I've been testing the Galaxy Note 10's camera for almost a week, and it's clear that Samsung is trying way too hard to make photos look good

Here's New York City from outside Business Insider's office. The Galaxy Note 10's camera is looking pretty good so far ...

... upon closer inspection, details are crisp and clear, but colors seem a little washed out.

Bringing things back to nature, the Galaxy Note 10's camera makes greens look overly bright — almost neon. The lighting is also pretty flat, a result of Samsung's obsession with HDR (high dynamic range).

For reference, here's the same photo taken with the Pixel 3, which looks a lot closer to what I actually saw than the Note 10's photo.

Here's another example of Samsung's overactive HDR, which makes photos look weird, in my opinion. My cat, Wally, looks like he's been heavily photoshopped.

Doesn't it feel like this tree should be a lot darker? (And I'm telling you right now that the grass is not that neon color.)

You can turn off Samsung's HDR in the Note 10's settings, but it doesn't seem to do very much. For this totem pole, I took two photos with and without HDR. I honestly can't tell which one is which.

Here's the other photo of the totem pole, which may or may not have HDR enabled.

Still, the Note 10 takes nice photos of scenery ...

... and it's not totally inept in the outdoors.

It can handle indoor lighting very well ...

... in fact, the Note 10 handles indoor photos extremely well. It takes better photos indoors than outdoors ...

... and I'm a huge fan of ultra-wide cameras on smartphones.

Selfies look pretty nice, too. Can you tell I never, ever take selfies?

Night mode ... is there, sure, but it's not very good. You have to stay very still while taking photos in night mode, just as you do with the Pixel 3's Night Sight. But you absolutely don't get the same result with the Galaxy Note 10.

The Galaxy Note 10 has the makings of a good camera, but a lot of the photos are somewhat ruined by Samsung's over-eager enhancements. That's just my opinion, as many millions of Samsung owners surely love the photos their phones take.