Aura’s impressive e-ink photo frame doesn’t even look digital
Aura’s impressive e-ink photo frame doesn’t even look digital
Aura 令人惊艳的电子墨水屏相框：看起来根本不像数码产品
What’s the most cliche possible gift you can give a relative? A digital photo frame, displaying a rotating slideshow of family photos. Now Aura has completely refreshed this product space with its gorgeous Aura Ink frame, which uses e-ink to create a display that doesn’t even look digital. 送给亲戚最老套的礼物是什么？当然是数码相框，循环播放着家庭照片的幻灯片。现在，Aura 用其华丽的 Aura Ink 相框彻底刷新了这一产品领域，它利用电子墨水（e-ink）技术打造出一种看起来根本不像数码产品的显示效果。
Digital frames have always been so popular (yet mostly disappointing) because there’s an undeniable allure to the idea of them — it feels like magic to imagine hanging artwork on your wall that you can change depending on your mood. In practice, these devices usually look clunky. You need to plug them in and figure out how to hide a bulky cord, and does anyone even want another bright screen in their home anyway? 数码相框一直很受欢迎（但也大多令人失望），因为这个概念本身有着不可否认的吸引力——想象一下，墙上挂着的艺术品可以随心情更换，这感觉就像魔法一样。但在实际使用中，这些设备通常看起来很笨重。你需要插上电源，还得想办法隐藏粗大的电线，而且真的有人希望家里再多一个刺眼的屏幕吗？
This problem was already on the Aura founders’ minds when they started the company 10 years ago, but color e-ink wasn’t feasible until now to use in a digital frame. “E-ink is definitely next level,” co-founder and CTO Eric Jensen told TechCrunch. “We have people tell us that they hung it up, had friends over, and their friends were like, ‘How did you print that picture so quickly?’” Aura 的创始人在 10 年前创办公司时就已经考虑到了这个问题，但直到现在，彩色电子墨水技术才真正具备在数码相框中使用的可行性。“电子墨水绝对是跨越式的升级，”联合创始人兼首席技术官 Eric Jensen 告诉 TechCrunch。“有人告诉我们，他们把相框挂起来后，朋友来家里做客时会问：‘你是怎么这么快就把照片打印出来的？’”
E-ink is the same technology that you see on e-readers, which lets you read a book without feeling the same strain that you get from staring at an LED screen for too long. But there aren’t that many color e-ink devices on the market aside from the Kindle Colorsoft, because the company that manufactures e-ink displays can only currently produce six colors: red, blue, green, yellow, white, and black. 电子墨水与电子阅读器上使用的技术相同，它能让你在阅读书籍时，不会像盯着 LED 屏幕太久那样感到眼睛疲劳。但除了 Kindle Colorsoft 之外，市面上并没有太多彩色电子墨水设备，因为目前生产电子墨水显示屏的厂商只能制造六种颜色：红、蓝、绿、黄、白和黑。
It’s hard to imagine what your favorite family portraits and travel photos would look like with only six colors. But Aura has created a dithering algorithm — a technique that blends a limited color palette into patterns the eye reads as smooth gradients — that renders images close enough to the originals that its e-ink frame could finally go to market. 很难想象你最喜欢的家庭肖像和旅行照片在只有六种颜色的情况下会是什么样子。但 Aura 开发了一种抖动算法（dithering algorithm）——这是一种将有限的调色板混合成肉眼看起来平滑渐变图案的技术——它能将图像渲染得足够接近原图，从而使这款电子墨水相框最终能够推向市场。
“I’m learning color theory from our chief scientists, and as far as I understand it, there’s not a good definition for how many colors this represents well,” Jensen said. “It’s all sort of theoretical and comes down to how people perceive it. Everyone’s a little different, so it’s actually taken a lot of testing with a lot of people in a lot of different spaces and different lighting conditions in order to get where we are today.” “我正在向我们的首席科学家学习色彩理论，据我理解，目前还没有一个很好的定义来衡量这种技术能表现出多少种颜色，”Jensen 说。“这在某种程度上是理论性的，归根结底取决于人们的感知。每个人的感知都有所不同，所以为了达到今天的效果，我们实际上在不同的空间和光照条件下，对许多人进行了大量的测试。”
All of Aura’s frames connect to the Aura app, which is where you can upload photos from your phone, web, email, iCloud, or Google Photos. I found the process to be pretty user-friendly — easy enough for a less tech-savvy relative to navigate, which matters for a product that lives or dies on whether non-technical users will actually set it up. Aura 的所有相框都连接到 Aura App，你可以在这里从手机、网页、电子邮件、iCloud 或 Google Photos 上传照片。我发现这个过程非常人性化——即使是不太懂技术的亲戚也能轻松操作，这对于一款成败取决于非技术用户是否愿意设置它的产品来说至关重要。
