts, try to keep very bright light sources out of the field of view.
  • To increase exposure, tap on various objects, then move the exposure slider. Tap again to disable — the exposure can be decreased later if required in the Google Photos editor.
  • If it’s so dark the camera can’t focus, tap on a high-contrast edge, or the edge of a light source.
  • Night Sight works for selfies too, with optional illumination from the screen itself.
  • If it’s so dark the camera can’t focus, tap on a high-contrast edge, or the edge of a light source. If this won’t work for your scene, use the Near (4 feet) or Far (12 feet) focus buttons (see below).

Some users have been testing out the official Night Sight mode for a few days and the results are impressive as you can see in the Tweet from MKBHD below.

Here is one quick example we took with the previous hacked version:

Night Sight is coming soon in an update to the Google Camera app to all Pixel smartphones. If you want to read the nuts and bolts as to how Google perform this wizardry head on over to the Google AI Blog and check it out. If you want to test out the official version now you can grab the apk from APK Mirror here.

Have you tried Night Sight yet? What are your thoughts?

Source: Google AI Blog.

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