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wuhaoyu1990/magiccamera

5,513JavaAudience · developerComplexity · 3/5Setup · moderate

TLDR

MagicCamera is an Android camera app that applies more than 40 real-time visual filters to the live camera preview, photos, and videos using the phone's GPU, with built-in face beauty effects.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((MagicCamera))
    What it does
      Real-time filters
      Photo editing
      Video recording
    Features
      40+ filter styles
      Face skin smoothing
      Skin brightening
    Use Cases
      Camera filter apps
      Beauty camera apps
      Android reference
    Tech Stack
      Java
      Android
      OpenGL ES
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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Build an Android camera app with GPU-accelerated real-time photo filters applied to the live preview.

USE CASE 2

Add skin-smoothing and skin-brightening face beauty effects to an Android camera or photo editing app.

USE CASE 3

Record videos with live filters applied using this project as a reference implementation.

USE CASE 4

Learn how to use the GPU to process camera frames in real time on Android.

Tech stack

JavaAndroidOpenGL ES

Getting it running

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 1h+

No installation instructions in the README, project targets older Android Studio and Eclipse setups and may require manual configuration.

In plain English

MagicCamera is an Android camera app written in Java that applies real-time visual filters to what the camera sees, so you can watch the effect before you take the photo or record the video. The idea and technical approach came from an existing open-source project called android-gpuimage, which uses the phone's graphics chip to process images quickly enough to run filters live. The app includes over 40 different filter styles. These apply to the camera preview as you shoot, to videos as you record them, and to photos in a separate image editing mode. The image editor also includes a face beauty function with two options: smoothing skin texture and brightening skin tone. These were common features in Chinese camera apps of the era and are explicitly listed in the project description. The project supports both photo capture and video recording with filters running in real time. The author notes in the changelog that the Android Studio version of the project covers camera mode, while the Eclipse version of the project also includes the full image editor. Both versions of the source code are in the repository. The README is sparse and was last updated in 2016, when the project was still described as a work in progress. It does not include installation instructions or details about how to build the project. The description is written in both English and Chinese, and the project appears to be aimed primarily at Android developers in China who want a ready-made reference for building a camera app with filter support.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
How do I add a new custom filter to the MagicCamera Android project using the GPU image pipeline?
Prompt 2
Help me integrate the face beauty skin-smoothing feature from MagicCamera into my existing Android camera app.
Prompt 3
Explain how MagicCamera applies real-time filters to the camera preview stream using OpenGL ES on Android.
Prompt 4
Show me how to add a slider control to adjust filter intensity in the MagicCamera project.
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