General GCam vs Asus photo quality

[Tom100%]

This thread explores the photo quality possibilities of the Z8. I'll post occasional info and tests about the stock camera, comparisons with GCam mods, etc, with example pictures to illustrate my findings. I hope you'll find some of this useful and post examples of your own that we can learn from.

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Latest posts

Nikon SLR vs Zenfone photo quality test, edited 28th June 2023
Asus & GCam Night Shots, in-depth comparison
Brightening GCam to match the Asus Camera - 2
Brightening GCam to match the Asus camera
Asus vs GCam vs Nikon - DSLR quality from the Z8?


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Wichaya GCam V1.6

Wichaya has recently released an updated version of GCam, “GCam_8.1.101_Wichaya_V1.6”, that is now almost as good as the stock Asus camera.

The previous GCam version's shots were always too dark, lacked shadow detail and looked dull compared to the Asus stock camera's excellent pictures. With the latest V1.6 pictures are almost identical with the stock Asus camera, most of the time.

My only criticism of Asus shots is that they are over-sharpened. Foliage looks great but it can have an unnatural flattened appearance; fine textures can look like sand and coarser textures can be exaggerated too much. Unfortunately the Asus camera does not allow any adjustments.

GCam does not suffer from over-sharpening and the settings can be fine-tuned. Occasionally it will under expose and may not give as much shadow detail as the Asus shots, and the white balance can be a bit too warm, but overall the latest version is a fantastic improvement.

Many thanks to Wichaya for this upgrade!

Available here: https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/google-camera/dev-wichaya/f/dl6/

I used the “Wichaya8.1_ZF8_V5.xml” with it from here: https://xdaforums.com/t/working-gcam.4280045/page-8

 

[MRDA1981]

I'll never understand why people think stock cam takes better pics than GCam. Whenever I take shots side by side, Gcam's always have more detail.

 

[Jgruar]

I wanted to test this latest GCam 1.6 with this V5 config file and Asus A12 .113 firmware stock camera. Just to see for myself, and well here are some pictures and details. It's like previously said, stock camera has a lot of sharpening added. It blows the fine details out and gives some edges a "halo effect". GCam without HDR was useless at least on this spot.

Overall, I like the Asus white balance a lot better, closer to reality like with my own eyeballs. GCam is much too cold. Is there a configuration setting that tunes the GCam WB? GCam HDR+ Enhanced catches in some cases a lot better detail, but takes some seconds to capture. HDR+ still has more detail, but also more noise and in my opinion worse white balance. Asus camera can oversharpen a lot and add halos around every edge. Denoise and sharpen blurs details.

https://imgur.com/a/cxgK8nj

edit: Jeez imgur destroys the pictures, maybe just download them.

Also the full pictures if someone wants to zoom, my photo editor might have processed the zooms a bit.

 

[Tom100%]

I wanted to test this latest GCam 1.6 with this V5 config file and Asus A12 .113 firmware stock camera. Just to see for myself, and well here are some pictures and details. It's like previously said, stock camera has a lot of sharpening added. It blows the fine details out and gives some edges a "halo effect". GCam without HDR was useless at least on this spot.

Overall, I like the Asus white balance a lot better, closer to reality like with my own eyeballs. GCam is much too cold. Is there a configuration setting that tunes the GCam WB? GCam HDR+ Enhanced catches in some cases a lot better detail, but takes some seconds to capture. HDR+ still has more detail, but also more noise and in my opinion worse white balance. Asus camera can oversharpen a lot and add halos around every edge. Denoise and sharpen blurs details.

https://imgur.com/a/cxgK8nj

edit: Jeez imgur destroys the pictures, maybe just download them.

Also the full pictures if someone wants to zoom, my photo editor might have processed the zooms a bit.

Thanks for taking the trouble to explain and illustrate your findings comparing the Asus camera and Wichaya's latest GCam version. I also prefer the look of the Asus shots but dislike both how they over-sharpen some areas and smooth out other areas.

