[Asus Zenfone 9] Silly22:
I've been testing out the Zenfone 9 camera and have been disappointed with the 12 MP binned photos from the stock software. I've found it oversharpens way too much and smears similar colours into one so things look flat, like a poorly drawn painting especially if you pixel peep on a monitor. In fact it's worse than my much older LG V30 stock camera photos, although those jpegs are 16.3 MP compared to the 12.6 MP from the Zenfone.

The 50 MP unbinned files from the Asus camera software is marginally better than the V30's jpegs but are 3.42X the size of the binned files. So not the greatest solution but I may have to resort to it in some instances. Whereas the Zenfone 9's RAW files retain the most detail but are huge ~100 MB and require post-processing work but still look superb. Also, you'd have to copy the EXIF data from the simultaneously-saved 50 MP jpg into the processed RAW after every edit too.

So I learned about modded GCam from Youtube and posts at XDA and installed GCam_8.1.101_Wichaya_V1.6 and added the Wichaya8.1-ZF9-V4-081257.xml config. I've attached shots from the GCam mod (binned 12MP 4:3 file) and the stock Asus camera software (binned 12 MP 4:3 file). First, the size of the file from GCam is over 1MB bigger than the file from the stock camera software, even though they are both 4096 x 3072, so it probably means more data retained. These were taken on a flat-light day due to wildfire smoke, so it was easy to control lighting.

I do prefer the output from GCam. It is more realistic, the colors are slightly less punchy and there are more details in areas that matter. Most importantly it retains some of the local depth of individual subjects in the frame. It is also generally softer than the Asus software output with less haloing due to sharpening. Look how flat the small shrub and plants at the base of the large spruce tree appear in the Stock software output, it's like somebody copied-and-pasted pixels from another photo onto the wood chips underneath the tree. The GCam output is definitely better. This is also the case with the grass just in front of those wood chips and the colors are definitely more natural in the GCam jpeg. The central large spruce tree is reproduced better in terms of needle details and color accuracy in the GCam output. Again in the GCam photo, the chainlink fence in the back is better preserved as well as tree bark.

However, the Asus stock camera software shows a tiny bit more detail for the spruce trees wayyyy in the back behind the chainlink fence, and better picks out some thin branches of a small columnar aspen that covers the trunk of the large elm just to the left of the house. The textured wall above the garage and the soffit under the roof eaves benefit from the extra sharpening from the stock camera software. GCam was definitely softer for the trees on the left part of the frame where the stock software is sharper and more detailed. But the basketball net below those trees is sharper in GCam. I will have to do more tests but generally I prefer the GCam results. For example, I'm more satisfied that the variegated dogwood shrub in front looks better from GCam, with actual depth to individual leaves and bunches of leaves vs. getting more detail in rather distant background objects using the stock app.