Question G cam
- Thread starter althafjava
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So in this thread we are talking about the Google Camera app, GCam for short, that was created for the Pixel but that was ported to other phones.
And there are different variants of this, different developers are working on it, basing their work on each others work, with different features and different bugs.
And these developers give their versions different names, I think the letters themselves are pretty meaningless, it's just names.
And MGC and LMC are the most popular variants for A52s I think. There are many more.
I am a fan of MGC, specifically I am a fan of the MGC 8.1 line (you can now get up to 8.6, but the 8.1 line has more settings).
But as I said in my previous comment that you reacted to, LMC 8.4 has been getting better, specifically two issues that I found annoying was the viewfinder kept freezing even after applying the fix, and the night sight mode was not really working, but both of those things are fixed now. And it always had the best image quality.
If you're just starting out I would actually recommend just starting with MGC 8.4 because you do not really need to use a config file for that one. But if you want to immediately get what I think is the very best image quality, you should get LMC 8.4 with a correct config file, see my previous comment.
(and meanwhile, I personally will keep using MGC 8.1, because it is what I am used to)
(I attached a night mode shot comparison I took yesterday to show LMC night mode now works fine, if you don't zoom in all three look okay, but if you do zoom in LMC now has both the lowest noise and highest detail)
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Wow, thanks for the great answer. I was searching for a Gcam for ages now. At some point there wasn't even a thread about it yet. Came back few months ago and didn't get the jist of it with what version i need. But this clears things up. I will recommend the MGC Version to my brother and try the LMC version. I like to tinker
Edit: Nice comparison. I like the MGC version. And Jesus what does Samsung do with the noise reduction algorithm? It's going nuts!
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XML:
(put XML file in LMC8.4 folder at the top level, then double tap next to the shutter button)
If the viewfinder does not freeze after a few seconds, you have loaded the config file correctly....
Oh, and a second way, if you have the config loaded and you take a picture, the file will have LMC8.4_A52s_Metal in the filename if you have the config loaded.
To make it more concrete, if you go to Settings|Stream Configuration|Main Camera, and you see several values set to 61448 (and you did not change them yourselves), then the config file was loaded because by default those values are not set that way I think.
Lib .so:
Put .so file in LMC8.4/libs folder in the top level directory, then go to Settings|Photo Processing|Library|Lib From Dir
You select the library there. If you can select it there you have probably set it correctly. Oh, and probably you have to select Library,Custom Lib from Dir on the same screen (see screenshot below, last two options).
The difference with or without XML config is massive, but of course you can only see that when you compare images. But I could not see a difference with or without the .so file.
So I would say that is an optional step, and that is why I did not include in my earlier comment (but I do have that library set myself, just for completeness).
Also, I think there are newer config/ lib files from 'Metal', but I always like to link to stuff I have actually used.
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I'm so confused. I was able to put the .so file properly but the app cant read the .xml. Is it something to do with Android 13?
I even put the xml file in every folder possible.
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What part does not work?
I am on Android 13, I could still select the config again.
I just experimented a bit, when I removed the folder, it would flash a 'Configs not found' popup on the screen, is that what you are getting? What I noticed was that when I removed the folder, it created a new empty one automatically. So maybe you should check whether there are perhaps multiple LMC8.4 folders on your phone, with different capitalizations (so e.g. both an lmc8.4 and LMC8.4 folder).
Hi again! Is there a way to make the focus manual? I already changed the "focus toggle mode" to tap focus but it still auto focuses in center.
You say you changed but after loading the config it is already configured with tap to focus and then track focus, with the Metal config?
But anyway, manual focus in LMC I think is: Settings|Processing functions|Viewfinder settings|Focus slider.
Then you get an extra button in the view finder in the top right, and if you tap on that you can select a focus distance.
(Note: I do not really use LMC, or manual focus, so maybe there are other settings)
That's what I did. Even the manual focus slider doesn't work. I guess I'll have to use the other one you mentioned.
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14Okay, I actually got something working on A52s, thanks to a comment from Windoors here:
You have to change the Photo Session, and no I have no idea what that is or what the values below actually mean.
To make it concrete, here is how I got GCam working on the A52s (emphasis on 'S'):
- Download and install
I picked the ruler package name version
- Load luke-A52-BSG-GV1.xml from the configs section of the URL above (location of file does not matter, double tap next to shutter button and select it).
