android - Summary: Take a picture utilizing Camera Intent and display the photo with correct orientation (works on hopefully all devices)

Question

It seems to be the simplest thing in the world: taking a picture within your Android app using the default camera activity. However, there are many pitfalls which are covered in several posts across StackOverflow and the web as, for instance, Null Intents being passed back, the orientation of the picture not being correct or OutOfMemoryErrors.

I'm looking for a solution that allows me to

1. start the camera activity via the camera intent,
2. retrieve the Uri of the photo, and
3. retrieve the correct orientation of the photo.

Moreover, I would like to avoid a device configuration (manufacturer, model, os version) specific implementation as far as possible. So I'm wondering: what is the best way to achieve this?

Answer 1

UPDATE: January 2nd, 2014: I tried really hard to avoid implementing different strategies based on the device manufacturer. Unfortunately, I did not get around it. Going through hundreds of posts and talking to several developers, nobody found a solution that works on all devices without implementing device manufacturer specific code.

After I posted my solution here on StackOverflow, some developers asked me to publish my code on github. So here it is now: AndroidCameraUtil on github

The code was successfully tested on a wide variety of devices with Android API-Level >= 8. For a complete list, please see the Readme file on github.

The CameraIntentHelperActivity provides the main functionality, which is also described in more detail in the following.

Calling the default camera activity:

• for Samsung and Sony devices: I call the camera activity with the method call to startActivityForResult. I only set the constant CAPTURE_IMAGE_ACTIVITY_REQUEST_CODE. I do NOT set any other intent extras.
• for all other devices: I call the camera activity with the method call to startActivityForResult as previously. This time, however, I additionally set the intent extra MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT and provide an URI, where I want the image to be stored.

In both cases I remember the time the camera activity was started.

---

On camera activity result:

1. Mediastore: First, I try to read the photo being captured from the MediaStore. Using a mangedQuery on the MediaStore content, I retrieve the latest image being taken, as well as its orientation property and its timestamp. If I find an image and it was not taken before the camera intent was called, it is the image I was looking for. Otherwise, I dismiss the result and try one of the following approaches.
2. Intent extra: Second, I try to get an image Uri from intent.getData() of the returning intent. If this is not successful either, I continue with step 3.
3. Default photo Uri: If all of the above mentioned steps did not work, I use the image Uri I passed to the camera activity.

At this point, I retrieved the photo Uri and its orientation which I pass to my UploadPhotoActivity.

---

Image processing

Please take a close look at my BitmapHelper class. It is based on the code described in detail in that tutorial.

Moreover, the shrinkBitmap method also rotates the image if required based on the orientation information extracted earlier.

---

I hope this is helpful to some of you.