The Gcam shots on my Zenphone 8 generally look more natural (= not over-sharpened) but are often a bit too dark, and can also be a bit too warm. So there may be manufacturing variations that affect the white balance. The Asus shots also have a lot more shadow detail, which I prefer.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a combination of Ram Patcher setting that would bring the Gcam shots closer to how I'd like them to be. If Wichaya can advise how to increase shadow detail without affecting the highlghts I'd be grateful!

 

[Jgruar]

Yeah, would be really great if we could combine the good parts from both softwares. I don't know much about the GCam settings, if someone wants to share what we are able to change and how?

 

[MRDA1981]

Thanks for taking the trouble to explain and illustrate your findings comparing the Asus camera and Wichaya's latest GCam version. I also prefer the look of the Asus shots but dislike both how they over-sharpen some areas and smooth out other areas.

The Gcam shots on my Zenphone 8 generally look more natural (= not over-sharpened) but are often a bit too dark, and can also be a bit too warm. So there may be manufacturing variations that affect the white balance. The Asus shots also have a lot more shadow detail, which I prefer.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a combination of Ram Patcher setting that would bring the Gcam shots closer to how I'd like them to be. If Wichaya can advise how to increase shadow detail without affecting the highlghts I'd be grateful!

Give this a look: https://xdaforums.com/t/app-arnova8g2s-google-camera-port.3862448/post-84805697

 

[Tom100%]

Give this a look: https://xdaforums.com/t/app-arnova8g2s-google-camera-port.3862448/post-84805697

Thanks, it's certainly interesting and gives some insight into how complex changing the default settings can be (for Arnova8G2's GCam). It shows how to increase the exposure time - this would brighten both the shadows and the highlights.
I would like to increase only the shadow detail. This is the main difference between Wichaya's GCam and the Zenfone 8's stock camera which gives the shadows a welcome boost.

 

[Tom100%]

I did a quick test to see how the Zenfone 8 and Whchaya V1.6 GCam performed in Night mode.


All examples are cropped from 16MP files.


I took one shot in the normal camera mode, then in night mode, and an extra shot with the GCam’s RAW (DNG) mode to compare side by side.


The Asus camera’s normal mode always tries to smooth lightly textured areas and so has made the road and areas of soil look unnaturally smooth. The GCam normal shot (HDR+) records the textures faithfully and is more colourful but a little too bright. Both cameras blow out the bright lights at the front and side of the building.


The Asus Night shot is excellent as it holds all the textures, minimises the highlight blowouts and is quite sharp and well exposed. The GCam Night shot is quite good but a bit too bright. It’s more colourful, not quite as sharp as the Asus shot and the highlights are blown out.


So it appears as though the Asus Night mode gives the best result.


However, take a look at the enlarged cropped area of the “Asus-GCam Night modes” comparison. The Gcam Night shots is not as sharp as the Asus Night shot, but the Asus is way very over-sharpened, so much so that the light pebbledash texture of the wall is unnaturally exaggerated. The ideal, in my opinion would be somewhere in-between these two. The GCam DNG edited shot is almost ideal as it is sharp but does not over exaggerate textures, however the highlights are blown out...


To sum up I’d say that the Asus Night mode will give the best results, but can sometimes look a bit artificial depending on the range of textures involved.

 

[Dave.a]

Hello,
thank you for another comparison of image quality. At night the scenario from the day is repeated, the stock camera is oversharpened and the Gcam is unsharp with little detail. Is it possible to modify the Gcam in general to produce sharper images? This is a question more for the author @michelinoO

 

[Tom100%]

Hello,
thank you for another comparison of image quality. At night the scenario from the day is repeated, the stock camera is oversharpened and the Gcam is unsharp with little detail. Is it possible to modify the Gcam in general to produce sharper images? This is a question more for the author @michelinoO

If you look in Wichaya's GCam settings, Advanced, Ram Patcher you'll see setting to vary lots of parameters, including sharpness...

