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it's going to be replaced. In the short term, there are other apps available providing
more capabilities and better support for taking advantage of the hardware.</p>
- <p>Google Camera can be used with the <a href="#sandboxed-play-services">sandboxed
- Play services compatibility layer</a>.</p>
+ <p>Open Camera is somewhat more advanced and much more configurable. You should
+ make sure to configure it to use the Camera2 API since it uses the legacy camera
+ APIs by default for broader compatibility with devices. It isn't currently able to
+ make use of special purpose cameras and doesn't have any advanced image capturing
+ or processing technology. It has a traditional software-based HDR mode which
+ captures 3 images and merges them in a way that isn't at all intelligent and
+ causes a lot of blur and distortion. You probably don't want to use this unless
+ you have a way to mount the phone in a stable position and aren't taking a picture
+ of anything that's not almost entirely still.</p>
- <p>The Pixel 3 (but not the Pixel 3a) and Pixel 4 (but not the Pixel 4a) have a
- Pixel Visual Core / Pixel Neural Core providing a hardware-based implementation of
- HDR+. HDR+ captures many images and intelligently merges data across them, taking
- into account motion, etc. It substantially improves the quality of images,
- especially in low light. This is used transparently for third party apps that are
- compatible with it, and there isn't an explicit switch to turn it on or off for
- most of them. An example of a compatible app is Open Camera's default
- configuration, or Open Camera with the Camera 2 API and other settings (including
- the the various knobs / toggles outside of the settings menu) left alone. In
- general, HDR+ will work transparently in most apps as long as they keep things
- simple and use a good minimalist approach to taking pictures. It should work
- transparently in most messaging apps, etc. with internal support for taking
- pictures.</p>
+ <p>Google Camera can be used with the <a href="#sandboxed-play-services">sandboxed
+ Play services compatibility layer</a> and can take full advantage of the available
+ cameras and image processing hardware as it can on the stock OS. Other camera apps
+ could provide the same image quality and features but there aren't any comparable
+ alternatives in practice. HDR+ is enabled by default and is a much more advanced
+ replacement for HDR taking bursts of pictures and intelligently combining those
+ which is what makes the image quality so much higher, especially for low light.
+ The Night Sight feature is essentially the same thing, but with the light of the
+ picture unnaturally increased through combining the data.</p>
- <p>In addition to supporting HDR+ via the Pixel Visual Core, or similar features on
- other devices with the same constraints, Open Camera offers advanced configuration and
- various advanced features. Make sure to enable the Camera 2 API in the settings, which
- should be the default, but the app doesn't have a great user interface / user
- experience. You probably don't want to use the traditional HDR feature in the app.
- That's not HDR+, but rather captures 3 images and merges them in a way that isn't at
- all intelligent and causes a lot of blur and distortion. The HDR+ implementation can
- actually benefit from the camera not being completely steady as it's smart enough to
- match up the picture and it provides it with more data vs. a traditional HDR
- implementation where it essentially doesn't work without a tripod and is not really at
- all useful on a phone unless you actually have that for it.</p>
+ <p>Since there isn't a project making a serious, high quality open source camera
+ app able to even compete with Google Camera without HDR+ and the fancy features,
+ GrapheneOS is considering funding the creation of a new app as a replacement for
+ the AOSP Camera app.</p>
</section>
<section id="exec-spawning">