Does this require associating your phone with a G account?

I believe so. I'd imagine the image has to be uploaded to Google Photos as well, since most of their nice features like personal tagging require that.

Part of the reason I switched to an iPhone was for all the on device stuff that Google insists you use the cloud for.

	▲	scottyah 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Same, the google phones just absolutely hated that I went into airplane mode frequently but still wanted to do things like listen to music, view and edit notes, etc. God forbid I try to add to my shopping list while camping.

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tucnak 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

One compromise in GrapheneOS is to use Storage Scopes to limit the scope of Google Photos to select folders, or potentially even disable Network permissions for it altogether. I use Google Photos for sharing photos with my partner and family, and I can do this by moving photos around on disk so that they enter the scope. The camera app from Google is great, and so is the keyboard: neither gets Network permission on my phone.