 

[Tom100%]

Asus vs GCam vs Nikon. DSLR quality from the Z8?

Modern smartphones cameras have tiny imaging sensors yet take amazingly good pictures. The Zenfone 8’s imaging sensor is only 7.5 x 5.5mm and is crammed with almost 64,000,000 light sensitive cells. It requires a serious amount of “computational photography” processing to create pictures that exceed the actual capability of the camera’s tiny sensor.

About 20 years ago I bought one of the first cellphones that had a built in camera, the Nokia 7650. The photos were only 640 x 480 pixels but looked good on the phones 176 x 208 pixels display! Todays phones take high quality HDR pictures that look good on large screens, so I thought it would be fun to compare a picture taken with my Zenphone 8 and Nikon DSLR. This has an 24MP sensor that’s 10x the size of the Z8’s.

Z8 compared to DSLR

The DSLR has fewer megapixels but they are larger and gather much more light which results in higher quality pictures without the need for the intense processing necessary in smartphone cameras.

I took all of the attached shots during a 10 minute period to try to keep the lighting reasonably consistent and used the Z8’s stock camera and the Wichaya V1.6 GCam mod to shoot both Jpegs and DNGs. I shot only RAW files (NEFs) with the Nikon.

I edited the Asus DNG, Gcam DNG and the Nikon RAW files to reasonably match the Asus stock camera’s Jpegs to give some consistence to the comparisons.

I expected the Nikon would come out on top, but I wasn’t certain because of the outstanding results I’ve had with the Z8. The Nikon won, but the edited 64MP Gcam DNG came a close second. In some ares the Asus and GCam shots were actually better than the Nikon’s.

Notes

I’ve kept the comparisons the same size - I was impressed that the 16MP Asus Jpg that even when enlarged to 130% compares quite well with the edited 24MP Nikon RAW seen at 100%. But enlarging the Asus Jpeg makes the usual over-sharpening of fine foliage details more obvious.

The 16MP GCam at 130% is also impressive but is under exposed and lacks shadow detail that’s usual for Wichaya’s GCam.

The large 64MP Asus and GCam Jpgs both lack shadow detail, but at least the Asus isn’t over-sharpened and is actually a bit softer than the GCam.

The best results were obtained with the edited GCam 64MP DNG. I’ve shown how it compares to the edited Nikon RAW in two comparative enlargements. A very impressive result.

Of course in different circumstances the results will vary, but this test in daylight with deep shade and sunlit highlights shows the astonishing capability that computational photography has with tiny sensors.

I did this test for my own amusement and out of my interest in computational photography, but for most normal snaps it probably makes little difference whether you prefer the normal 16MP Asus or GCam Jpegs.

Computational Photography and Mainstream Cameras

Mainstream camera manufacturers don’t seem in a hurry to introduce computational photography into their mirrorless cameras because this would narrow the gap between expensive professional and cheaper consumer equipment. But eventually they will have to give in and this could revolutionise the amateur and professional photography scene. Can’t wait!

 

[Tom100%]

I expected the Nikon would come out on top, but I wasn’t certain because of the outstanding results I’ve had with the Z8. The Nikon won, but the edited 64MP Gcam DNG came a close second. In some ares the Asus and GCam shots were actually better than the Nikon’s.

Notes

The best results were obtained with the edited GCam 64MP DNG. I’ve shown how it compares to the edited Nikon RAW in two comparative enlargements. A very impressive result.

I just worked out that the 64MP Gcam that came a close 2nd to the Nikon DSLR was shot at 2 stops of under exposure (f1.8, 1/850sec, ISO 25 compared to f8, 1/60sec, ISO 100).

If the phone had taken only a single shot the image would have been very dark with mainly the highlights showing. Because of "computational photography" the phone takes a lot of the same shots quickly, perhaps 15 or more, which it then adds together using “image stacking” and uses several digital enhancement techniques to create the final HDR image.

