I have been wondering how many in the community have taken the FLOSS plunge on their Android devices. OS distribution, etc. If so, which ones are you using or considering? Discuss!
Also, those who participated in A full Android FOSS raw imageing pipeline (tutorial) (@Isaac @paperdigits @Tobias …), any updates on your advice or workflows?
I’m still running LineageOS with fdroid. No google services. I don’t count on my phone for much, but OSMand for recording the GPS of my photo trips and Suntimes to tell me about solar noon and sunset. I also use OpenCamera, which is nice, but the camera on my OnePlus 5t is potatoe.
I have still my old phone (Motorola Moto Z) from 2016. The build in camera is not great and the Raw photos don’t help. So I have not investigated it more.
Well I noticed that Krita is available for Android, however I don’t know whether this version can can open RAWs (Krita for Linux does have a very simple RAW importer).
I think Snapseed is free, but not open source.
Other than that, I would like to revive this discussion. I am curious especially about photo apps for tablets.
And add one more thing - do you know anything about Android color management? afik it does not work/exist.
Is really none interested in this topic?
I just got a new tablet. I like it a lot but Apparently krita does not open raws and sometimes not even jpegs. Basically there is only Snapseed. There are several commercial tools that i have not tried.
I am also interested in a tool for transferring files from a camera/sdcard to a tablet. Python seems to work, just tried Pelican so in theory RPD should work?
My tablet has 6GB of RAM which should be enough for a tool like RawTherapee?
If I wanted to try to compile an existing raw developer for android, where would I start? I would need android in a virtual machine right?
Syncthing is very useful for copying things to other devices without much effort, you could try that. I’ve used it in the past for copying raws to edit with lightroom mobile on my tablet, and it worked fine.
When it comes to mobile raw editing, I think it’s a great idea, and new mobile devices don’t lack the raw power at all, at least for regular sized images. I think with a little work it should be doable, but it isn’t so trivial. For example, in LR mobile you never edit the whole image, they use some kind of algorithm to resize the raw, which is mostly fine for color and light adjustments but not the rest.
Krita was most likely ported because Qt has native android support, it facilitates things a lot. You don’t need android to compile android applications, it can be done in Linux(or any other OS) directly, as apposed to apple that forces you to use MacOS and their stack.
I noticed that in Snapseed too.
Edit: I think thats necessary for older weaker devices but I think it isnt for more powerful tablets. So those apps are kind of designed for older devices.
I dont expect it to be fast.
Some years ago I started with RT with a laptop with 4 gb of ram. I dont remember it to have been so terrible though those were 16 MP photos. These days I have 20 MPs.
I mean… I use some apps that measere hardware resources and raw developers dont need terrible amounts of rams. Though my desktop has 16 gb, not even a third of it is used usually. They do need much more processing power resp gpu power. That really brings speed.
Ok so today I found out that Snapseed does not read my E-M5 Mark 3 raw files.
Turns out, the best (I was going to write Pest) photo and raw editors for Android are actually Lightrom mobile and Photoshop Express. No issues with performance/speed.
Also had a closer look at compiling Linux/desktop apps for Android and it seems not so easy…
So there is a lot to do here… because I have a problem with working with Lr, getting nausea fainting etc
A problem with RT is GTK I think. Are there other raw developers that use qt?
It’s not ‘compiling RT to android’, you need to really port it.
You have GCC and a tool chain on Android , but it’s meant to compile a library to use from Java apps . Maybe you can use it to start ‘a native activity’ instead of a native library? But android has no x11 or GTK, but its own thing. So GTK/gdk would need an Android port (maybe it already exists ? But in what state ?)
The android SDK contains an ide and device emulators .
Compiling native stuff (instead of java stuff) is called the NDK. Maybe that is an old name and it’s called different these days , or even included in the SDK.
Btw, an open source Android app that I can really recommend is Delta Chat.
So far I am only using that and the Simple File Manager Pro from F-Droid. I am mostly ok with the Samsung apps and they cannot be removed. But I guess I should switch to Firefox.
Bromite is also a good browser alternative. It’s basically ungoogled chromium but for android. Usually I use Firefox on PC but it can be a little heavier than chromium in android, where battery and speed matters more.
Collabora Office looks nice to me than Google docs.
RT 5.5 on my tablet via Andronix.
Appimage of 5.8 does not start, the system does not seem to see it…
I did not notice any serious performance issues so far
Edit: this is not the ultimate solution…
Does it work decently with the touch screen? Or do you have a mouse plugged in?
The last time I tried to use a tablet (some years ago) I learn two things:
It would be nice to here if that is still the case.
I works ok with the Touchscreen but it’s somehow different than native, the pen does not work properly
I totally agree.
I think the reason for that is on both sides. Perhaps one could also say this the other way around.
Well, I am very sorry that there are no good native open source photo tools for android.
With the advent of cheap tablets with very good pens, the idea that the tablet is only good for consuming has slowly changed. There’s even some digital artists that do everything with their tablet, be it android or ios.
It still is detached from the Linux desktop dev community unfortunately, and that will hardly change.
