TrueHDR review

Don’t you hate how some photos come out too dark while others can be too bright? The TrueHDR app from Pictional aims to solve your woes by bringing the tried and tested HDR (High dynamic range imaging) technology to your iPhone. Using a simple to use interface, TrueHDR will guide you through the process of creating your very own HDR photos using the built in features of the iPhone 3GS camera mixed with its proprietary technology that automatically aligns and merges two photos together to create a stunning HDR photo.

Once you open the app you can either import existing photos from your library or take them right from within TrueHDR with helpful instructions. Try to keep your iPhone pointed at the same area, but don’t worry too much about being perfect because TrueHDR will try to align your images on its own.

Tap “take pictures” and you’ll see the Camera app with some onscreen help. Point the camera at your subject and tap the screen where the brightest area is. The built in iPhone auto focus feature will put a square around where you tap, and it will also automatically adjust the exposure making the picture a little darker so it will capture the shadows. After taking that photo, you will need to take your second photo to get the bright areas. Tap on the darkest area of your subject and the iPhone will brighten the exposure and auto focus your subject. Take the second photo and you’ll see them both show up in the TrueHDR window. From here, you can tap Save to save both originals to your Camera Roll. Also if you want to retake a photo, tap it to remove it from the list. Once ready tap the Merge button and wait about 25 seconds for TrueHDR to do its magic. You will see messages saying “aligning images”, “optimizing dynamic range” and “optimizing display”. Once finished TrueHDR will display the finished HDR photograph. Tap Save to keep it in your Camera Roll. You can also attach it to an email and send it off if you wish.

The results are quite noticeably better than the originals. You will see richer colors and deeper darker shadows. Your dark shadowy areas are now visible and have a realistic finish. Depending on your original lighting you might want to again open the result in PhotoShop and fine tune the hue and saturation for a perfect finish. One minor complaint we have is the dimensions of the resulting HDR photo are actually cut in half. The iPhone 3GS takes photos at 1536×2048 and the HDR photos created with TrueHDR are reduced & compressed to about half the size at 713×954 pixels. As with any other Photography app, you get out of it, what you put into it, so the better your original photos, the better the resulting HDR image will be.

Up until now creating HDR photos was something that required expensive digital equipment and complicated software. TrueHDR brings the exciting world of HDR photos to the masses with an easy to use iPhone app that can be used by just about anyone. TrueHDR will hone and boost the power of your built in iPhone camera to new heights by creating great HDR images with ease.

Here is a video demo of the TrueHDR app on the iPhone

AppSafari review of TrueHDR was written by Joe Seifi on December 10th, 2009 and categorized under App Store, Featured, Fun, Photos, Utilities. Page viewed 5283 times, 2 so far today. Need help on using these apps? Please read the Help Page.