- Now you have a camera app that freezes up after 3 seconds on A52s (you can still take pictures before that freeze)
- Go to the Settings, then
Modules
Back (1.0)
Session of photo modes (near the bottom of the list)
Photo
and enter the value 61448
Then do the same for
Settings / Modules / Back (1.0) / Session of photo modes / Portrait / 61448
Settings / Modules / Back (1.0) / Session of photo modes / Night Sight / 61448
Settings / Modules / Back (0.5) / Session of photo modes / Photo / 61448
Settings / Modules / Back (0.5) / Session of photo modes / Portrait / 61448
Settings / Modules / Back (0.5) / Session of photo modes / Night Sight / 61448
Settings / Modules / Front (1.0) / Session of photo modes / Photo / 61448
Settings / Modules / Front (1.0) / Session of photo modes / Portrait / 61448
Settings / Modules / Front (1.0) / Session of photo modes / Night Sight / 61448
Settings / Modules / Front (1.2) / Session of photo modes / Photo / 61448
Settings / Modules / Front (1.2) / Session of photo modes / Portrait / 61448
Settings / Modules / Front (1.2) / Session of photo modes / Night Sight / 61448
And presto working GCam with all camera's working, both for photos and videos.
When I first wrote this post I was just glad to have something working, but now many months later I can say this 'recipe' has been what I have been using for many months (I have now switched, see my message from Feb 6 2022 in this thread, but if you're starting out I recommend the way described here).
If you want to try it with other GCam versions, that 'Session' value is stored in different locations.
For instance in Gcam-8.1.101.build-V6.2.211013 from Arnova8G2 it is under Settings|Advanced|Stream Config|Enable OPMode and then set it for Main
and in MGC_8.3.252_V0e it is under Settings|Photo modes session config|Session ID
But both of these versions at least initially appear to have less stability and features, so I am at least for continuing to experiment with MGC_8.1.101_A9_GV1u for now.12Hello,
I have been messing with the configs in more detail, and really felt a need to share what I learned, and I thought I would just do it here in a very very long comment, because I feel at least some readers here might be interested in messing with configurations. Feel free to ignore this message
Introduction
This message is about starting a GCam configuration from scratch. As you can read from other comments in this thread by me I have been using A52s + MGC 8.1+luke-A52-BSG-GV1.xml+sessionid fix since October, and was generally happy with it. But I was annoyed some pictures I took of Family failed over Christmas (white faces in dimly lit environment were too red because of over-saturation, easily fixed 'in post' but then I had already send the pictures around....).
So what I wanted to get away from was from this custom configuration whose origin I did not know and changes I did not understand, and I wanted to stay closer to the default Google/ MGC configuration, hoping it would work better in all kinds of scenarios.
Whenever I talk about 'Luke' here I mean luke-A52-BSG-GV1.xml which is the recommended A52 config on celsoazevedo. I do not have a lot of experience with the Morgenman config that is also often recommended here and on Telegram.
On the GCam version I use: Since using GCam (4 years) I have always used MGC from BSG, so for me it is a 'trusted brand' and I don't look at other creators if I don't have to. At the time of writing the MGC 8.4 build does not have many of the features that the 8.1 series has. For a very long time the later 8.1 versions had an annoying toast message which made me stuck on an older version. But thankfully, on May 25 2022 after many months MGC_8.1.101_A9_GV2a was released, which when I write this is the latest and has no downsides it appears.
The basics of getting MGC GCam working on A52s without a configuration file
This is a very long message, but the core of what I wanted to share is that it is actually very easy to start your own configuration from scratch. I thought that you would have to set up hardware modules manually, or that there are extensive color configuration for individual phones, but neither of that is true. With just some small changes you can make it work and get really close to something like the Luke configuration:
- To reset the configuration you can reinstall the app, but I found it is better to reset the app by deleting it's local storage from the Android app settings (on reinstall it can sometimes find the last settings, don't know how).
- Go to Settings|Modules|module ...|Module hardware level, and set it to 'Level 3', do this for all 4 modules.
