Camera app quality

Steve-robee

How does the GrapheneOS camera app compare to the Google camera app?
Is the picture quality comparable?

lcalamar

Steve-robee tons of replies on this question in this forum. Simple searching would reveal all.

I find the gos camera to be as good

matchboxbananasynergy

Steve-robee Hi there! I would say that the GrapheneOS' Camera quality is fine, although Google Camera is better in most cases.

What I personally do is use the GrapheneOS Camera most of the time, and I have a specific Google Camera profile for when I want to take a picture of something special, just to have the option.

There's a relatively recent comparison of the two apps from Sideofburritos on YouTube, if you're interested:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=MSvHKf9hxao

abcZ

Steve-robee The quality is absolutely identical, because its the same camera and HAL. The difference is in FEATURES. GrapheneOS camera has fewer FEATURES (like background blurring and stitched images) because those features aren't exposed by CameraX.

Volen

Steve-robee

Quality-wise, GOS camera is no different from any other 3rd party camera and is simply a no match to Google Camera as Google Camera utilises all the APIs / hardware whilst GOS camera (and any other 3rd party camera) does not.

So GOS cam (+any other 3rd party cam) vs Google Camera:

Google camera has Night Mode, so if you take a picture at night / dark place, it will make it much better. The GOS cam (or any other 3rd party) camera is not good for night shots as it doesn't have any post-processing algorithms so pics will be too dark. The difference is big and noticeable - try to make a night time pic on GOS cam and Google Cam and you'll spot the difference.
Google camera has post-processing, GOS camera doesn't. This is noticeable when looking at details.
For example, take a pic of a carpet. The stock camera will process it nicely so you will see all the fine details if you zoom in. GOS camera won't (not much details if you zoom in, pic will be blurry).
Google Camera has lots of useful, extra modes (Portrait and Macro being one of the most useful ones), GOS doesn't.
Comfort-wise, Google Camera has pre-set zoom buttons, so you can easily tap on desired zoom level. GOS camera doesn't have this so you have to manually zoom in (which is a headache as takes time + its almost impossible to get fixed zoom (if you try 5x, it will most certainly end up with 4.9 or 5.1).

GOS (and any other 3rd party camera) is good for basic shots but if you really want a quality photography, then nothing can beat stock Google Camera (or modified GCam that is basically the same Google Camera).

Please note that Google Camera (and GCam) are much slower on Pixel 7 vs stock OS for some reason (there is a separate thread about it). Pixel 6 devices are working fine though.

lcalamar

matchboxbananasynergy the video is 6 months old, I think gos cam has improved since then?

The video is still good, but may be a little dated?

sugseg52

matchboxbananasynergy May I ask about your reasoning for making a profile just for Gcam? Wouldn't it be enough - security wise - to install it and disable network access for this app? Assuming that you don't have any other google things installed...

matchboxbananasynergy

sugseg52 Sure, it would be fine! It's mostly just a personal choice, not something that's mandatory!

[deleted]

abcZ
I don't use phone camera much but I was quite curious so I tested it.
I tested P6a Google camera and GOS camera and see quite clearly the difference once you zoom a bit in. I made sure that the phone was stabilized and took one photo with each app and than when I zoomed in the result was quite clear. I shot it inside, so the light conditions weren't very good, but Google camera still outperforms the GOS camera in details.

ve3jlg

abcZ
I thought those features were done by google on their servers? Are they done in-camera?

abcZ

[deleted] Any differences are due to you having set different level of compression (JPEG). Again, the data is IDENTICAL.

MineralWater

abcZ
If it was about compression, all phones would make awesome photos. It is related to the software only.

The gcam makes much better and detailed pictures, that is visible to the naked eye.

[deleted]

abcZ

abcZ 314random Any differences are due to you having set different level of compression (JPEG). Again, the data is IDENTICAL

If you claim something, support it.
Where exactly could one adjust "different level of compression" - as you were saying - in GOS camera and in Google camera?

abcZ

MineralWater COMPRESSION.
Look it up and look into it.

