9mo ago

Why is there no good photo app?

Since some time I've searched photos related apps, to edit and take pictures but I've not found anything interesting in open source... Does someone has an explaination?

20 comments

Does someone has an explanation?
companies that have the most money and resources to improve image processing don't want to disclose their findings in order to keep their advantage over the competition.

I recently discovered Image Toolbox, it has the best editing capabilities of any FOSS Android app I've seen so far. That being said, if developing RAWs is something you need as well, I don't think there exists anything besides Google's Snapseed and Lightroom mobile.
As for taking pictures, I quite enjoy OpenCamera, but there's not much else than that.
- Image Toolbox + Aves Libre is my current setup.
- I known this app but it's not really complete, yes it has some really great features but lacks some features like light... And OpenCamera is good but not great
  
  As far as I know, it's all we have right now
- Samsung have Expert RAW for their (high end?) phones. That's probably Samsung only though.
  
  it's closed source.

Editing photos on a phone is painful. Better to use a desktop editor of which they're are plenty.

Darktable is pretty powerful, though it's not as easy to use as Lightroom
- It’s the same UX. Not sure how one would be less easy to use than the other just for different nomenclature & things being in slightly different locations.
  
  Well, that's always the case when switching to a new piece of software
  
  It's very different. They used to be similar years ago, but now darkroom is its own thing.
  Scene referred processing, parametric masks and many other modules that have no equivalent in Light room.

Avariy was pretty good. Then Adobe bought and killed it. It's still possible to download it, but a lot of the free stuff, filters and etc are missing because they shut down the servers.

GrapheneOS has a camera app called "secure camera". It's avaliable through Aurora store. It's not feature packed but does take a decent shot.
- Even they would tell you that using sandboxed google play and the g cam app is a better experience if your looking for more then just snapping a photo on your phone though. As obnoxious as they can be on mastodon they are pretty honest with the limitations of their apps due to it not being as high of a priority.

I don't think there is any good one. For privacy, you can install Google Gallery then disable network access to it.

20 comments