- For A52s (on A52 it is not necessary), go to Settings|Modules|module ...|Session of photo modes, and set it to '61448', do this for all 4 modules. (For MGC_8.1.101_A9_GV1y and later now you now have to set it three times per module)
- There is one less important thing, under Settings|Modules|Back 1.0|Manual focus, you may want to change the manual focus distances (only the Back 1.0 camera module has variable focus). There is a measurement debug tool on that page. based on that I have now set Near=14 (that is one beyond what you can focus up close), Far=1 (that is about one meter), Infinity=0 (by the way Far and Infinity are set very different in Luke and Morgenman).
- Added 16-3-2022: Even though using the Google Whitebalance setting is 'dangerous', you can make it a lot better by changing Settings|Modules|Back 1.0 and Back 0.5|AWB Correction|AWB For to 'Sony IMX_682_OFILM'.
- Added 22-3-2022: On A52 you can apparently use the Macro camera module, but on my A52s that does not appear to work. So A52 (non 's') users can go to Settings|Modules|WhiteList and set it to 54.
- Added 28-5-2022: You may want to enable to Settings|Globa|lHide save message
And with just those changes you are extremely close to the quality of Luke in my opinion. I was actually shocked by this
So then I took literally 400+ comparison photos, comparing both many configurations and many 'scenes'. My goal was achieved because I wanted to run a very basic config, but I wanted to make sure of course that the photos were at least about as good as the Luke config I was using before.
So I did a lot of comparisons with the Luke config (you can install GCam multiple times if you use the different package names, I used the scan3d and ruler packages at the same time). But I also compared different settings within the gcam app.
Noise noise noise
I thought I would be looking a lot at colors, but as it turns out I was looking mostly at noise. From what I found, you have to choose for either:
- more detail with more noise,
- or less noise but then also less detail.
The relevant settings are under Settings|Modules|Your favorite module|Image Processing|Noise Settings
(You have to enable the RAM patcher to use this. This is the mechanism in MGC GCam with which you can apply extra 'live' processing on the images beyond what stock Google Camera does)
There are different settings related to noise. The most relevant option appears to be "Noise Model Blocker", if you change that option to Unblock you get:
a) More detail in the images, images becomes sharper (less soft) and small details become visible.
b) More noise (grain) in the images, generally speaking especially in shadows.
I attached two sample comparisons related to noise.
In the night shot comparison (shot with night sight mode) you can see that there are more details visible when "Noise Model Blocker" is set to Unblock, more waves in the water, some structure of the bricks in brick walls, and correct branches in the tree on the right. I would say turning noise settings on in that scenario really helps.
In the 500% crop of a picture of a plant in the other comparison, you can see that the shadow cast on furthest leaf contains a ton of grain, except in the fourth picture there the shadow is way more smooth. That smoothness is in part caused by an overall softness in the image, but I much prefer it.
Both the Luke as well as the Morgenman configuration set Noise Model Blocker to Unblock, turn on Activating Noise Models. So they go for more detail and more noise. They also set a modified noise model which is meant to reduce noise, see 2 paragraphs below.
But I am choosing to keep those noise parameters off, leading to less noise in the images but also less detail and more softness. It means that I do not use the RAM patcher at all, which means I stay closer to GCam defaults, which was my original goal.
Since the ultrawide camera on the A52s is technically quite bad, I would always keep those noise options off for the ultrawide cam, so you get less noise. There it is not a matter of taste in my opinion (but Morgenman and Luke have the noise parameters turned on in the RAM patcher section).
Update 2022-5-25: Today I learned a bit about noise modellers. You can too, by reading here. But the gist is that different camera sensors hardware that have different kinds of noise, and what you can do then is go through a complex process to determine how noise behaves in your sensor, and derive a model with 4x4=16 config values which can be presented in a .c file. There is a google drive folder where such files have been collected for different sensors. In both the Morgenman and Luke config the noise model values for the IMX682 sensor taken from the file 'A52_imx682_0_noise_model - AbOuLfOoOoOuF.c' from that Google drive folder have been entered manually under Settings|Modules|Back 1.0|Image processing|Noise Settings|Modified Noise Model.
I found this out three months after I creating the config described here, and at the moment I have absolutely zero intention of applying this learned knowledge to my config(s), for the simple reason is that noise is not really an issue for me. Hilariously, not every A52s phone has the same camera sensor for the main camera, so entering the Sony IMX682 values may not even be right for you, because you may have a Samsung S5KGW1 sensor instead. You can find out about finding out your sensors here.
