Ding Dong The Droid is Dead

I have been waiting at least four years for this time that day in October when I was able to get an iPhone. Surviving the Blackberry Pearl and then a first generation Android, I was finally rewarded with a smart phone that lacks the clunkiness of Microsoft... Err, well, it might just as well be. Google will eventually get it but the software exceeded the sorry Gen 1 of the Droid. The folks in Cupertino CA have something going when they can release a new product in an old form factor hand have it so sucessful. I am talking of the iPhone 4S. It is the same shape and feel as the iPhone 4 but all new insides.

This is not going to be a post on how much I like my iPhone 4S but rather a review of one of the iPhone Apps.

TrueHDR is an App that worked ok with the iPhone 4 but when Apple changed the sensor to handle light a little better in the 4S and added the fifth optic element something happened. In a good way. When you start the app you get to choose how you are going to control the app.

• Auto Capture will take three exposures and work its magic. 
• SemiAuto Capture waits for you to select to locations in the screen. One for highlights and one for shadows. The you press the shutter button and the app takes two exposures based on your selection and then works its magic.
• Manual Capture is for the real control freak and really does little to enhance the usability of the app. You select a highlight area and click the shutter, then a shadow area and again you must click the shutter. Seams like a waste of time, but like I say, it can appease the control freak.

I like to use the SemiAuto Capture option and is what the following images are an example of. Excuse the fact that I am simply using my hotel room for the example but it serves the purpose for this post.

Here you can see the two locations in the image that I have selected to be used for the highlights and shadows of the HDR. When the camera shutter is pressed it will make two different exposures based on the selection I made.

Here it has taken both exposures and is waiting for the second one to display. When you press the Merge button, the app goes to work keeping you abreast of its progress with the following screen.

Once both images have been merged you are presented with four sliders to tweak the image. Here again there is not much to do here except for the previously mentioned control freak.

The sliders are self explanitory. At the bottom are some options which include some Fx presets. The presets available are Sepia, Retro, Retro-II, Mono, XPro RedShift, and Vingnette. You can select any of the presets and if yo decide you don't like any of the just click on the last selected and it goes back to the original merged file. Once a preset is selected you can also go back and make adjustments with the sliders by selecting the little slider icon at the bottom.

When you his the save button you really don't get to see the finished image but rather you have to exit the app and go to your camera roll to see the finished product. Here is a comparison between the iPhone 4S and the 4S camera after the TrueHDR processing.

I don't know about you, but I'm sold. If you want to enhance the already fantastic camera iPhone 4S, I can not more highly recommend TrueHDR for your iPhone Apps collection

That will do it for me today. Take care... Doug