Weird Artifact in Digital Image - Trying to Find an Explanation

The person who took this is trying to figure out what the unusual artifact is in the image. She was taking landscape photos. with her Samsung Galaxy S21 and noticed this. I told her I would post on a photo. forum and see if anyone had any ideas. The first image is more-or-less the original from the camera, and the second is a crop I did in Lightroom with enhanced contrast. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

The aliens got rid of the saucers because everyone knew about them, and they started bringing over cubes that can present the illusion of invisibility.


Within the past year, I have seen some very weird edge enhancement artifacts from cell phone images, this one is a puzzler.

No idea. But my first thought is even though you say 'straight from camera' what setting was it on?
Stock standard Samsung camera or one of 'The Modes'?
If latter might help isolate something.

On a dslr camera I would have said likely card error & to try another card.
- did the phone record this image to onboard storage or a removable card, e.g. micro SD?

joeseph wrote in post #19350289
On a dslr camera I would have said likely card error & to try another card.
- did the phone record this image to onboard storage or a removable card, e.g. micro SD?

Yes, on a digital device bad address line results in a horizontal or vertical line of artifact which is the full width/length. this artifact is weird in terms of being little squares, making it not a simple as bad addressing.

phones have some crazy image manipulation software to try to make the images look good from the camera, and I suspect that is all that is. Saturated areas in the scene are being compressed heavily, creating large blocks of bright and dark in those parts of the scene. You can see all the compression that is happening in that entire part of the image with the blocks of gray and white.

Or just say it is a lost Pokemon, Cloudburst, and call it a day!

Good question.

That sounds like a likely explanation - thanks!