Other findings
Here some other things I learned (these are of course personal subjective observations, but I was very surprised by many things):
- I thought that in the end I would turn on more saturation again, to make pictures more colorful, but I did not feel the need (I am talking about Settings|Modules|e.g. back 1.0|Image Processing|Main settings|e.g. Saturation These are probably the RAM Patcher settings you would be most likely to customize for personal taste but I did not feel the need to touch them.
- I always used HDR+ Enhanced, but now that I did an extensive comparison, I could not see any difference in any picture where there was at least somewhat decent light with regular HDR+. And in very low light all it really did was make some dark parts of the photo more bright (but not more detailed). I intentionally went with many samples with a darkened subject and bright sky, so lots of dynamic range, but never saw any benefit to HDR+ Enhanced. So I am not using HDR+ Enhanced anymore, I am going to switch to (the faster regular) HDR+.
Edit 2022/3/6: I have now found that in some scenarios, specifically a dark room with a large window with sunlight on the outdoors HDR+ Enhanced can make a difference. But I still never encountered such a situation outside. - I also played with setting Settings|Module|Back 1.0|Frames HDR+ enhanced to much higher values. And again no difference seen, apart from taking longer to take a picture, and some dark objects being slightly lighter but not more detailed.
- Even when pixel peeping at individual pixels, so zoomed all the way in, I could not see a difference between JPEG 95% and JPEG 100% compression. The extra storage (those 5% extra mean more than double the file size) is no problem for me, but I just cannot see a difference so I am going to stick to the default 95%.
- I also took this opportunity to play more with RAW files. Those extra DNG files you can get look so different from the JPEG files with so much more detail in them. And they are 'free' extras apart from storage. But the problem is that they do not have all the color corrections that GCam applies to the JPEGs. So in practice they will never be as good as the JPEGs, only if photos are way too dark or overexposed (because with RAWs you can then still 'recover' shadows/ highlights by just changing exposure, that part also really works as with RAWs on real cameras). But GCam never really messes up the exposure. Only if I take a lot of photos at night (so really dark) or if you take pictures on a very bright day (so with chance of blowing out the sky) might it be useful to turn on RAW (DNG) storage just in case, but I doubt I will ever use those files in real life.
Config files with the configurations discussed in this message
Since the whole point of this long comment is to encourage you to try create your own configuration, I should not share mine. But for completeness and self containedness I will share my new config (so I am switching to my own config now).
I am on Samsung Galaxy A52s with Android 12, using this MGC Gcam MGC_8.1.101_A9_GV2a version:
(I use the ruler version but probably they all work)
You can load one of the attached xml configs by double tapping next to the shutter button, or using the drop down menu at the top, then Settings|Configs|Load.
I added two configs to this message:
- mgc8.1-A52s-barebones.xml - A configuration with the absolute minimum changes to get MGC Gcam working on A52s, but for the rest all defaults from GCam and MGC, so no personal preferences of some random person just what is needed to get it working on A52s.
- sander-mgc8.1-20220528.xml - My actual current configuration, which has the mostly the same image quality settings as the barebones version above, but with many changes in other mostly user interface preferences, and with the changes described below.
- I updated my attached config, still mostly as it was when I wrote this in February except for the changes described below (exposure compensation +2 and "Frames HDR+" set to 14 instead of default).
- The 'Google Auto Whitebalance' feature is somewhat problematic. But I describe above setting it to IMX682 and then it appears to be a lot better. Apparently the A52s comes with different camera modules, so it's best to try it out by making a photo a day with a blue sky, with the Google AWB on and off the sky should be the exact same blue in both cases (for me that is the case though). The safer option is to never turn on Google AWB...
- I am still experimenting with the best value for Settings|Modules|Back 1.0 and 0.5|Exposure compensation. For the ultra-wide it appears that +3 (or even higher) is definitely better. For the Main camera I have now set it to +2, but for certain situations +3 is better. Esepcially in sunny situations the Samsung stock app will go for an exposure like '+3', and brighter looks usually nicer then. Use +3 if you want to mimic the Samsung app exposure wise, use +2 (or less) if you want to be more accurate.