The app also has social features, so if your sister has a great new photo of her baby, she can upload it to your shared library and it will appear on your frame. (I didn’t try this, since I don’t know anyone else with an Aura frame, but if I did, I would probably use this feature to prank my family members with ridiculous photos. Am I a bad person?) 该 App 还具备社交功能，所以如果你的姐妹拍了一张宝宝的新照片，她可以将其上传到你们的共享相册，照片就会出现在你的相框上。（我没有尝试过这个功能，因为我认识的人里没有用 Aura 相框的，但如果我有，我可能会用这个功能发些搞怪照片来恶作剧我的家人。我是个坏人吗？）
In addition to the 13.3-inch Ink frame, Aura also sent me its more classic, 12-inch LED Aspen frame as a point of comparison. But the LED frame surprised me with how good it looks in its own right (it feels like the Prada of digital frames). The lighting is about as unobtrusive as an LED screen can be, and it’s anti-glare, which makes the frame look way more premium. Aura’s frames also benefit by surrounding the LED screen with a paper-like matting display, which helps trick the eye into reading it as a printed photograph. 除了 13.3 英寸的 Ink 相框外，Aura 还寄给我一款更经典的 12 英寸 LED Aspen 相框作为对比。但这款 LED 相框本身的出色表现让我感到惊讶（它感觉就像数码相框界的 Prada）。它的光线处理得非常柔和，几乎是 LED 屏幕所能达到的极限，而且具备防眩光功能，这让相框看起来高级得多。Aura 的相框还在 LED 屏幕周围采用了类似纸质的衬垫设计，这有助于欺骗视觉，让人觉得它是一张打印出来的照片。
Aura says it designed its dithering algorithm for portraits of people, since users tend to highlight family photos. I’m a rebel, so I decided to load my frames with travel photos. When comparing the same photo on the Ink and the Aspen, it’s very clear that the colors aren’t exact, but as a digital photographer who isn’t that picky, I didn’t care very much. The distorted color palette almost seems like an artistic choice, even if I know it’s reflective of a technological limitation. Aura 表示，他们的抖动算法是专为人物肖像设计的，因为用户往往更倾向于展示家庭照片。我比较叛逆，所以决定在相框里放旅行照片。当对比 Ink 和 Aspen 上的同一张照片时，很明显颜色并不完全一致，但作为一个并不挑剔的数码摄影师，我并不太在意。这种失真的调色板看起来几乎像是一种艺术选择，尽管我知道这反映了技术上的局限性。
But when I showed the two Aura frames to an analog film photographer who painstakingly studies the small color aberrations in his darkroom prints, he thought that the Ink frame needed some work. I disagree, but if you look at the photos below and are bothered that the white balance isn’t perfectly consistent across each of the three image from my phone, then you might not like the Ink frame. 但当我把这两个 Aura 相框展示给一位胶片摄影师看时，他平时会费尽心思研究暗房冲印照片中的细微色差，他认为 Ink 相框还有待改进。我不同意他的看法，但如果你看下面的照片，并且对手机拍摄的三张照片中白平衡不完全一致感到困扰，那么你可能不会喜欢 Ink 相框。
By default, the Ink frame changes photos once per day, and it will usually do this change in the middle of the night, when you’re least likely to be paying attention. If you manually change the pictures via the app, do not be alarmed if the frame looks like it’s glitching — it takes about a minute for the hardware to run the dithering process and render the six-color, e-ink version of your image. 默认情况下，Ink 相框每天更换一次照片，通常是在深夜进行，那时你最不可能注意到。如果你通过 App 手动更换照片，如果看到相框看起来像是在“闪烁”或“故障”，请不要惊慌——硬件需要大约一分钟的时间来运行抖动处理，并渲染出六色电子墨水版本的图像。
I am very bad with anything involving hammers and nails — all of the art in my apartment is hung up using Command strips — but mounting hardware that Aura includes feels sturdy. It’s easy to take the frame on and off the wall, but you probably only will need to take it down to charge the frame via USB-C once per month. (When the lights are off or you’re not in the room, the display will go to sleep, helping save battery.) 我不擅长任何需要锤子和钉子的活儿——我公寓里所有的艺术品都是用无痕挂钩挂起来的——但 Aura 附带的安装配件感觉很结实。将相框从墙上取下或挂上去都很容易，但你可能只需要每月取下来一次，通过 USB-C 充电即可。（当灯光熄灭或房间里没人时，显示屏会进入睡眠状态，有助于节省电量。）
At $499, I wouldn’t call the Ink frame cheap (the Aspen runs $229, by the way). But aside from its color inconsistencies — which you can argue are more of a feature than a bug — I’ve loved having the Ink frame on my wall. With the unavoidable technical limitations of e-ink in mind, it’s hard for me to imagine how Aura could’ve made a better product. 499 美元的价格，我不会说 Ink 相框很便宜（顺便提一下，Aspen 的价格是 229 美元）。但撇开它的色彩不一致性不谈——你甚至可以说这是一种特色而非缺陷——我非常喜欢墙上的这个 Ink 相框。考虑到电子墨水技术不可避免的局限性，我很难想象 Aura 还能做出比这更好的产品。