The "Asus Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders" scored 131 in the DXOmark Photo category. It costs twice as much as the Zenphone 8 but has the same main Sony camera and Qualcomm chip as the Z8, which has a Photo score of only 120.

I guess only the computational photography software had been upgraded to give the superior Photo score. Hopefully Asus will share some of the magic sauce in future upgrades to my Z8.

 

[Tom100%]

Brightening GCam to match the Asus camera

Shots taken with the Asus camera have an edge over GCam shots, they have lots of "pop", are well exposed and have good shadow detail. GCam shots have a more natural appearance but are generally darker with less shadow detail.

The Asus camera over-sharpens and exaggerates textures such as foliage and grass, etc. This creates the "pop" effect that looks good on a smartphone but can look artificial and over-processed when viewed on a laptop or PC screen. Unfortunately Asus does not have any settings to reduce this effect so I’ve been experimenting with Wichaya’s GCam to try brighten its shadow detail to look more like the Asus shots.

In GCam’s Advanced section the Ram Patcher has settings to fine tune the processing. Some settings are self explanatory, such as Sharpness and Saturation, but it’s not clear how other adjustments affect the picture, either when used singly or in combination.

Adjusting Ram Patcher settings is not straightforward. There are hundreds of possible combinations, and some settings are predictable up to a certain point and then produce erratic results.

Other Mods sometimes explain what their setting do but use different terms that may not directly apply to Wichaya’s Ram Patcher. As far as I can tell there isn’t a setting that will directly increase shadow detail without affecting the midtowns or highlights. I’ve came to the conclusion that it will take a combination of settings to do this.



Test Results

In a recent test I found that a combination of HDR Range Minus and HDR Range Plus can lift the shadow detail and bring GCam closer to the look and feel of the Asus camera.

The examples below show the same scene taken with the Asus camera, the darker looking GCam V1.6 (plus xml), and the GCam with custom HDR Range Minus “-4” and HDR Range Plus “4” settings to brighten the shadows. I'll be using this setting over the next few weeks in different situations to see if it can be improved.

I noticed a peculiar effect in the Asus Camera’s shot: The sun is high in the sky towards the left side of the building - in the GCam shots the sky in this area is almost white. In the Asus shot the sky behind the building appears to have been over processed to make it a much darker, and this looks quite artificial in the area I've marked in red. The GCam sky has a more natural appearance.


If you have found other ways to improve the quality of the GCam compared to the Zenphone 8’s camera I be happy if you could share examples and details here. Thanks.

 

[Dayuser]

The examples below show the same scene taken with the Asus camera, the darker looking GCam V1.6 (plus xml), and the GCam with custom HDR Range Minus “-4” and HDR Range Plus “4” settings to brighten the shadows. I'll be using this setting over the next few weeks in different situations to see if it can be improved.

Couple of settings i have seen in other xml setups.

HDR range Minus
-0,375
HRD Range Plus
8.5(default) / 10.0 / 11.5

HDR Range Minus
-0.875
HDR Range Plus
8.5(default) / 10.0 / 11.5


I use my phone (not AZ8) on -0.375 / 10.0. I like that shadows is little bit darker but i have to test that -4 / 4 setting

 

[Tom100%]

Couple of settings i have seen in other xml setups.

HDR range Minus
-0,375
HRD Range Plus
8.5(default) / 10.0 / 11.5

HDR Range Minus
-0.875
HDR Range Plus
8.5(default) / 10.0 / 11.5


I use you my phone (not AZ8) on -0.375 / 10.0. I like that shadows is little bit darker but i have to test that -4 / 4 setting

Thanks for the information - I'll try out those settings. I found that there are a wide variety of settings that brighten and lighten the shadows but the HDR Range Plus/Minus seem to give the most control.

Edit: I tries out the settings they didn't make much difference. The best results so far I've shared in my latest post: Brightening GCam to match the Asus Camera - 2.

 

[flymetothemoon]

Is there a way to use the Asus Cam on a custom ROM?
I run lineageOS and tried to backup the Asus CAM before wiping the phone via ADB but only got a file with a few kB. Does anyone have a working APK?

