Last week, Google launched the Zoom Enhance feature, but only on the Pixel 8 Pro – sorry, Pixel 8 users. The new Pixel 9 series will already have this feature available, of course, even on the vanilla model. However, shipping is still a few days away. Here’s an early preview of how the feature works, courtesy of Peyman Milanfar, who works on computational imaging, machine learning, and vision-related tasks at Google.
First, what is Zoom Enhance? Unlike Super Res Zoom, this feature works even after you’ve taken a photo. If you have a Pixel 8 Pro (or you’re reading this after getting a Pixel 9), you’ll find Zoom Enhance under Tools in Google Photos.
Milanfar posted a thread on X explaining how the feature works. What’s most interesting is that this is Google’s first image-to-image diffusion model designed to run on-device (so, the Pixel 8 with 8GB of RAM can’t handle it).
As we mentioned above, this works on photos you’ve already taken – any photo, including old photos, even photos you took with a non-Pixel camera. Obviously, this also works for photos that aren’t real photos, you can upscale photos you get from a text-to-image AI model.
Here are some sample photos shared by Milanfar. They are arranged in groups of three: first, the original photo, then a simple crop and upscale and finally, an upscale processed by Zoom Enhance.
Example of Zoom Enhance
Going beyond the Pixel 8 Pro’s max zoom
More Zoom Enhance Images
Promoting the Mona Lisa
Trying to zoom in on text
Improve the framing of a photo by cropping
that car looks so far away
Another example of improving framing
this is a 20 year old photo
Another example of Zoom Enhance
Google initially announced Zoom Enhancement in October 2023, a week before the Pixel 8 series went on sale. You can say it took the Google team a long time to finish working on this feature. At least Google was always clear that this would be only for the Pixel 8 Pro and not the vanilla model.