[Moto G General] juanchotazo99:
Post process noise reduction, morpho VNR (NR, what else could that be, than noise reduction?). Let's disable these two settings and test. I'll give the camera a try tomorrow in daylight with these changes. I mean, scenes with foliage and plants, that suffer greatly from the noise reduction and become painting-like in pictures. Before, and after.

Thanks a lot for this!!

Hidden above is the original. Let's make a better use of this post.

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Bringing all of this to Moto's attention:

In my camera testing post quoted above I had added the following at its end:

Based on all the previous testing done by people in Motorola's official thread on Moto G's camera quality, BEFORE what [MENTION=5775403]GodOfPsychos[/MENTION] has discovered, a Motorola representative stated the following:

https://forums.motorola.com/posts/e2f2722bfc?page=1

https://forums.motorola.com/posts/e2f2722bfc?commentId=801623#801623

Image quality improvements have been promised for the next update, that would be Android L.

Android L is itself a big deal for imaging because it exposes the entire picture/video taking pipeline to camera apps... that means someone can write a camera app with their own picture processing algorithms which in our case can definitely help us with the quality issue.

Meanwhile, we can enjoy better pictures thanks to OP's findings on the camera app's hidden settings. Anyway, if you read what I've bolded in the quoted comment from that official thread... What the hell, Motorola? I mean, he's probably meaning that the stuff that has to be changed is regarding the sensor itself (it presumably does in-sensor noise reduction, outside the scope of what the camera app does by itself) but when the camera app is doing useless noise reduction and you tell people that it can't be solved that way, then [MENTION=5775403]GodOfPsychos[/MENTION] finds out about the app's hidden settings being some simple on/off toggles for that useless noise reduction... just... what the hell. This defies logic.

I've made a user in the Motorola forum and have been posting all our findings in that thread. This can't go unnoticed there because their representatives are able to communicate with the camera team. All my posts so far, under the name JohnRambo:

https://forums.motorola.com/posts/e2f2722bfc?commentId=808803#808803

https://forums.motorola.com/posts/e2f2722bfc?commentId=809381#809381

https://forums.motorola.com/posts/e2f2722bfc?commentId=809421#809421

https://forums.motorola.com/posts/e2f2722bfc?commentId=809547#809547

https://forums.motorola.com/posts/e2f2722bfc?commentId=810521#810521

https://forums.motorola.com/posts/e2f2722bfc?commentId=812005#812005

https://forums.motorola.com/posts/e2f2722bfc?commentId=812831#812831

Silence so far, and people are starting to get upset about the matter. You would be, if the representatives all along said that the camera was fine, and the required tweaks are beyond what they can do with the camera app.. yeah, you get the idea. People shouldn't have to root their phone to fix its camera. EDIT: well, there's the modded camera APK now which is just great! Everyone can now enjoy their moto G's camera as it should be.

They updated the Moto X 2013's software to improve its camera quality, we've proven they can do the same with the Moto G 2013...

01/10/14, 9 days later

https://forums.motorola.com/posts/e2f2722bfc?commentId=813675#813675

Finally, an answer. So, no mention of the camera app doing this useless NR. Okay. Well, it seems we'll have to wait for the L update.

This actually made it to the XDA front page.

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Added 28/09/14

Old camera app, before the update:

So, we have three settings to tweak, what do they do?

Wavelet NR is the offender, if you want to improve your pictures then disable that one.

Morpho VNR reduces color noise in the camera live view, I've been taking pictures with it on and off, and there's no difference in the final picture, nor in its file size. Its effect is especially noticeable in low light conditions, try it out. This one is up to you, if you prefer a cleaner live view.

QC Tintless affects color rendering, in particular the amount of red in the final picture. It is presumably the 4.4.4 fix for people who had too much red in their pictures in 4.4.2, so this one is up to you to tweak. Keep it enabled if you want more neutral colors, disabled if you want a little more red in your pictures out of the camera.

Just disable Wavelet NR. The other two are beneficial either to the live view's quality, or to the final picture through better color rendering.

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Added 12/10/14

There has been an update to the camera app.

Wavelet NR is now QC denoise, still enabled by default. Do the right thing and disable it to improve picture quality.

Morpho VNR has been renamed to Morpho denoise and is no longer selectable. It doesn't affect you, don't mind this change. It is enabled by default and it should be, otherwise the viewfinder becomes a color noise mess under low light conditions, unlike the pictures taken with QC denoise off.

QC Tintless is unaffected. Keep it enabled.

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Added 03/10/15

Go here for the latest camera app, with hidden settings enabled. Thanks [MENTION=4413273]S0bes[/MENTION] for all your hard work on this.

The camera app's hidden settings have changed a bit since the last update to this post, some other interesting settings have appeared (which I haven't tested by the way), but the recommendation that's been on this post for a year so far stays the same. Disable QC denoise, leave the rest as it is, enjoy!

As always your mileage may vary, the app can be installed on most Motorola phones so far (all of them?), and the improvements depend on how bad your phone's sensor is. The 1st gen Moto G has a particularly bad 5MP sensor that its output suffers too much by the noise removal done by the app. On phones with better cameras, well, you'll have to test for yourself to see if it's worth it.