 

[Tom100%]

Is there a way to use the Asus Cam on a custom ROM?
I run lineageOS and tried to backup the Asus CAM before wiping the phone via ADB but only got a file with a few kB. Does anyone have a working APK?

I don't know about technical things like this, but I do remember reading how the Asus camera couldn't be extracted from the Asus system. Can't remember where I read it, though.

 

[Tom100%]

Brightening GCam to match the Asus Camera - 2

I've always preferred the brighter, more punchy look of the Asus Zenfone 8 camera to Wichaya's V1.6 GCam. Unfortunately the Asus shots are over-sharpened and can look somewhat unnatural when viewed on laptop and monitor screens.

Wichaya's GCam does not over-process the images but usually gives darker results, so I've been experimenting with the Ram Patcher settings to try to brighten them up...

In my last post, "Brightening GCam to match the Asus Camera", I listed some Ram Patcher settings that lightened the GCam shadows to try and resemble the Stock Asus Camera. Further experiments have yielded improved results and I've attached samples cropped from 100% enlargements of a few pictures. Those with more subtle highlights are the Gcam shots.

The setting I now use are shown in the Ram Patcher screengrab. I discovered that the HDR Effect Intensity alters the overall contrast of the image and I've adjusted it to give more shadow and highlight detail.

No combination of setting can make GCam shots exactly match the Asus shots since the intense computational processing that goes on under the hood is different. But I like these GCam shots and for me they provide a good alternative to the Asus shots.

I now use Asus for general/family pictures and GCam (RAW+Jpg) for more important or creative shots that I might process afterwards.

---

Reviews I've seen about the Asus Zenfone 9 camera indicate that it still over-sharpens the images. Hopefully Asus might provide some setting to reduce this in future upgrades.

 

[Tom100%]

Asus and Gcam Night shots, in-depth comparison


I’ve been having another look at pictures taken at night with the Asus stock camera and the Wichaya GCam on my Zenfone 8. The results can vary a lot between the two cameras, particularly if there are large areas of dimly lit shadows.

The Asus camera over-sharpens fine detail which gives pictures taken during the day or at night an over-processed appearance. Viewed on a phone they look great, but when viewed on larger screens they can look a little unreal. GCam applies less sharpening - pictures look good on phones and have a more natural appearance on larger screens. Which you prefer is personal preference.


Asus vs GCam Night Shots

The difference between pictures taken at night with the GCam and Asus cameras is more pronounced than in daylight shots. You can view the attached examples to judge for yourself…

I sometimes use the Asus Night camera for general shots in low light. I can access it quickly (using Zenfone shortcuts) to capture fleeting moments. But when I have the opportunity to take a more artistic or creative shot at night I will use the GCam HDR+ Enhanced mode. This is set to capture jpg and dng files together - the jpg looks sharp and accurately exposed, and if I want the very best quality I can edit the dng files later.

The quality of the edited GCam Night mode dng is almost as good but it has a longer "hold still" time, so it's not my first choice for quality and convenience.

The Night Sight mode can also be used for daylight shots but it still doesn't give any sharper or more detailed result than the HDR+ Enhanced mode. The edited dng files from both look just the same, so the HDR+ Enhanced mode is still the best choice.

However in very extreme low light situations I may try the GCam Night Sight mode, which has the longest "hold still" time. But so far I’ve been happy with the quality achieved by the HDR+ Enhanced option.


The examples are from the central area of the picture to make comparisons easier...


I”m using

Wichaya's 8.1 v1.6: GCam_8.1.101_Wichaya_V1.6

• Wichaya-8.1.101-ZF8-amrazing33.xml

The HDR+ modes and Ram Patcher settings are shown in the screenshots.
In GCam Settings I have the Multiframe HDR+ Enhanced set to Very High.

 

[flymetothemoon]

Did someone try night sky photos?
I could not get good star photos with gcam, but with Asus cam they look decent.