QuickAdvice: HDR For Everyone With TrueHDR - Plus, Win A Promo Code!
TrueHDR ($1.99) by Pictional LLC gives iphone photographers more options than the iPhone 4’s native HDR. Perhaps you’ve had fun playing around with the native HDR and you’re looking for more flexibility and control over your HDR photography. Maybe you find the native HDR lacking, like I do: as you can see from the in-line screenshot below, the before-and-after shot using native HDR is not that impressive. Have you noticed the iPhone 4’s native HDR doesn’t allow you to take front-facing photos? TrueHDR does. Or, maybe you don’t have an iPhone 4, and would like to experiment with HDR photography on your iPhone 3GS or iPod Touch.
We’ve all had the frustration of taking a picture and having the sky blown out to white, or the sky looking perfect but the object of the photo being so dark you can barely make it out. HDR, or High Dynamic Range photography, involves taking two shots at different exposures in rapid succession. By taking a lighter and a darker shot of the same scene, you can combine the best parts of each photo for a single photo that captures something closer to what you really see.
First, if you like more dramatic and vivid color, you’ll want to go into settings and changed the Preferred HDR Mode from Natural to Enhanced. Now go to the menu to choose how you want to create your HDR photo: Auto Capture, SemiAuto Capture, Manual Capture, or Choose Pictures. For Auto Capture, you simply point and shoot. TrueHDR does all the work. For SemiAuto, you select the dark and light areas when prompted, and the app does the rest. Manual Capture gives you more control - you select the dark area, shoot, select the light area, and shoot again. The the app takes over to combine the shots.
A really cool feature this app has is that you can choose pictures from your camera roll, you are not just limited to pictures you take in-app. I can see this coming in handy for old photos, or for photos you take on your regular camera and sync to your camera roll for this purpose.
The lead photo at the top of this article is a composite of pictures I took in SemiAuto Capture, using Natural color. The photo on the right is the HDR shot, so you can see how the TrueHDR takes the best of the light and dark photos to create this. Click here for more examples of what you can do with this app.
The only downside of this app is that it does take longer to shoot and process than the native HDR does. I think this is a worthwhile trade-off for the flexibility you get, however. TrueHDR is definitely a worthy addition to your iPhoneography app collection.
How would you like to own TrueHDR for free? Comment below for your chance to win a promo code. Must have a US iTunes account to redeem. Contest ends December 7 at 2:00 EST. Good luck!
