This could well become one of my must-have iPhone apps for iPhoneography. TrueHDR is fantastic for capturing scenery as you see it, but it needs you to take two very similar shots of the same scene. Your first shot uses tap-to-focus on a bright area, and the second shot focuses on a dark one. Then […]
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Quick Look: TrueHDR, render high dynamic range images right on your iPhone [iPhone App Reviews]

Feb 2nd 2010 by

version 1.0.1

This could well become one of my must-have iPhone apps for iPhoneography. TrueHDR is fantastic for capturing scenery as you see it, but it needs you to take two very similar shots of the same scene. Your first shot uses tap-to-focus on a bright area, and the second shot focuses on a dark one. Then you press a magic “merge” button and create a blended image that should show all the details in your picture. You can actually do this manually in Photoshop on the desktop, but TrueHDR takes the extra step of aligning your first and second shots automatically, in case of camera shake.



One thing I do appreciate is the option to save your first and second shots (the dark and light ones) so that you can see how dramatically the third HDR photo is. The results take about 20-30 seconds to render and are usually good, if not a little green. This isn’t much of a hassle if you have other apps like photogene or photoforge to lower the green levels, though.

The app is obviously best used on a 3GS with its fantastic tap-to-focus and exposure settings, but you can use TrueHDR on iPod touches and other iPhone models provided you upload two similar pictures with different exposure settings to the device. If you’re going to do that, however, you might as well figure out a way to manipulate HDR on a desktop program. It’s more fun (and more magical) to take the pictures from your iPhone camera and turn them into something spectacular.

High Dynamic Range is something I’ve wanted to play with for quite a while, and it’s amazing to suddenly have an HDR-for-dummies app sitting right on my homescreen. I won’t be using it all the time, but it definitely makes landscape shots or tricky daytimeshots a lot more plausible on my little iPhone, and that makes it well worth the $1.99 price of admission in my book.

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TrueHDR is available for $1.99 on the App Store.

The app was provided by Pictional LLC for review on Just Another iPhone Blog. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.

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