You Can See Clearly Now Thanks To CrystalView PhotoPlayer
CrystalView PhotoPlayer ($2.99) by Aexeda, LLC is a photo viewer that optimizes your iPhone or iPad's visual display in order to allow you to see images as they were meant to be seen instead of how they look on your mobile device’s screen. It is not a photo editor, nor is it a camera app. The purpose of CrystalView PhotoPlayer (CVPP) is to enhance images so that, on your mobile device, they look like they should.
Upon opening CVPP, you are presented with a blank screen and a couple of option buttons. Here is where you’ll want to add the images that you want enhanced. You add your photos from your camera roll or photo library into the playlist. You can have multiple playlists and as many as 100 pictures per playlist, but that is scheduled to change to as many as you want in the next update.
After you have selected the pictures for viewing, you can decide to increase, decrease, or turn off the optimization feature. You can rearrange the order of your playlist photos and you can delete photos if you decide you don’t want them in it.
CVPP utilizes their personally developed technology that focuses on certain areas of your image instead of adjusting the entire photo. The result is a clearer, brighter picture that does not have too much light, brightness or sharpness in unnecessary areas. I used an image that was pretty awful in its original form. It was in a dark room with a lot of shadows and the foreground was too bright. CVPP adjusted the image just enough to make it clearer and have more depth, without causing the foreground to increase in brightness. It didn’t make the photo look good, the original was just too poorly shot, but it did make it possible to see what I saw when I took the picture, which was a rock club filled to capacity with sweaty punk rockers. That is the image I wanted to capture.
The photos cannot be saved in your camera roll or photo library, but the enhanced images can be sent directly to Facebook or Twitter or can be emailed.
When I first started using the app, I couldn’t figure out what to make of it. It’s not an image editor and it’s not a camera. You can’t just save the enhanced photos, but you can send them to people. It confused me at first. I discovered the purpose of the app when I was playing around with images on my Apple TV. After enhancing a couple of photos and emailing them back to myself, I viewed them from my photo library through AirPlay on Apple TV. I could see that the enhanced image was different than the original, but still couldn’t see the point of the app. Then, when I looked at the original image on my iPad and the original image on my HD television, it all became clear to me, literally. The original image displayed on my TV was much clearer and brighter than how it looked on my iPad. The image that was enhanced by CVPP being displayed on my iPad looked exactly like the original image being displayed on my TV. Since this technology is so new, I don’t think it is being used to its fullest potential with this app. While it is amazing to see how it can enhance certain areas of a photo while leaving other areas alone, the features seem to be lacking. For example, if you can email photos, why can’t you save them to your photo library?
CrystalView PhotoPlayer is available for the iPhone and iPad, for $2.99.
