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Pro HDR app make High Dynamic Range photography easy

By | August 30, 2010, 8:32pm PDT

Summary: Guest blogger Bob Snow shows us two cool photography apps, one for taking HDR photos, the other for creating perfectly seamless panoramic photos — all in camera.

Ever noticed how photos taken on camera phones (including the iPhone) notoriously blow out the sky and/or leave the subject in the foreground in dark shadows? Sure, “touch to focus” helps, but it usually can’t compensate enough in high contrast settings.

A colleague and fellow-PPUG member Bob sends along this great tip for an app that I purchased immediately after seeing the results.

My wife and I received our new iPhone 4s on Monday. The built-in camera does well in low light, but seems to blow out the highlights pretty badly in high contrast situations. The angle of view is quite wide for a camera phone.

Here is a photo taken with the iPhone’s built-in Camera app.
The second photo (below) is the same subject photographed using the Pro HDR app ($1.99, App Store) in just two exposures, in automatic mode and processed completely in the iPhone 4.

The last photo (below) was taken with the Pano app ($2.99, App Store) with five photos, stitched in the phone while you wait. Pretty cool.

What is your favorite camera app?

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Topics

Phone, Photograph, Camera, Camera Phones, Cellular Phones, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Jason D. O'Grady

Jason O'Grady is a journalist and author specializing in mobile technology. He has published six books on Apple and mobile gadgets and his PowerPage blog has been publishing for over 15 years.

Disclosure

Jason D. O'Grady

Jason D. O'Grady is the creator and editor of O'Grady's PowerPage, which has been publishing mobile technology news since 1995. He maintains an advertising relationship with the following legacy advertisers on the PowerPage:

  • Amazon Associates
  • Google Adsense
  • Tekserve

    • Advertising on the PowerPage is brokered by a third-party agency (BackBeat Media) and he recuses himself from these negotiations.

Biography

Jason D. O'Grady

Jason D. O'Grady developed an affinity for Apple computers after using the original Lisa, and this affinity turned into a bona-fide obsession when he got the original 128 KB Macintosh in 1984.

He started writing one of the first Web sites about Apple (O'Grady's PowerPage) in 1995 and is considered to be one of the fathers of blogging. He has been a frequent speaker at the Macworld Expo conference and a member of the conference faculty. He also co-founded the first dedicated PowerBook User Group (PPUG) in the United States.

After winning a major legal battle with Apple in 2006, he set the precedent that independent journalists are entitled to the same protections under the First Amendment as members of the mainstream media.

O'Grady is the author of The Nexus One Pocket Guide, The Droid Pocket Guide, The Google Phone Pocket Guide, and The Garmin nuvi Pocket Guide (Peachpit Press), the author of Corporations That Changed the World: Apple Inc. (Greenwood Press), and a contributor to The Mac Bible (Peachpit Press). In addition, he has contributed to numerous Mac publications over the years, including MacWEEK, Macworld, and MacPower (Japan).

When he's not writing about Apple for ZDNet at The Apple Core, he enjoys spending time with his family in New Jersey.

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RE: Pro HDR app make High Dynamic Range photography easy
jackson1984-24316069205748857739440257893812 11th Oct
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Agree
Userama 30th Aug 2010
Both HDR Pro and Pano are very nice apps. There's another pano app, Video Panorama, that makes panos from short video clips. Very cool!
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Hipstamatic
phlyfumblr 31st Aug 2010
I am also a fan of the Hipstamatic app- some great filters that capture some amazing retro-looking shots...
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RE: Pro HDR app make High Dynamic Range photography easy
heymatthew 31st Aug 2010
I'm still a big fan of Tiffen's PhotoFX and Camera Bag. I also like the Hipstamatic app, although I feel it's a touch over-used among the 15-15 1/2 crowd who can't figure out how to, or are too lazy to shoot with a Holga, LOMO LC-A, etc. It is a ton of fun, though.
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RE: Pro HDR app make High Dynamic Range photography easy
kenosha77a Updated - 31st Aug 2010
I'm still waiting for my Droid X .. sorry .. couldn't resist.

But back to the subject at hand. My vote for best app would go towards "Pro HDR".
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seriously?
jc7997 7th Sep 2010
did no one notice that the pictures aren't the same? There's a flag on the second one. The whole thing looks doctored anyway, coloring is all wrong... Just saying. Maybe a perk of the HDR app is that it adds peculiar little flags to your pic. If that were true, it would get my vote.
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RE: Pro HDR app make High Dynamic Range photography easy
jackson1984-24316069205748857739440257893812 11th Oct
Exceptional generating. Would you ideas me submitting a web site hyperlink of this publish on my nfl jersey blog page web page? It will eventually assistance my viewers likewise.

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