Photography on Android: Modified GCam Settings
Explained + My own curves!
phone
PhaseLockedLoop Apr 10
Dirty Fingers
Google is awe- I mean sucks right? Why not unlock
these by default
So we are probably all familiar with the google camera right? Well its an
exceptionally powerful piece of software if you can tweak its values. You may
not know this but there is an entire page dedicated to GCam ports. I tested
the stock version of the camera and compared it to open camera. I decided I
liked google camera better. See the thread: Open Camera vs Google Camera
(Software that makes or breaks the camera)
Google Camera Ports Download
I dont want to repeat everything on that page so check it out for yourself
Device:
Pixel 3 XL
ROM
Lineage OS 17.1 (base) (I havent compiled 18.0 from source yet) (I compile
my own ROMs)
GCam Mod:
Cstark 7.2 (latest) (8.1 crash)
What is the lib patcher?
Libpatcher - is a custom setting where you can set all the settings to your
liking
Radius Temporal changes the graininess of the image by affecting noise, the
higher the image is more blurry and less noise, the lower the more noisy, but
more detail
Tone Curve is where you can adjust dark points, white points, shadows,
highlights. It is recommended to enable and leave the default values or
tweak them (advanced users)
Sharpness allows you to control the sharpness of the image. Zoom in for low-
light shots, and zoom out for selfies.
Luminance Noise Reduction is what controls the “graininess” in images
caused by high ISO. Decrease it to get more detail at the expense of high
noise, or increase it if the noise is unacceptable to you
Color Noise Reduction: Controls color spots. There is usually no need to
adjust it as this will not improve the quality, but you can increase it slightly if
you see colored spots in the dark. Too much chroma noise can cause a
decrease in saturation. Also known as color noise. Be careful with this setting
it can mess with the fine details of an image.
Contrast settings allow you to control the contrast of the image. Increase it if
you want darker shadows, and decrease it to make it brighter is the general
idea. This is again a personal preference
Saturation is what allows you to control the saturation of the image. Increase
it if you want more saturated colors in your photos. Obviously decrease if
your HDR is getting too saturated. This is again a personal preference
Now there are some advanced settings. These affect the morphological
processing (Image Processing Topic - More info here ) Naturally thats a very
basic overview. I took the course while finishing up my engineering degree. It
was difficult stuff past the basic level. I wont get into what these settings do
beyond a decent generalization.
Warning to all these settings can absolutely have a drastic negative effect on
your images. A lot of testing would be necessary by the end user
Luminance noise reduction levels
Level 1 (Detail) changes the photo very slightly, slightly smoothing out small
elements in the image.
Level 2 (Rough Surfaces) seriously alters the image by smoothing grain
Level 3 (Edges) doesn’t change much. Smooths edges slightly
Level 4 (Smooth Surfaces) radically alters the image by making it posterized
by smoothing out large areas of the same color. Avoid magnification over 1.0
Color noise reduction levels
Level 1 (Detail) fine textures, but the same applies to rough details
Level 2 (Rough surfaces) fine textures, but the same applies to rough details
Level 3 (Edges) Edges are mainly defined by the contrast between one object
and another
Level 4 (Smooth Surfaces) Smooth surfaces are generally uniform areas of
the image. Like wallpaper with few small details
My Settings
Now I have done A LOT of testing on my phone, with my case (affects light
angles coming in slightly) and just about everything I can to nail these in for
my device and my tastes so please dont just copy and paste. This is more of
an informative post.
Libpatcher Switches:
Force System Noise Model (I tweaked the tweaked one but I cant post that
code (license issues)) ON
Disable Dehave ON
Sharpness: 1.13
Saturation: 1.21
Global Chroma Denoise: Set to wavelet
Global Luma Denoise: Set to wavelet
Wavelet Luma Denoise Settings:
Level 1 - 0.875
Level 2 - 0.875
Level 3 - 1.0
Level 4 - 1.125
Wavelet Chroma Low Frequency Denoise Settings: (556 THz - 792 THz)
Level 1 - 1.0
Level 2 -1.0
Level 3 - 1.1
Level 4 - 1.2
Wavelet Chroma High Frequency Denoise Settings: (403 THz - 555 THz)
Level 1 - 0.875
Level 2 - 1.0
Level 3 - 1.0
Level 4 - 1.3
Those work far better for me and ive noticed my pictures have less sports
Tips:
If you notice a certain color of spots on your low light photos. Check its
frequency spectrum. Look where its at in the photo and go to the specific
wavelet reduction setting and tweak it. See if you can remove it. More often
than not these settings are used to improve astrophotography, low light and
high detail images.
My sensor has more higher frequency color noise than others. Ive seen some
XDA users where they had to turn down denoise. It really all depends on a lot
of stuff. Its fun to tweak and squeeze out what you can.
YMMV
Will post occasional pics displaying some of the modded apps performance on
occasion
Why didnt your wavelet settings work for me
Factors that affect settings
Your phone
When it was made
The chip itself
The silicon in your sensor
Ambient weather conditions
The image processing firmware on the Pixel Visual Core
Other properties of silicon unique and intrinsic to your device
FAQ
Why are your colors listed as frequencies?
Light is an electromagnetic phenomenon and as an RF engineer its
easier for me to refer to spectra as a frequency but one could easily
refer to it in wavelengths or color (but color wont be accurate as thats up
to perception)
What the f**k are wavelets?
A wavelet is how we define a center frequency and some deviation. We
use wavelets because a color is not just one frequency its a range see
here : Spectral color - Wikipedia Its also an entire subset of mathematics
used by anyone who works with the spectrum (i.e RF engineers, optical
engineers (fiber stuff), biomedical engineers). They are helpful because
we can take the average of a color spectrum (say blues) and convolve it
with the signal to find the center frequency of blue or the blues in a
subset (image). It basically the magic behind the IM processing math.
Do I need to understand light/color physics aka Photonics to do this?
LOL no but a basic informative overview is a good thing to have when
tweaking.
Why did you do this?
For fun
Open Camera vs Google Camera (Software that makes or breaks the cam…
PhaseLockedLoop Apr 10
Dirty Fingers
Image Example: (notice the lack of red green and blue dots (chroma noise))
Just tried a sample of my night time “light bleed” mode and its okay. It still
need more tweaking but heres an example of what tweaking your denoise
settings can do. The image is far better than a stand night photograph (even
with some longer exposure)
Keep in mind you wont remove all the noise. In fact it sometimes takes noise
to remove or smooth noise (dithering). Dithering is a process where we add a
bit of noise to a data set in an attempt to constructively perturb the signals
we want to convolve, isolate and amplify over the average.