[deleted]

Can you guide me where exactly could I have adjust "different level of compression" - as you were saying - in GOS camera and in Google camera? I am trying to understand if you mean that one should use RAW to get similar results or if I am missing something, because repeatedly performed test showed me that input from Google camera is in not-as-good-light conditions visibly better than GOS camera, even though GOS camera improved a lot.

The only settings which I changed in Google camera was:

save location - to OFF
Google lense suggestion - to OFF
social networks sharing - to OFF
I see that Resolution is/ was set to Full.

In GOS camera I have:
Image quality: 100%
and Gyroscope suggestions: OFF
Most of these settings have no relation to image quality..., but these are the only changes I did, therefore I wonder about how I set that different level of compression.

Sim

Volen
Hi Volen,
You mention macro option on Google camera, does it work for you on graphene OS? I have graphene OS on a pixel 7 and I don't have the macro option on Google camera, the golden flower icon doesn't appear, the focus doesn't work and the macro option doesn't appear in the settings.
Thank you in advance for your feedback :)

AdamBv1

When talking about GOS camera quality keep in mind there was a change back in Version 56:

Notable changes in version 56:

use Latency mode by default for fresh installs instead of Quality mode: Latency mode doesn't wait for 3A convergence (stable auto-focus/auto-exposure/auto-white-balance), defaults to 95% JPEG quality instead of 100% and uses HDR+ on Pixel 4 and later instead of Pixel 2 and later which doesn't matter much for fresh installs since Pixel 3 has been end-of-life for over a year

I had my GOS install done before this update and so fiddled around with the setting and tested it out and manually put it on latency priority. I found that Latency really improved how fast it took photos after hitting the shutter button but you are more likely to get less awesome photos as as a result. Since I have my phone set to launch the GOS camera with a power double tap and generally want to snap really quick photos this setting is perfect for me and I use GCam for anything I'm willing to take a couple more seconds to capture and care about the quality of.

[deleted]

AdamBv1

I have a question about this.
I recently installed GrapheneOS and my camera app also had "Latency" enabled at first.
But since the quality is most important to me, I then immediately switched to "Quality" here.

Unfortunately, I'm not very tech-savvy, but for photos, the quality is much more important to me than the speed when shooting.

[deleted]

To abcZ: I missed the time window to edit my comment, but I would like to add, that I really don't care about what kind of processing or magic does the app, the only thing that's important here is, if the picture is of a good quality. And if I have two apps and one takes always better shots, than it's quite easy to pick a side. I am glad that GOS camera is improving but these statements like: the data is the same is absolutely irrelevant, when one picture is evidently better than the second one.

Volen

[deleted]

Sorry for hijacking the thread but wanted to say that I totally agree with this statement and think the same.

Whilst GOS Camera is a GREAT project, respecting user privacy and consistently improving, the fact it cannot utilize the APIs in full (which is Google's fault) makes it pretty much not good for me too as I care about quality, especially, considering that Pixel is a flagship phone with camera capabilities similar to high-end Apple and Samsung devices.

The most disappointing thing is that the Google Camera is not processing images fast enough on GOS on Pixel 7 for some reason so it makes it very challenging to use.

abcZ

[deleted] Guess what? GrapheneOS Camera does no processing. That's all done by the HAL, which is the same no matter what camera program you use.

CobaltInferno

I didn't find it to be as good as the Pixel Camera, so I just installed the pixel camera again.

AdamBv1

[deleted] Quality works well and it's what my device was defaulted to originally. It has very noticeable shutter lag to me but hardly unusuable, being maybe up to a whole second compared to a small fraction of one, but it does use that time to make sure everything is good instead of possibly a poorly focused and exposed mess.

If you don't plan on using multiple camera apps then putting the GOS camera in quality mode is probably a good idea. I like being able to optimize it for Latency and then using another when I care about quality and have the time. I spend a lot of time driving and sometimes that second of shutter lag can be the difference between what I want to get a picture of being in frame or not and so capturing anything at lower quality because it took shortcuts for speed is better than nothing to me.