A camera application for the COSMIC desktop environment.

View more screenshots

Status

This is a personal project by Frederic Laing. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by System76. The application may be contributed to System76 or the COSMIC project in the future if there is interest.

Installation

Flatpak (Recommended)

# Install from Flathub
flatpak install flathub io.github.cosmic_utils.camera

# Or install from a downloaded .flatpak bundle
flatpak install camera-x86_64.flatpak

From Source

Dependencies

• Rust (stable)
• GStreamer 1.0 with plugins (base, good, bad, ugly)
• libcamera (>= 0.4.0)
• cmake (for building embedded libjpeg-turbo)
• libwayland
• libxkbcommon
• libinput
• libudev
• libseat

Build

# Install just command runner
cargo install just

# Build release binary
just build-release

# Install to system
sudo just install

CLI Usage

The camera application supports several command-line modes for headless operation:

camera              # Launch GUI (default)
camera --help       # Show help
camera list         # List available cameras
camera photo        # Take a photo
camera video        # Record a video
camera terminal     # Terminal mode viewer

List Cameras

Shows available cameras with their supported formats:

Available cameras:

  [0] Laptop Webcam Module (V4L2)
      Formats: 1920x1080@30fps, 1280x720@30fps, 640x480@30fps

Take a Photo

Options:

• -c, --camera <INDEX> - Camera index from camera list (default: 0)
• -o, --output <PATH> - Output file path (default: ~/Pictures/camera/IMG_TIMESTAMP.jpg)

Examples:

camera photo                         # Quick photo with defaults
camera photo -o ~/snapshot.jpg       # Custom output path
camera photo -c 1                    # Use second camera

Record a Video

Options:

• -c, --camera <INDEX> - Camera index from camera list (default: 0)
• -d, --duration <SECONDS> - Recording duration (default: 10)
• -o, --output <PATH> - Output file path (default: ~/Videos/camera/video_TIMESTAMP.mp4)
• -a, --audio - Enable audio recording

Examples:

camera video                         # 10 second video
camera video -d 30                   # 30 second video
camera video -d 60 -a                # 1 minute with audio
camera video -c 1 -d 30 -o out.mp4   # Camera 1, custom output

Press Ctrl+C to stop recording early.

Process Images

Process images through computational photography pipelines.

camera process <MODE> [OPTIONS] <INPUT>...

Night Mode

Multi-frame denoising and HDR+ pipeline for low-light photography.

camera process night-mode [OPTIONS] <INPUT>...

Arguments:

• <INPUT>... - One or more image files (PNG, DNG) or a directory containing images

Options:

• -o, --output <DIR> - Output directory for processed images (default: <input>/output or ~/Pictures/camera)

Examples:

camera process night-mode /path/to/burst/               # Process all images in directory
camera process night-mode img1.png img2.png img3.png    # Process specific files
camera process night-mode /path/to/burst/ -o /output/   # Custom output directory

The pipeline automatically:

• Selects the sharpest frame as reference
• Aligns all frames to the reference using GPU-accelerated pyramid alignment
• Merges frames using FFT-based frequency domain denoising
• Applies tone mapping with shadow recovery
• Outputs as DNG

Terminal Mode (For the Brave)

Ever wanted to see your face rendered in glorious Unicode? Wonder what you'd look like as a half-block character? Well, wonder no more!

Controls:

• s - Switch camera (cycle through available cameras)
• q or Ctrl+C - Return to the real world

Why does this exist?

• SSH into your server and check if you left the oven on (assuming your oven has a camera)
• Finally achieve your dream of becoming ASCII art
• Prove to your coworkers that you can attend video calls from a TTY
• Because we could

Note: Your terminal needs true color support (most modern terminals have this). If you see a sad mosaic of wrong colors, try a different terminal emulator. Also, this won't make you more photogenic - trust us, we tried.

Development

# Run with debug logging
just run

# Run with verbose debug logging
just run-debug

# Format code
just fmt

# Run all checks (format, cargo check, tests)
just check

# Run clippy lints
just clippy

# Run tests only
just test

Cross-Compilation

Cross-compilation for other architectures uses cross with custom Dockerfiles in docker/.

# Install cross
cargo install cross --git https://github.com/cross-rs/cross

# Debug build
cross build --target aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu

# Release build
cross build --release --target aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu

The configuration is in Cross.toml. Docker or Podman is required.

Podman users: If your system uses btrfs, configure the storage driver:

mkdir -p ~/.config/containers
printf '[storage]\ndriver = "btrfs"\n' > ~/.config/containers/storage.conf
podman system reset --force

If your kernel lacks the tun module (check with modprobe tun), pass host networking:

CROSS_BUILD_OPTS="--network=host" CROSS_CONTAINER_OPTS="--network=host" cross build --target ...

Distrobox (Atomic Desktops)

For development on atomic/immutable desktops (Fedora Silverblue, Kinoite, Bazzite, etc.):

# Create the development container
distrobox assemble create

# Enter the container
distrobox enter camera-dev

# Build inside the container
just build-release

# Run the binary on the host (not inside distrobox)
# Camera access via PipeWire requires running on the host
./target/release/camera

# Remove when no longer needed
distrobox rm camera-dev

To run GUI apps from inside the container, allow local display access on your host:

xhost +si:localuser:$USER

Add this to ~/.distroboxrc to make it permanent.

Note: Camera access requires PipeWire, which doesn't work reliably from inside containers. Build in distrobox, run on host for full functionality.

Flatpak Development

# Full install (uninstalls old, installs deps if needed, builds and installs)
just flatpak-install

# Run the installed Flatpak
just flatpak-run

# Uninstall all Flatpak components
just flatpak-uninstall

# Individual steps (if needed)
just flatpak-deps   # Install Flatpak SDK/runtime
just flatpak-build  # Build and install Flatpak
just flatpak-clean  # Remove build artifacts

Acknowledgments

The exposure controls implementation was inspired by cameractrls, a camera controls GUI for Linux.

Night Mode Feature

The night mode photo feature implements a simplified version of the HDR+ algorithm, with implementation guidance from:

• hdr-plus-swift by Martin Marek (GitHub) - GPL-3.0

  • Hierarchical pyramid alignment with L1/L2 hybrid cost functions
  • FFT-based frequency domain merging
  • Spatial domain merge algorithm
  • Noise estimation techniques

• Google HDR+ Paper - "Burst photography for high dynamic range and low-light imaging on mobile cameras" (Hasinoff et al., SIGGRAPH 2016)

  • Paper

• Night Sight Paper - "Handheld Mobile Photography in Very Low Light" (Liba et al., SIGGRAPH Asia 2019)

License

Licensed under the GNU Public License 3.0.

Contribution

Any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you shall be licensed under the GNU Public License 3.0 (GPL-3.0). Each source file should have a SPDX copyright notice at the top of the file:

// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-only

Reporting Bugs

The easiest way to report a bug is to use the "Report a Bug" button in the app settings. This generates a detailed system report that helps with debugging.

1. Open Camera → Settings → "Report a Bug"
2. A bug report file will be saved to ~/Pictures/camera/
3. Your browser will open the bug report form
4. Attach the generated report file and describe the issue

You can also report bugs manually if you prefer.

Feature Requests

Have an idea for a new feature? Submit a feature request!