I have hacked up a thing that lets you glow your Librem 5 photos up with one tap:
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Nice! For a bit more context: Sebastian Krzyszkowiak: "It just uses a single preset and doesn't let you …" - Librem Social
"It just uses a single preset and doesn’t let you adjust anything, but it’s a start - some photos already glow up a lot with it. The obvious next step would be adjusting parameters in the XMP file; not a rocket science, darktable does everything for us already.
It probably needs to be fully rewritten before adding stuff, but it’s just 400 lines of hardcoded UI code in Python, so that could be someone’s one-afternoon project"
And from dos / glowup · GitLab
Glowup - Offline Photo Enhancer
Proof-of-concept for developing photos taken with the Librem 5’s rear camera.
While Millipixels has fast online processing, its quality isn’t great. On the other hand, darktable can output great results, but it takes a while. This app lets you easily use darktable to process photos post-factum (offline) using a predefined template.
It takes about 30 seconds to process a photo on my phone.
GLOWUP obviously means “Great Librem5 Offline Worked Up Photography”.
Comparison photos from Mastodon thread:
[Modeling like a pro! 
]
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Nice work! Thank you for everything you do.
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Where are your usual “kittycisms?” 
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1 “Yes, yes, I’m gorgeous… Let’s move on, shall we?”
2 “Hmm… this place’ll do.”
3 “Oh yeah… I moved in.”
4 “You are this close to taking a little trip to Scratch City, buddy.”
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Asking in advance, what does everyone think: When next year we have this years L5 photo showcase (like https://forums.puri.sm/t/l5-photography-showcase-2023-2024-post-pics-here/22506), would it be appropriate to allow using this? I know there are opinions. Photo editing is usually a big no-no in such (a bit of a slippery slope to allow any… “where does it stop” etc.) but I’m inclined to think automatic glowup should be ok (and it’s just a forum thread anyways). Counter arguments?
I’m hoping this motivates people to take more nice pics to share in showcase. Even those who don’t have cats
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Millipixels and/or camera support needs to be reincluded in Crimson for the Librem 5 first.
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I wouldn’t even call it “automatic”, I couldn’t find a way to trigger auto adjustments from darktable’s CLI. It’s just a more complete Bayer->JPEG pipeline and an app to trigger it. If it didn’t take 30 seconds to process a single photo it would be simply used by Millipixels by default. Basically all digital cameras do the same kind of things on their own as you press the shutter button.
Our problem is that we don’t have a dedicated piece of hardware to do it (ISP) and that nobody sat down and wrote a complete performant pipeline optimized for the hardware we do have. So we’re stuck either with fast but extremely basic pipeline I used in Millipixels, or proper but slow pipeline used by darktable that’s optimized for PCs with huge GPUs where darktable is usually being used. And a single preset that’s made by someone who knows nothing about photography (me )
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Well, the definition may be debatable, but I was reffing to automation in a way that is not doing some selections or enhancements beyond what the original image intends to be - as in, no crops, removals, touchups, targeted enhancements to highlight (or opposite) to persons/items/parts of image etc. Automatic in the sense that it’s more mechanical deterministic enhancement that is same for all.
I think it’s a good idea to A) have app like Glowup, B) have it separate from camera app, because speed may be essential (UX thing too), and C) there’s no reason why darktables or some other algorithm couldn’t be used in Millipixels as an add-on or additional selectable feature (you could still need Glowup for som eof the photos) - especially since the new version of the camera app is under construction.
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What’s more, you can put it there yourself, it’s a single-line script. It’s just that putting a script that eats your whole CPU and plenty of RAM for at least 30 seconds every time you take a photo would cause a rather miserable user experience 
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Ay, hence the “speed is essential” note. “Could”, not “should” (not all the time probably), as we learned with AI & L5 too 
The real job is making a nice settings GUI with selection switch (and maybe some sliders for values).
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In the end, there’s no single objective way to transform the electrical signals received from the sensor into an array of colored pixels that you can call a photo. There are always choices made on the way that affect the output. Some of them come from technicalities, but some come from aesthetics (especially when it comes to how to handle photos taken under less than ideal conditions). Usually, these choices have been made by the device manufacturer and you just press a button and get a photo done based on those choices. Here there’s no single entity that can enforce such choice, it’s all* done in software and each app could do whatever it pleases. Therefore, I wouldn’t see a point in limiting a “photography showcase” to a single pipeline - and especially not to such a bad and incomplete one as Millipixels’ (and when I say “bad” I really mean it, I was the one who put it there 
)
* okay, not all, there’s some preprocessing in the sensor already
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The salient point is that it’s all equal and what is considered “natural” or neutral editing, like “developing” digital negative image via darktable. I agree that using Glowup adheres to the spirit of photographing and that it should be understandable to make the distinction between using it and some more drastic or altering editing. I know some purists (not associated with the company, I believe ) would disagree with us.
Besides, there are plenty of people who take pics with old box and pinhole cameras. And don’t forget the computers and cameras in Voyagers (still recently used resumed working but too far a way to send pics at 22h44min lag [cameras off since 1990]). Millipixels is dowright futuristic (and special) in comparison
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Well, professionals, amateurs, and aficionados use cropping, filters, multiple-exposures, masking, vignetting, and so on, in creating photographs, so why not allow free rein in the forum “exhibit?” Just have participants include a description of the techniques, settings, and parameters they’ve used. 
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The difference being how the showcase is perceived. If we’re showing what L5 can do, then it’s about what L5 does (camera, Millipixels, Glowup). If it’s more creative and user capability showcase, yes, L5 would only be the start and sky the limit. When I had the idea, I was leaning towards the first, but it’s also a question of how people would like to participate and your idea would allow wider expression.
[Apologies that this has hijacked the topic. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming now. I do feel there is an ethical aspect that is associated with photography, whether it’s about news or art - hence the connection to Glowup, which however most reputable news publications to my knowledge would not consider to be against their editing policies]
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Yes, I often think about how far technology has come in my lifetime. What was acceptable to me even 10 years ago no longer feels “fast enough”. It is all a matter of perspective, really.
I have said this before, but I appreciate the “low-fi” output of the Librem5 camera as it currently exists. There is some art there. Yes, the quality of an image is subjective. However, I think it is important to have the perspective that not all technology is the “same” and that nuance, however it is obtained, can be considered “art”.
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Wouldn’t an AI-generated image be out of bounds? And if so where is the boundary between an original image and a computer-modified image? For example, I might use airbrushing to remove something unhelpful from an image - or use any of the many special effects that are available.1
Another answer might be: You must exhibit the original raw unmodified image straight off the sensor side-by-side with the finished product. People can then make up their own mind whether they think that the computer-modifications to the image have gone too far - and also see the effectiveness of those modifications and maybe learn something along the way.
1 For example, one thing that I have played with in GIMP is converting a digital photograph to a line drawing. (This isn’t on or related to the Librem 5 though.) There’s nothing “artificial” as such in the final image but it differs greatly from the original image.
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