- In very specific situations, being my living room when my window is in the shot and it is Sunny outside, I can actually see a very noticable difference with the HDR+ Enhanced mode, that the outside world in the window in pictures is not overexposed. So in darker indoors situations with a Window to the outside world, it can be useful to turn HDR+ Enhanced on, and I changed Settings|Modules|Back 1.0||Frames HDR+ Enhanced to 14 because I will turn it on only in exceptional situations and then I can see the difference between 7 and 14 frames (but not really between 14 and 28 frames).
- With later MGC 8.1 revision, when using 16:9 aspect ratio which I guess only I do, it appears that it is necessary to set Settings|Advanced|Photo resolution camera to 'Identical RAW' to get a 12MP 16:9 resolution.
3
That is great....
I only really made small changes, so not an expert here. And I have been using GCam for several years now but only in the last months did I feel a need to change anything.
So I think actually the most relevant things you can do is go to Modules|your favorite module|Image processing|Main settings Because both Luke and Morgenman changed stuff there and for many options it is clear what
But since you asked I will share my config (attached), of course you cannot use that config with your version
But I will also describe what I changed so that you can see it's very little:
- So it's based on luke-A52-BSG-GV1.xml
- I shoot with 16:9 so that is probably the first thing you want to change back to 4:3
- With 61448 entered for session of photo modes so that the preview does not freeze (A52s fix)
- Dialed down the saturation from what Luke does (from 1.25 to 1.125), I like more saturation but it made my niece and nephews (white) faces way too red, that is under Settings|Modules|Back 1.0| Image Processing|Main Settings|Saturation (I think I also may have reduced sharpness a little bit on the same page, I have it now set to 1.125).
- Disabled hints for framing (main settings page) because that horizon leveling indicator does simply not work...
- Set DNG to compressed (Global settings) and added option to switch between RAW (DNG) and JPEG in the dropdown menu (but DNG is not enabled in the config, just made it easier to turn it on, DNG is a mixed bag, but it's fun to experiment because the pictures are so different without JPEG).
- Changed JPEG quality (Global settings) to 98% (I now see that in luke it is set to 100 so I reduced it? In the end it probably does not matter, picture quality is not going to be affected a lot JPEG compression itself)
- Changed some astro mode settings (mostly Modules|Back 1.0||Astro max exposure time to 16 seconds). But maybe that is not wise, I actually had an opportunity to make astro photos in a really dark night and GCam saw thousands of stars but the result still sucked, and that could be on me (e.g. forgot to turn on DNG storage).
- Turned on H.265 support (Store videos effeciently option in advanced settings). Means video files are half the size without quality loss, and are a pain to work with.
Still to play with but not tested yet, I am also intreaged to try out Modules|Back 1.0|Frames HDR+ Enhanced.
Edit: Let me make this comment more self contained by adding that I use this on A52s (works on Android 11 and 12) in combination with this GCam version:
3
Just for completeness, that is not true.
They are surely based on one each other, but if you look with a diff tool at these files you see a lot of small differences in all kinds of areas of the configuration.
I think the Morgenman file is meant to be used with the Morgenman .so library file, but everybody who uses that config seems to use it without that library
(I also now tried the morgenman xml file linked above in the comment from January 10, so can now confirm it works on A52s+Android 12 (without the Morgenman extra library))
It is true that Morgenman config includes the Photo Session Fix so will work out of the box on A52s.
Now that I have used the luke config a number of months and made small personal adjustments, I would say the most 'controversial' aspect of the Luke config is that it increases the saturation by a lot:
Settings|Modules|Back 1.0| Image Processing|Main Settings|Saturation
is set to 1.25, and that leads to very colorful pictures but I found that when I took pictures of white people in dimly lit environments it makes their faces really red.
Just for that reason alone Morgenman (which has that value set to a more modest 1.0625) may be a better starting point.3First thank you for sharing your XML
Short question:
What else did you adjust in your gcam settings/XML except the fix for a52s?
I actually go into way too much detail into that here.
For the actual changes, in that post there is a bullet list near the top with changes made just to get it working properly, and then there is another bullet list near the bottom with more smaller changes I made.
And then there are a lot of personal preferences like no shutter sound, 3x3 grid overlay, h265 video recording.
But comparing to the many many many settings you can change, the changes from the defaults are extremely minimal (and if you want to have an even more barebones config with just the changes needed, I provide that config file there as well).
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